Life in Night City is expensive: new Cyberware, Equipment, Ammunition and more cost a lot of money. Our Guide shows you how you can earn money in Cyberpunk 2077, and how you can invest it profitably into your progress.
In this Cyberpunk 2077 Money Earning guide, you’ll learn how to:
- which Jobs and Activities pour money into your pockets
- what lucrative possibilities you have when dealing with Junk Items
- Which Perks you should skill for rewarding Hacks
- What other possibilities you have to earn Eurodollars
Saving Money & Avoiding unnecessary Expenses
The best Eurodollar (€$, also called Eddie) is the one you don’t spend on anything. As long as you’re saving up for certain equipment, or trying to save up money for missions, the following tips will help you:
- Cars are superfluous luxury items: Fixers in the individual districts try to tempt you into spending money by giving you jobs for car sales on a regular basis – just ignore them. Firstly, V’s car is totally sufficient, and secondly – depending on the decisions you make – you’ll receive additional vehicles through missions. The regular use of fast travel is the cheapest alternative for those in a rush, anyway.
- Don’t buy weapons and armor: You’ll collect more weapons and armor items than V can even carry in the mission areas of Act 1 – even Rare or higher quality ones, depending on the type of enemy. Do not spend money on weapons in stores unless you want a specific type of weapon and have not yet been able to obtain it from enemies nor have been able to craft it through an unlocked Crafting Spec.
- Making ammunition yourself instead of buying it: If you craft your own ammunition instead of buying it, this has another positive effect apart from saving money: your Skill Level in “Crafting” keeps receiving a few extra points. The common components needed for ammunition production can be found either in the game world or can be obtained by disassembling junk, weapons, and armor parts.
- Don’t buy food: As long as you don’t rush through mission areas and the open world, you’ll find more than enough food to make fights easier through food buffs.
- Boost Street Cred and save money when shopping: Once you reach a certain level of Street Cred in a district, the local Fixer will contact you via phone and inform you that from that point on you will be saving money when shopping in the stores in his district. This is particularly useful when you have some expensive purchases of Cyberware (Guide) coming up, or if you’re on the lookout for Legendary items.
Collecting and Selling Junk
Collect everything that isn’t nailed down as early as possible to replenish your Eurodollar account: Fortunately, Cyberpunk 2077 supplies you with tons of items labeled “Junk” – things that have no worth other than a retail value or for disassembly into item components.
Your use of junk for money-making depends on whether you want to engage in Crafting or not. In general, it’s recommended to unlock the Perk “Pack Mule” from the “Athletics” Perk Tree (Body 3, 1 level – see also our Cyberpunk 2077 Skill Guide), as it increases V’s carrying capacity by 60 – which means more stuff you can lug around to sell!
- Scan your surroundings regularly: Your scanner will not only mark Access Points, hackable devices and enemies, but also junk.
If you’re not into Crafting, simply stuff all your junk into the nearest vending machine or shove it into the hands of vendors like Ripperdocs, Netrunners, Weapon, and Clothing merchants. Individual junk items may not be particularly valuable, but it’s the quantity that generates you all the Eddie.
Crafting fans have two options: Either you manually disassemble your junk into components, and craft weapons out of them to sell them to vendors or vending machines. This helps to sort out particularly valuable junk so you can sell it separately – after all, it would be a shame if expensive jewelry was broken down into one or two cheap components!
Or you just sell the received components directly: Let the vendor/vending machine display V’s complete inventory, and scroll until you find the components you want – there is no separate inventory filter for selling components at the moment.
Alternatively, use the “Scrapper” perk (Crafting Perk Tree, Technical Ability 3, 1 level), which automatically recycles junk into components in your inventory, and use them to craft weapons for sale. V owns some basic Crafting Specs at the beginning of the game, while others can be bought from weapon vendors, found as loot from enemies and chests, or learned when your Crafting Skill Progression reaches a high enough level.
Selling superfluous Consumables
If you browse mission areas even halfway motivated, you’ll find consumables galore in the form of healing sprays, boosters, and food. Sell anything that you don’t use actively over and over again: While you still benefit from the passive over-time recovery effect of consumed food and drinks during the lower levels, you should have unlocked enough Perks and Rewards through Skill Progression by mid-game at the latest so that you don’t have to rely on them any longer.
Check your inventory regularly: MaxDoc MK.1 or Bounce Back MK.1 healing sprays are candidates for sale once you have dozens of them, and have collected and/or if you can craft higher-quality versions. The same applies to the MK. 2 variant of the two boosters.
Disassembling Drinks, Selling Components
This trick provides you with a rather convenient source of income at the moment (Game Version 1.4). First, unlock the Perk “Mechanic” in the “Crafting” Perk Tree (Technical Ability 3, 1 level; also see our Cyberpunk 2077 Attributes and Perks Guide), which will give you more components for each item you disassemble. Afterward, visit a beverage vending machine and buy a beverage can for 10 Eurodollars (alternatively, capture them from enemies or collect them in the Open World). You’ll break down each can into six common and three uncommon components that you can use for Crafting.
Nevertheless, you will receive 5 €$ per common component and 8 €$ per uncommon component for selling them to vendors or vending machines – thus, a beverage can that you picked up somewhere will provide you with components worth 54 Eurodollars, and a purchased will still bring you 44 Eddies!
