EVE Online Cargo Optimization Guide

A filled freighter with the wrong mix can make less money than a half-empty hauler with the right mix. Because EVE Online cargo capacity is limited and your ISK per trip is limited, every cubic meter and every ISK you commit has to compete for a spot against every other item you could have taken. Ignoring this is the fastest way to leave ISK on the table.

Cargo planning is also where beginners most often overthink. You do not need linear programming to get 95% of the value — a simple habit of sorting candidates by ISK per cubic meter and stopping when either volume or budget runs out is already enough to out-earn an unsorted run by a wide margin.

EVE Online offers a wide range of haulers, each optimized for a different trade-off between capacity, speed, alignment time, and safety. Tech I industrial ships carry modest volumes for casual runs. Deep space transports such as the Occator and Mastodon hold much more and benefit from strong resistance bonuses. Blockade runners like the Viator and Prowler sacrifice capacity for covert-ops cloaking and very fast alignment, making them ideal for lowsec sneak routes. Freighters and jump freighters sit at the top end for bulk volume.

Whichever ship you fly, get in the habit of reading the packaged volume of every item you trade. EVE Online items often repackage down to a fraction of their assembled size, and stacking the packaged versions is how high-value routes like module hauling become viable in smaller hulls.

When your hauler's volume is the binding limit — which is the usual case — the correct sort key is ISK of profit per cubic meter. High ISK-per-m³ items make every unit of cargo space work as hard as possible. In the rare case where your budget is the binding limit, the correct sort key shifts toward ISK of profit per ISK of cost, because you want each ISK of stock to generate the most additional ISK on arrival.

In practice, the highest-turnover routes in EVE Online are dominated by compact, high-margin items: Tech II modules, rigs, ammunition, PLEX, skill injectors, and faction gear. These items deliver disproportionate profit per cubic meter and fill cleanly at both ends because the order books are deep. Bulk minerals and raw materials have their place too, but they shine on large-freighter routes rather than on a blockade runner.

There is also a durability dimension. An item with a wide margin but a thin order book is fragile — if one other trader runs the same route ahead of you, the opportunity is gone. Mixing a handful of deep-book items with a few riskier high-margin picks tends to produce more stable runs than going all-in on the single fattest number on the leaderboard.

Real EVE Online market order books are not infinite. An item might show an attractive headline margin, but only twenty units are available at that price; beyond that, you are paying more at the source or receiving less at the destination. A good cargo plan caps the per-item quantity to what the order book on both sides can actually absorb without shifting the price beyond your margin tolerance.

Broker fees and sales tax also quietly reshape the ranking. Items with narrow margins can tip from profitable to unprofitable once the full tax stack is applied, while items with very fat margins stay viable even under heavy fees. Training Accounting and Broker Relations is therefore one of the highest-ROI investments a new trader can make — every route's ranking improves a little, and marginal routes become viable.

Build a repeatable workflow. At the start of each session, refresh the route list, pick one or two hub pairs that match the hauler you want to fly, and export the cargo plan. Before undocking, double-check the current price at both ends for your top two or three items — the gap is allowed to narrow a bit, but a disappearing gap means the opportunity is already gone and you should switch items rather than push through.