EVE Online Planetary Industry — Build vs Buy, by the Numbers
Planetary Interaction (PI) turns raw planet resources into commodities that feed almost everything in EVE Online — from structures to tech II production. But owning a chain of colonies doesn't make ISK on its own. The real question is which commodity is worth producing right now versus simply buying off the market — after the taxes and hauling most calculators conveniently ignore. This guide explains the tiers, the build-vs-buy decision, and the two hidden costs that decide whether your reprocessing chain actually profits.
What Planetary Interaction is
Planetary Interaction is EVE Online's resource-processing layer. You place a command center on a planet, build extractors that pull raw materials out of the ground, and route them through processors that refine raw goods into higher-tier commodities. Each refining step follows a fixed recipe — a "schematic" from the game's static data — so the inputs, outputs and cycle time never change between patches.
Because the recipes are fixed but market prices move every day, PI is fundamentally a trading problem dressed up as an industry one. The colonies are just a machine; the profit lives in the spread between what the inputs cost and what the product sells for.
The five tiers: P0 to P4
Every planetary commodity sits at one of five tiers. Higher tiers pack more value into less volume but need a longer supply chain:
- P0 — Raw resources (15 types) — harvested directly from planets by extractors (Aqueous Liquids, Base Metals, Noble Metals, and so on). No recipe — you mine them. Tiny volume, tiny unit value.
- P1 — Basic commodities (15 types) — each refined from a single P0 (Water, Bacteria, Reactive Metals, Plasmoids…). The first processing step; cheap and high-volume.
- P2 — Refined commodities (~24 types) — each made from two P1 inputs (Mechanical Parts, Consumer Electronics, Coolant…). The workhorse tier for most PI sellers.
- P3 — Specialized commodities (~21 types) — built from multiple P2 inputs (Robotics, Guidance Systems, Transcranial Microcontrollers…). Higher value, needs P2 supply.
- P4 — Advanced commodities (8 types) — the top tier, built from several P3 (Broadcast Node, Nano-Factory, Wetware Mainframe…). Used in the biggest structures; 100 m³ each, so freight matters most here.
The only question: build or buy
For every producible commodity (P1–P4) you can either buy the inputs on the market and run the recipe, or just buy the finished product directly. The reprocessing step is only worth it when:
product sell value > inputs cost + customs tax + freight
The margin is the gap between the two sides, as a percentage of what you actually spend. On a healthy market this gap is small and shifts daily: a commodity that paid 18% last week can go negative when someone floods the input market or dumps the product. That's why a one-off calculation is nearly useless — what you want is a live ranking of which reprocessing step pays best right now.
The two hidden costs: customs and freight
Customs tax (POCO)
Moving goods between a planet and space goes through a Customs Office (POCO), and that office charges a tax. The tax is not based on the market price — it's based on CCP's base price (the adjusted price the game publishes for each item):
customs = base price × tax rate × quantity
Player-owned POCOs set their own rate (commonly 5–17%); the Customs Code Expertise skill lowers the NPC portion. Export — taking your finished product out to sell — is the expensive direction. Our calculator exposes the rate so you can match the POCO you actually use.
Freight (ISK per m³)
The product still has to reach a trade hub. Whether you haul it yourself or pay a courier like Red Frog or PushX, the cost is measured in ISK per cubic meter — typically 500–1500 ISK/m³. Because P3 and especially P4 are bulky, freight can quietly erase a margin that looked fine on price alone.
Worked example — Robotics (P3)
Robotics is a P3 made from 10 Mechanical Parts + 10 Consumer Electronics (both P2), yielding 3 units per cycle. Suppose, on the hub right now:
- Mechanical Parts: 9,000 ISK best sell
- Consumer Electronics: 8,000 ISK best sell
- Robotics: 70,000 ISK best sell, base price 45,000 ISK, volume 3 m³/unit
For one cycle (3 Robotics):
- Inputs: 10 × 9,000 + 10 × 8,000 = 170,000 ISK
- Revenue: 3 × 70,000 = 210,000 ISK
- Customs at 5%: 45,000 × 5% × 3 = 6,750 ISK
- Freight at 1,000 ISK/m³: 3 × 3 × 1,000 = 9,000 ISK
- Net profit: 210,000 − 170,000 − 6,750 − 9,000 = 24,250 ISK → ~13% margin
Drop the same numbers into a "sell − buy" calculator and it would claim 40,000 ISK profit — almost double. The 15,750 ISK difference is exactly the customs and freight it ignored. Scale that error across thousands of units and a "profitable" run turns into a loss.
How to read the planetary rating
The planetary tool lists every commodity of the selected tier on your chosen hub. Hover the “?” on any column header for the same hint. What the columns mean:
- Best sell / Best buy — Lowest sell and highest buy order on the hub's main station — what you pay to buy inputs and what you get selling instantly.
- Vol/day — Average daily traded units over 30 days — how fast the item moves.
- Base price — CCP's adjusted price — the tax base for customs, not a market price.
- Inputs cost — Market cost of all inputs for one production cycle.
- Profit/unit & Margin — Net profit per product unit and as a % of total cost, after customs and freight at the default rates.
- Profit/day — Profit/unit × daily volume — the realistic ceiling on what this chain earns per day.
How to use it: sort by Profit/day to see what's worth producing right now, then click any row to open the calculator — set your real POCO tax and freight rate, type the run size, and read the exact net profit and margin.
Tools that rank PI margins for you
Checking 79 commodities across 4 hubs by hand, with customs and freight, every day, is not realistic. The scanner does it live:
- eve-hub planetary calculator — ranks build-vs-buy margins for P1–P4 across Jita, Amarr, Dodixie and Rens, with customs tax and freight built in, plus a per-item calculator for sizing a run.
- Station trading scanner — flip commodities on a single station if you'd rather trade PI goods than produce them.