You can buy a maximum of 50 beverage cans per vending machine, which gives you a profit of 2,200 Eurodollars minus purchase costs. And since there are vending machines all over the city, you won’t run out of options for convenient money-making anytime soon – at least until the developers fix this balancing loophole.
Looting Enemies and Mission Areas
Apart from enemies or Cyberpsychos (Guide), a lot of crates and other containers with more or less useful items are found everywhere in mission areas as well as in the open world. Collect armor, weapons, and other stuff from enemies that you have knocked down or killed. It pays off to fill up your inventory with everything that falls in front of your feet, especially during longer missions or missions set in a large area. Weapons in particular fetch a useful selling price. In addition, many enemies also carry Eurodollars or consumables in their pockets.
Once you’ve cleared an area of enemies, take your time to look around again, scan the area for missed junk, and collect everything. Containers in dark corners are easy to miss with the naked eye – but not with the scanner! If your inventory is full, it’s usually enough to disassemble one or two weapons into components or to craft ammunition to save a few weight points. The rest of the junk should end up at the vendor unless you want to earn money by disassembling and crafting items.
Earning Money through Hacking
As a skilled netrunner, your cyberdeck already provides you with the best way to get a lot of money and crafting materials: Use the Breach Protocol at Access Points of computers, laptops, terminals, and other devices with net access, along with the quickhack “Datamine” to grab Eurodollars and components. Read our detailed Cyberpunk 2077 Hacking Guide to learn how the Breach Protocol works, and how to sequence hacks for maximum profit.
The following Perks will increase your profit from the quickhack “Datamine” and facilitate hacking for money:
- Datamine Mastermind: (Breach Protocol Perk Tree, Intelligence 9, 2 Levels): 50% more components through “Datamine” at Access Points
- Extended Network Interface (Breach Protocol Perk Tree, Intelligence 7, 1 Level): Automatically highlights all Access Points in the vicinity
- Advanced Datamining (Breach Protocol Perk Tree, Intelligence 3, 2 Levels): 50% more Eurodollars through “Datamine” at Access Points
We explain everything you need to know about Attributes, Perks and the associated Rewards in our Cyberpunk 2077 Skill Guide.
Completing Jobs, Preventing Crime
There’s something to do for V on every street corner as you travel through Night City. The prevention of crimes on behalf of the NCPD is particularly rewarding for you: These crimes are usually committed by criminals who have bounties on their heads.
If you eliminate such an enemy, you’ll get a few Eurodollars – even more for a group of wanted criminals, of course. In addition, V’s Street Cred increases, which grants you access to higher-quality and sometimes cheaper goods at the city’s vendors in the long run.
Even smaller gigs assigned to you by the city’s Fixers will provide you with a steady income – primarily because – as with the crimes on the scene – you collect additional loot, which you then either disassemble and process, or sell. You won’t be doing your bank account any favors in Cyberpunk 2077 by rushing from Main Mission to Main Mission while skipping all optional tasks!
Mastering Beat on the Brat Fight Challenges
You meet Coach Fred in Act 1 as soon as you leave V’s apartment and head to your appointment with Jackie. Talk to the coach, accept the challenge to fight his training robot. After that, Coach Fred will unlock several boxing challenge quests for you, which can be found in different parts of the city.
Since you have to bet money on your victory in every fight, you might want to wait until you have a few Eddies on hand before you start betting – because you can double the amount of money you bet, and if you win, you will get the same amount from your opponent. Click through the blue conversation options if you don’t see the option to double your bet.
Unlocking Special Discounts through Missions
You’ll have to make decisions in some missions in Cyberpunk 2077. Or you discover incriminating material during missions, with which you can blackmail some poor vendor.
- Attention: The following overview contains light spoilers for Side Missions and Gigs.
| Name | Store | Location | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chang Hoon Nam | Netrunner, Jig-Jig-Street | Westbrook, Japantown | If you have rescued Chang in the Mission “Wakako’s Favorite”, he will sell you his items cheaper in the future. |
| Charles Bucks | Ripperdoc, Bucks Medical Center | Watson, Kabuki | The “Last Login” Gig and the “Full Disclosure” Side Mission take you to the same building. The basement contains incriminating information against Charles on a laptop, which you can use to extort a permanent discount. |
| Robert Wang | Wang’s Medical Center | Kabuki | If you solve Wangs’ debt problem during the “Shark in the Water” Gig, you can talk him into a permanent 10% discount. |
| Zane Jagger | Clothing Store, Jinguji | City Center, Downtown | Zane offers you a discount after the Side Mission “Bullets”. |
Translation by: Dennis Anjuschin
All Cyberpunk 2077 Guides & Articles
- Earning Money – How to get rich
- Skills Guide – All Attributes and Perks Explained
- Hacking Guide – Breach Protocol Mini-Game Solved & Tips for Netrunners
- Weapons Guide – All Weapons, Mods, and Iconic Weapon locations
- Cyberware Guide – All about Cyberware & where to find it
- Clothing Guide – All about clothing, legendary sets & mods
- Cyberpsychos Guide – Locations, Tactics & Attacks
- Vehicles Guide – All Cars, Bikes & Locations
- Trophies Guide – All Achievements & Gamerscore
- Timeline – History of Night City
- Sex – In 146 annotated images
