Magic Item Price Calculator

Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition is notoriously vague about the price of magic items. The Dungeon Master's Guide provides wide ranges (e.g., "501–5,000 gp" for a Rare item), which leaves a lot of work for the DM.

The Problem with "Book Prices"

A Potion of Healing and a Potion of Flying are both "Common" items, but their utility is vastly different. Additionally, in a "Low Magic" campaign where wizards are rare, prices should skyrocket. In a high-fantasy metropolis where magic is commonplace, they might be cheaper.

How this Tool Calculates Value

This calculator uses a weighted random algorithm based on the official rarity tiers, but applies two critical modifiers:

• Consumables: Potions and scrolls are reduced in price (typically 50%) compared to permanent items like swords or rings.
• Magic Economy:
  • Low Magic: Prices x1.5 (Scarce supply)
  • Standard: Prices x1.0 (Rules As Written)
  • High Magic: Prices x0.75 (Abundant supply)

Use this tool to quickly generate a "market price" when your players want to sell their loot or buy something specific in town.

Magic item cost by rarity: the official numbers

Two official sources give you numbers, and they do not agree, which is the root of most of the confusion. The Dungeon Master's Guide gives wide ranges. Xanathar's Guide to Everything later gave a single base price per rarity, which is the figure most tables now use because it is one number instead of a spread.

The consumable column is the rule people miss most often. A potion or scroll costs roughly half what a permanent item of the same rarity does, because it is gone the moment it is used. That single adjustment fixes most of the pricing arguments that come up at a table.

Sane Magical Prices, and why so many tables use it

Long before Xanathar's existed, the community had already solved this. Sane Magical Prices is a widely circulated fan document that assigns a specific price to individual magic items rather than to rarity tiers, on the reasoning that a Bag of Holding and a Immovable Rod are both Uncommon but nowhere near equally useful.

Its baseline figures line up closely with what Xanathar's later printed, which is a decent sign that both landed somewhere reasonable. The advantage of the item-by-item approach is that it prices utility rather than rarity. The disadvantage is that it is a long list to search mid-session, which is the specific problem the calculator above exists to solve.

What do players get when they sell magic items?

Less than the sticker price, and that is deliberate. The usual convention is that a seller recovers about half of an item's market value, because finding a buyer with tens of thousands of gold to spend on a specific magic sword is its own adventure. Xanathar's builds a whole downtime activity around exactly that problem: you spend time looking for a buyer, you roll, and the offer you get depends on what turns up.

Practical rule of thumb: quote the calculator's price when the party is buying, and roughly half of it when the party is selling. The gap between those two numbers is not you being stingy. It is the reason merchants exist.

Should magic items be for sale at all?

Worth deciding before your players ask. The default assumption in 5e is that magic items are not a commodity, and most settlements do not have a shop with a wall of enchanted weapons. If your world works that way, price is almost beside the point, and availability is the real constraint.

If you do run open magic markets, keep prices consistent from session to session. Players will remember what a Cloak of Elvenkind cost in session 6, and they will notice when the same item costs triple in session 20. Set the economy level once in the calculator and stay with it.

Want the full picture? Our complete D&D 5e magic item prices guide goes deeper on pricing loot your players want to sell, and the magic item picker helps when you know the budget but not the item.