EVE Online Courier Contract Guide: Rewards, Collateral & Scam Contracts

There's a whole profession in EVE that never touches a market order: hauling other people's stuff. Courier contracts pay you a reward for moving a package from station A to station B, secured by collateral you post up front and get back on delivery. The one-line takeaway: the reward is your pay, the collateral is your bond, and every scam in the business lives in the gap between those two numbers.

This guide covers how courier contracts work, how to price them fairly from either side, and how to spot the contracts designed to part you from your collateral. It pairs naturally with the hauling guide — this is the business side, that one is the flying side.

How a courier contract works

A courier contract has four numbers that matter:

Field	Who it protects	What it means
Reward	The hauler	ISK paid to you on successful delivery
Collateral	The issuer	ISK you deposit; forfeited to the issuer if you fail or steal
Volume	Both	Package size in m³ — determines what ship you need
Time limit	The issuer	Days to deliver before the contract fails automatically

When you accept a contract, the cargo appears in your hangar as a sealed plastic wrap. You can't open it without failing the contract. Deliver it to the destination station, and the reward lands in your wallet along with your collateral back. Fail — by missing the deadline, or by getting blown up — and the issuer keeps your collateral as compensation.

That last part is the entire risk model. If the collateral genuinely covers the cargo's value, both sides are protected: the issuer can't lose (either the cargo arrives or they get paid its value), and the hauler knows exactly what a loss costs. Every problem with courier contracts starts when someone sets collateral that doesn't match the cargo.

Pricing: what's a fair reward?

Public hauling channels and freight corporations have converged on rates that look roughly like: a base fee per jump, scaled up for volume and for collateral (because carrying your money at risk is a service too). Highsec rates are modest; lowsec and nullsec deliveries cost multiples more, because the fail probability isn't theoretical out there.

As an issuer, price against the alternative: your own time flying 20 jumps in a hauler, times the odds of losing the ship. As a hauler, price against your risk: reward should comfortably beat (fail probability × collateral) plus fuel-for-time. If a contract pays 500K to move 60,000 m³ through a known gank pipe, the issuer isn't underpaying you — they're recruiting a volunteer.

ISK Scout's courier board runs this exact calculation continuously: it simulates profitable cargo between hubs, derives a suggested reward and collateral, and estimates fail probability from live route danger (kill activity, gatecamp detection, security status). Even if you never accept one of its suggested contracts, it's a live benchmark for what a route should pay.

The scams, in order of popularity

The collateral trap. A contract offers a juicy reward to haul a package with collateral far above what the cargo could possibly be worth — often to a lowsec or nullsec station. The issuer doesn't want the cargo delivered. They (or friends) plan to blow you up en route, or they're betting you'll fail the deadline, either way pocketing collateral that exceeds the junk inside the wrap. Defense: ask what plausible cargo justifies this collateral on this route. If the answer is "nothing," the collateral is the product.

The deadline squeeze. Generous reward, reasonable collateral, one-day time limit on a 40-jump route — accepted at 3 AM before you log off. Miss the window by an hour and the collateral is gone without a single shot fired. Always check the time limit against the route length before accepting, not after.

The volume surprise. The contract says 8,000 m³; your Blockade Runner fits 9,000. What it doesn't say is that you'll need to pass Uedama during a gank spree with 2 billion in collateral riding along. Volume tells you which ship; it's the route that tells you the risk. Check both.

The kickout station. Some stations dock you outside the docking ring when you undock ("kickout" stations), which matters for the return trip with an empty expensive hauler. Old hands keep a mental list. New haulers learn it once, memorably.

If you want the broader catalog of ways EVE separates the unwary from their ISK, the trading risk guide covers contract scams beyond couriers — trade contracts with lookalike items, doubled prices, and the rest of the zoo.

Running couriers as a business

The steady version of this profession looks like: pick a range of routes you know well, set a personal collateral ceiling you can afford to lose without tilting, and treat fail probability like a real number instead of a vibe. A 2% fail chance on 500M collateral is an expected 10M cost — if the reward is 15M, you're working for 5M plus variance.

Split big hauls. Two contracts of 250M collateral each cost the same to fail individually but halve your worst case, and let you use a faster, less gankable ship per trip. (This is why ISK Scout's courier tool recommends contract splits on dangerous routes — the math genuinely changes.)

And know when not to fly: cargo scanners are cheap, gankers use them, and a hauler on a schedule is a hauler taking risks. The freight business rewards the boring.

Recap — before you click accept

• Reward pays you; collateral bonds you. Scams live in the mismatch.
• Fair reward ≈ per-jump base + volume premium + risk premium. Benchmark against a live tool or public freight rates.
• Collateral far above plausible cargo value = the collateral is the point.
• Check the time limit against the route before accepting.
• Volume picks your ship; the route picks your risk. Evaluate both.
• Split large collateral across multiple contracts on dangerous routes.