Trade Reliability Grade

A hundred million ISK of estimated profit resting on one lucky seller who mispriced a single lot is not a hundred million ISK you can trust. If that seller cancels before you buy, or the buyer on the other side fills before your freighter arrives, the opportunity simply vanishes and you are stuck with cargo you now have to move yourself. Reliability grades put a name on that risk so it does not catch you by surprise.

In EVE Online trading, the headline margin is only half the story. A trade with a clean A grade has depth on both ends, consistent recent prices, and broad participation — you can usually execute it at the stated size. A trade with a D or F grade might still be profitable on paper, but it is balancing on a single seller, a thin buy wall, and prices that drift outside the 7-day history. Same headline number, very different experience.

Each trade starts with a perfect score and is marked down for specific weaknesses: over-dependence on a single order, a weighted-average price that deviates far from the best quote, shallow destination demand relative to the size you want to move, and quoted prices that sit outside the item's historical range. The final letter simply summarizes how many of those issues were detected.

A and B grades are your workhorses and should make up the bulk of your day-to-day EVE Online trading. C grade is opportunistic — you are accepting some risk in exchange for richer returns. D and F grades should generally be avoided unless you have external information, such as knowing the seller or being the market maker on one side yourself.

On a route card, the reliability letter appears alongside the profit, cargo, and danger figures. The grade reflects the specific quantity the engine has matched for you — if you scale your cargo up or down, the grade can shift because different orders become binding. Checking the full order book before committing is still a good habit for anything above a few hundred million ISK.

If you see a trade whose realized margin looks much higher than its neighbors, but the grade is D or F, treat that as a red flag rather than a jackpot. Very often the high number comes from one outlier order that will not be there by the time you dock. Low-grade trades with nothing obvious explaining the weakness are almost always traps.

A-grade trades form the backbone of consistent income in EVE Online — you can execute them at the quoted size with confidence, and rerun the same route day after day while it lasts. B-grade trades are still usable, sometimes with a small reduction in quantity to stay inside the depth you trust. C-grade is where position sizing really matters: take a smaller bite, accept that cancellation risk exists, and do not double down if one trip goes sideways.