Why is expected cost higher than the per-attempt cost?

Most crafts have a success chance below 100 percent, so you will usually need several attempts. Expected attempts equals one divided by the success chance, and total expected cost is the per-attempt cost times that number. A 25 percent craft averages four tries.

What currency should I enter?

Use one consistent unit for all materials, most commonly chaos orbs, since they are the standard trading currency in Path of Exile. Convert exalts and divines to chaos using the current exchange rate before entering them.

How do I handle intermediate steps?

Add a row for each material consumed at any step, including bases, essences, fossils, and orbs. The total reflects everything you feed into the craft, so build up the full recipe rather than only the final orb.

Does this guarantee my final cost?

No. It shows the statistically expected cost over many attempts. Variance is real, so a single craft can cost far less or far more. Budget at least the expected amount and ideally a buffer for an unlucky streak.

Can I model a guaranteed craft like a bench recipe?

Yes. Set the success chance to 100 percent and the expected total equals the per-attempt cost, since a deterministic bench or harvest craft always succeeds on the first try.

Path of Exile Crafting Material Cost Calculator

Email me this result

Get this tool's output sent to your inbox, plus one useful tool a week. No spam, unsubscribe any time.

Path of Exile crafting can quietly drain your whole stash if you do not budget for the attempts a chance-based craft really takes. This calculator sums your material costs and then applies the success probability to show the currency you should expect to spend, not just the cost of a single hopeful click.

How it works

For each material the cost is quantity * unitPrice, summed across the recipe to give a per-attempt cost. When a craft only succeeds part of the time, the expected number of attempts and the expected total are:

expectedAttempts = 1 / successChance
expectedTotal    = perAttemptCost * expectedAttempts

A 25 percent craft therefore averages four attempts, so you should budget four times the single-attempt cost.

Why expected cost matters

Players routinely underestimate a craft by quoting only the orbs for one try. Because crafting is probabilistic, the honest number is the expected total over many attempts. Add a buffer for variance, since any individual run can stray far from the average.

Example

A craft using 20 chaos, 1 exalt at 180 chaos, and 8 essences at 4 chaos costs 20 + 180 + 32 = 232 chaos per attempt. At a 25 percent success chance you expect four attempts, so budget around 928 chaos to finish it.