Herblore has a reputation as the skill that empties banks. The reputation is mostly earned. 99 Herblore requires 13,034,431 XP, almost every point of it comes from consuming tradeable items, and none of it can be earned passively while you do something else. This article puts numbers on the problem, then shows where the numbers can be cut.
One caveat up front. I last priced these routes on the Grand Exchange in July 2026. Herb margins move weekly, so treat every gp figure here as a range and check live prices before buying anything in bulk.
The bill, in context
Cost to 99 for the classic buyable skills, assuming you buy materials at GE price and sell products back where possible:
| Skill | Typical net cost to 99 | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Prayer | 45-90M | Fast but brutal gp/XP on bones |
| Herblore | 25-60M | Route-dependent, see below |
| Construction | 20-50M | Oak planks at the low end |
| Crafting | 15-35M | Battlestaves and glass reduce it |
| Smithing | 0-20M | Blast Furnace can approach break-even |
Two things stand out. Herblore is not the worst gp-per-XP skill in the game; Prayer holds that title comfortably. Herblore feels more expensive because the XP total is large, the training is active clicking rather than a quick bone-burning session, and the cost arrives in hundreds of small purchases instead of one painful bones order. Death by a thousand vials.
Where the money actually goes
Every potion has the same cost structure: herb, plus secondary ingredient, plus a vial of water, minus whatever the finished potion sells for. The XP per potion is fixed. The gap between ingredient cost and sale price is your real cost per XP, and it is different for every potion on every day.
Worked example with prayer potions. A prayer potion gives 87.5 XP. You need a ranarr weed and a snape grass. If the ingredients cost you around 8,000 gp combined and the finished potion sells back at most of that, your net cost lands somewhere between 1 and 4 gp per XP. At 4 gp/XP, the stretch from 38 to 63 costs about 1.3M. At 1 gp/XP it costs a few hundred thousand. Same clicks, same XP, very different bill. That spread is why patient buyers pay half of what impatient buyers pay.
The standard route and what each leg costs
XP values below are fixed game data. The gp/XP column is a realistic range at recent prices.
| Levels | Potion | XP each | Approx net gp/XP |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3-12 | Attack potions | 25 | 5-8 |
| 12-38 | Strength potions | 50 | 4-7 |
| 38-63 | Prayer potions | 87.5 | 1-4 |
| 63-81 | Super restores | 142.5 | 2-5 |
| 81-99 | Saradomin brews | 180 | 1-3 |
| 84-99 (budget alt) | Extended antifires | 110 | 0-2 |
The early legs are the worst value in the table and also the smallest, since levels 3 to 38 need under 33,000 XP in total. Quest XP can delete most of that leg outright: Druidic Ritual unlocks the skill, and rewards from quests like Recruitment Drive and Jungle Potion push you toward the prayer potion checkpoint without buying a single herb.
From 38 onward the route is stable. Prayer potions to 63, super restores to 81, then Saradomin brews to 99, with extended antifires as the budget branch from 84 if brew margins are bad the week you get there. Full level-by-level numbers, including the quest XP shortcuts and which potions to hold versus sell, are laid out in this 1-99 herblore training guide. Fixed XP data per potion is on the Prayer potion wiki page and its equivalents.
The time cost nobody budgets for
Gp/XP is half the equation. The other half is hours. With ingredients pre-banked, mixing finished potions runs at roughly 2,500 to 3,900 potions per hour depending on your banking rhythm and whether you use a preset setup. At super restore XP values that is somewhere between 350k and 550k XP per hour, which makes Herblore one of the fastest buyable skills in the game when you are actually at the bank mixing.
That speed changes how you should think about the cost. The stretch from level 63 to 99 is about 12.6M XP. At 450k XP/hr that is under 30 hours of actual mixing, spread across however many evenings you like. Compare that with a skill like Agility, where the same XP takes ten times the hours at zero gp cost. Herblore is not expensive relative to the time it saves you; it is expensive only in raw gp. Whether that trade is good depends entirely on how easily you earn gp, which is why bossers rush it and skillers ration it.
There is also a scaling benefit that partly repays the bill. Herblore levels unlock the potions that make money-making faster: super combats for Slayer speed, stamina potions for everything, anti-venom for Zulrah trips. The skill funds its own repayment in a way Prayer never does.
Five ways to cut the total
Buy unfinished potions, or pay Zahur. Making unfinished potions gives 0 XP. It is pure labour. Zahur in Nardah turns herbs into unfinished potions for 200 gp each, which converts a two-step training method into a one-step one. Your gp/XP barely moves and your XP/hr roughly doubles, which matters because time is the hidden cost in every Herblore calculation.
Run herbs while you train. A daily farming run of 6 to 9 herb patches growing ranarr or snapdragon produces a meaningful share of your own ingredients. Each run takes about five minutes. Over the weeks it takes to reach 99, herb runs commonly shave 10M or more off the net bill, and the Farming XP is a free bonus.
Buy at margin, not at market. Herb prices swing several hundred gp within a normal week. Placing buy offers slightly under the going rate and letting them fill overnight routinely saves 5 to 10 percent on the whole project. On a 40M project that is 2-4M for zero effort.
Sell everything back. A surprising number of players bank their finished potions out of vague hoarding instinct. Unless you personally boss enough to drink hundreds of brews and restores, sell them. The sale is the difference between the gp/XP figures in the table above and figures twice as high.
Check secondary prices, not just herbs. Snape grass, crushed nests and lava scale shards have their own price cycles. When crushed nest prices spike, Saradomin brews quietly become a bad deal and extended antifires take over as the value pick. GE Tracker’s live margin pages make this a thirty-second check rather than a spreadsheet job.
What not to do
Do not train past 38 on attack and strength potions. Their gp/XP is the worst on the list and their XP per potion is tiny.
Do not make your own unfinished potions in 2026. Zahur’s 200 gp fee is cheaper than your time at any realistic valuation.
And do not buy 5,000 of anything at market price in one click. The table above assumes you did not do that.
The same discipline applies on the way out. Dumping 4,000 finished potions at instant-sell price hands a few percent of your project straight to flippers. Stagger the sale across a few days with offers at or slightly above market and the potions leave your bank at a price that keeps the gp/XP maths honest.
The practical takeaway
Set a gp/XP budget before you start rather than discovering your total afterwards. Decide what a million XP is worth to you, 2 gp/XP or 4, then let that number pick your potion each week based on live margins. Combine it with a daily herb run from day one and 99 Herblore stops being the bank-emptying skill and becomes a manageable line item you pay down five minutes at a time.
