SWTOR: Making Credits as a New/Returning Player (2026 Guide)

As a new or returning player in SWTOR, you might find yourself in need of some credits, whether it’s to upgrade your gear or just to buy a nice looking weapon or colour crystal to use in the Outfitter.

There are various ways to make money in the game dependent on your starting situation (starting credits, character level, crew skills), the type of content you play, and whether you have time to invest in farming.

Low Level Character/Beginner Friendly

Questing

• Pros
  • Doesn’t require any starting credits
  • Earn credits whilst you play the story or level your character
• Cons
  • Low return on time invested

Most quests will award some amount of credits on completion. These are generally low for story quests and lower-level heroics/flashpoints, but can award five-figure sums for things like Weekly bonuses (completing a certain number of heroics, flashpoints, daily missions etc.)

As a starting point, visit the various mission terminals throughout the fleet. You can view the reward for completing a quest before accepting it at the terminal.

Gathering Crew Skills

• Pros
  • Higher return on investment, especially on high level planets like Onderon
  • Levels gathering crew skills for use in crafting later
• Cons
  • Takes time to gather a meaningful amount of materials; can be repetitive

You’ll want to do this anyway, since maxing out your crew skills will help make and/or save money later on.

Learn crew skills as soon as you’re able to (Crew Skills area of the Fleet) and gather resources whenever you can. This could be during normal gameplay (questing, flashpoints) or you could set out to farm materials.

Materials from higher-level planets like Onderon will grant more crew skill experience, and these higher-level materials generally sell for more credits too. The trade-off is that you’ll have to avoid enemies if you’re not appropriately levelled for the planet.

Bioanalysis is a good option as these materials can be used to craft consumable Biochem items (medpacs, stims and adrenals), which are always in demand, but other gathering skills are fine too.

Swtorista has compiled a list of locations for gathering materials here.

Level 80

Story Mode Operations

• Pros
  • Good return on time invested
  • Less reliance on RNG due to guaranteed mission reward/tech fragments
• Cons
  • You need to complete the entire operation to maximise profit; less flexible
  • Requires a basic standard of gearing and ability to clear Story Mode bosses

Arguably the easiest way to make money at level 80 is through Story Mode operations, because you’re earning money in three ways at once:

• Mission rewards: Again, not a huge amount of money, but guaranteed if you complete the mission and builds up over time.
• Tech fragments: This is where the bulk of your money will be made. Tech fragments can be exchanged for RPM-13s and OEM-37s from the Spoils of War vendor in the Supplies section of the Fleet. These are used in crafting high-level augments. They cost 1,800 tech frags each, and at the time of writing they sell for about 6 million credits each on the GTN (Darth Malgus server). (N.B. Make sure you’ve purchased the appropriate Tactical for your class and have fully upgraded your Legendary Implants before spending Tech Frags on RPMs/OEMs)
• Random item drops: Again, an element of RNG applies and so this should be viewed as a nice bonus when it happens as opposed to a viable way of making money in and of itself.

The bulk of your income will be from converting Tech Fragments to OEMs/RPMs and selling on GTN. At the time of writing the approximate tech frag : credit conversion rate on the Darth Malgus server is 1:3,333.

Relentless Replication (XR-53)

• Pros
  • One of the best methods in the game for credits earned vs time invested
  • With practice, clearing becomes easier, especially with an experienced group
• Cons
  • Can only be completed once per week per character (SM and VM are counted separately)
  • Requires a higher standard of gearing and ability compared to other SM and VM ops

XR-53 is a “lair boss”; technically an operation, but with only one boss fight instead of the normal five.

Although technically an operation, XR-53 deserves his own entry as this is currently one of the best ways to make money in-game. He drops Corrupted Bioprocessors, a valuable crafting material used in high-level augments.

After defeating XR-53 on Story Mode each player receives 1-4 Corrupted Bioprocessors. At the time of writing these sell for circa 600k credits each (Darth Malgus server), putting the total profit at anywhere between 600k and 1.8m per Story Mode kill.

Veteran Mode drops 12-18 Corrupted Bioprocessors per player, and there’s also a random chance that a player will receive a bonus drop of 20 or 50 Corrupted Bioprocessors, putting the total profit anywhere between 7.2m and 40.8m per Veteran Mode kill.

Biochem Crafting (Level 75+)

• Pros
  • Crafting can be done in the background whilst you play other content
  • Zero cost if you farm your own materials
• Cons
  • Takes time to build knowledge of the market
  • Even experienced players will occasionally lose money if you’re buying materials from GTN

Biochem crafting is arguably the most stable source of passive income in the game. Biochem lets you craft consumable items including medpacs, stims and adrenals, which are in constant demand.

To craft endgame consumables you’ll need Level 700 biochem. If you haven’t reached level 700 yet there are guides as to how to level the skill as efficiently as possible (like this one from Swtorista).

After hitting level 700 you can begin looking at crafting. There are two main approaches here: gathering the materials needed yourself, or buying materials from the GTN.

Gathering the materials yourself means guaranteed profit, but is more time consuming. Buying materials from the GTN means you don’t need to spend time gathering, but you need to keep track of how much you’re spending on materials and how much the finished item is selling for.

Making use of free Cartel Coins

Subscribers and free-to-play will also receive 200 free Cartel Coins every month if they have a security key (two-factor authentication) enabled on their account. You can enable this in your account settings on the SWTOR website.

You can also earn free Cartel Coins as part of Galactic Seasons, which are similar to a battle pass. Galactic Seasons are available to both subscribers and free-to-play.

In addition, subscribers receive 500 free Cartel Coins every month.

Cartel coins can be converted to credits fairly easily and it’s advisable to do so; it generally works out as more cost-efficient to buy items with credits instead of cartel coins.

There is no objective “best” way to do this, but there are some reliable methods and some important things to avoid:

• Certain Cartel Market items have fairly regular demand and stable selling prices, such as Cartel Packs, Hypercrates, and the Master’s Datacron and Equipment (instant Level 80 boost). These may not give the absolute best return on investment but are guaranteed to sell at a fairly predictable price.
• Avoid buying items on sale in the Cartel Market to sell for credits. This can be a good strategy, but you need to be aware that everyone else will also be buying these items on sale, and so GTN prices will drop. If you buy an item on sale you’ll likely need to hold onto it for quite a while until prices increase again.