Skip to content

Best hours to buy and sell

Pick a market and an item. Every hour of the day shows its typical price, lowest buyout and listings, and the page names the cheapest hours to buy, the dearest to sell, and what the gap is worth after the 5 percent cut.

Current market: Normal Alliance US. This browser opens every tool here until you pick another. Address for this market: ahledger.com/timing?market=forever/normal/alliance/us

Item

Best hours to buy

Not enough hours scanned yet.

Best hours to sell

Not enough hours scanned yet.

Spread after the 5% cut

Needs both windows.

Confidence

No pattern

No pattern yet: only 4 of the 24 hours of the day have been scanned on this market in the last 28 days. It fills in as players scan through the day.

Item 287019by hour · Normal Alliance US

Hour (UTC)TypicalLowestIndex
00:0025g25g1.000
01:0025g25g1.000
02:0025g25g1.000
03:0025g25g1.000

Under 1.000 is a cheap hour to buy; over 1.000 a good hour to sell. Days counts how many days that hour was scanned in the window. The same figures as JSON: /v1/timing/forever.normal.alliance.us/287019 on the API.

The whole market by hour · Normal Alliance US

Hour (UTC)Price indexListings indexDays
00:001.0061.0765
01:000.9911.1386
02:000.9741.1886
03:000.9751.1756
04:000.9781.0635
05:000.9791.0985
06:000.9981.1086
07:000.9761.0294
08:000.9961.1122
09:000.9891.0982
10:001.0131.0544
11:000.9781.0194
12:001.0010.9753
13:000.9880.9253
14:001.0030.8916
15:001.0130.8734
16:001.0140.7883
17:001.0130.8315
18:001.0040.8876
19:001.0390.8685
20:000.9920.9495
21:001.0050.9815
22:001.0360.9735
23:001.0410.8994

Each hour is indexed against the 24 hours around it, item by item across the market's largest positions, then centred so an average hour reads 1.000. For the day-of-week pattern, see market structure.

▸How this is worked out

Every hourly price is divided by the same item's average over the 24 hours around it, so a price drifting over the month does not make one end of the day look dear. The best buy window is the cheapest run of three hours and the best sell window the dearest; the spread buys at the cheap window's lowest buyout and sells at the dear window's typical price less the cut. Forever's history restarts at launch, so a live market's pattern never includes beta scans.

Common questions

How is the hour-of-day pattern worked out?
Every hourly price is divided by the same item’s average over the 24 hours around it, so a price drifting up or down over the month does not make one end of the day look dear, and the 24 hours are then centred so an average hour reads 1.000. The best buy window is the cheapest run of three hours and the best sell window the dearest. Hours are UTC, with the hour on the wall in the zone most of the market’s players keep beside them.
How much history does the pattern need?
Each hour of the day needs a few days of scans behind it before its figure means anything. The confidence line reads the thinnest hour: settled from ten days of scans, provisional from three, too early under that, and no pattern at all while fewer than half the hours have been scanned. Scanning Normal Alliance US through the night fills the gaps.