How to read the leveling-profit table

The leveling-profit table looks straightforward on a first pass — one row per gem variant, sortable columns, a few filters at the top. But each column and filter encodes a specific decision about how to read the gem market, and a few of them aren't obvious on inspection. This guide walks through what each part of the table actually means.

The columns

Reading left to right:

• Gem. The skill or support gem's name, with badges to its right if relevant: SUP for support gems (the gems that link to and modify other gems rather than standing on their own), VAAL for gems that have a Vaal variant available. The gem name is a link that opens the official Path of Exile trade site filtered to instant-buyout (B/O) listings of that exact gem-level-quality combination, in your currently-selected league.
• Quality. Either 0% or 20%. These are tracked as separate rows because they behave like distinct items on the market — different inputs, different outputs, different profit margins.
• Profit. The headline number. Chaos equivalent of price(max level) − price(L1), displayed as a green positive or red negative value. This is what the table is sorted by out of the box.
• ROI. Same delta expressed as a percentage of the L1 input cost. When the multiplier exceeds 1000% it switches to a "×" suffix for readability — 12× is the same idea as 1200%.
• Buy (L1). The current chaos price for the level 1 version of this gem at this quality. This is what you pay to start. Click to open trade-site listings filtered to this exact item.
• Sell (max). The current chaos price for the max-level version. Regular gems max at level 20; Awakened max at level 5; the Exceptional supports max at level 3. Click to open trade-site listings filtered to this version.
• Attributes. The Strength / Dexterity / Intelligence requirements at max level, color-coded red/green/blue. These are what your character actually needs to socket the leveled gem; use the "Char Attrs" filter to limit results to gems your character can use.

The filter row

The controls above the table let you narrow down what's shown. All filters compose — selecting Tier "Awakened" plus Quality "20%" plus "High confidence only" shows the intersection.

• Tier. Regular (most gems, max level 20), Awakened (powerful supports, max level 5), or Exceptional (Empower / Enhance / Enlighten, max level 3). Tier is intrinsic to the gem, not a setting.
• Quality. Show only Q0, only Q20, or both. Most players running the leveling-for-profit play use Q20 inputs because the chaos cost of getting from Q0 to Q20 is already 40 Gemcutter's Prisms, and the math is usually better starting from Q20 anyway.
• High confidence only. When checked (the default), hides any row where fewer than ten unique sellers had listings of the input gem at snapshot time. This is the most important filter to leave on — thin markets in the long tail are noisy enough that a single mispriced listing can swing the visible price by an order of magnitude. With high-confidence on, you can broadly trust that the prices shown are close to actual clearing prices.
• Char Attrs. Three numeric inputs for the highest Str / Dex / Int your character has. When you fill in even one, the table hides gems whose max-level attribute requirement exceeds what you typed. Empty inputs are interpreted as "no cap."
• Search. Filters the visible rows by name. Useful for checking a specific gem you're considering.

The status strip

The strip just under the filter row carries metadata about the snapshot itself:

• Updated X ago. When the current snapshot was taken. The data refreshes hourly; if you see "2h ago" or older it usually just means the upstream aggregator hasn't run in a while, not that the site is broken.
• 1 divine ≈ Nc. Current chaos-to-divine exchange rate. Used by the currency toggle in the header — flipping to "Divine" reformats every price column to divine-orb units. Useful for very expensive gems where chaos numbers get unwieldy.
• N of M gems. Filtered row count over total row count, so you can see how aggressively your filters are narrowing things.
• K unpriced. Gems we couldn't compute profit for because at least one of the L1 or max-level prices was missing. Usually obscure transfigured variants in a thin market.

Sort behavior

Every column header is sortable. Click once to sort descending by that column; click again to flip to ascending. The active column has its label and the small ▼ / ▲ indicator rendered in the accent orange — inactive columns are dimmed. Default sort is Profit descending, which puts the highest-absolute-chaos plays first.

Sorting by ROI surfaces the high-multiplier plays — cheap inputs with disproportionately valuable outputs. These often have small absolute profit but compound well if you can move volume.

Sorting by Buy ascending shows the cheapest inputs (smallest capital outlay per attempt); sorting by Sell descending shows the highest-value targets to chase.

How to actually trade from this page

• Pick a gem with strong absolute profit and a deep market (high listing count, high-confidence toggle on).
• Click the gem name to open the official trade site. It opens pre-filtered to that exact gem, level 1, your selected quality, uncorrupted, instant-buyout listings only.
• Whisper (or click "Buy" if it's a marketplace listing) for the cheapest few listings. Buy more than you think you'll need — sub-1c gems are nearly free per unit, and partially-leveled gems sell better than nothing.
• Socket the gems in unused gear slots and play. Maps, bosses, delirium, whatever your normal routine is. Gems gain experience from your character's normal kills.
• Once a gem reaches max level, click the "Sell (max)" cell on this site to see what current listings price it at, then list slightly below the cheapest current listing. They sell quickly when priced reasonably.

League selection

The league dropdown in the header controls which league's data the table loads. Most economic activity is in the current softcore challenge league; Standard has thicker long-tail markets for legacy gems but generally lower turnover. Hardcore challenge variants are smaller markets but real ones — fewer rows pass the high-confidence filter, but the rows that do are tradeable.

Different leagues have different exchange rates between currency types, and gem prices vary substantially. A gem worth 200c in Standard might be 30c in a fresh challenge league simply because less of the currency has been farmed. Always check the league indicator before assuming a price.