You know that feeling when you first spawn in No Man's Sky, staring at a broken ship, a half-empty inventory, and a shopping list of upgrades you can't even afford half of? Or when you finally see that S-class freighter pass you by, only to realize you're 10 million Units short of buying it? That's why so many players look for how to make money fast in No Man's Sky without sinking 10 hours into mindless resource grinding. I've put 300+ hours into the game across three different saves, and I've tested every money making trick you can think of, from early-game exploits to late-game passive farms that make millions while you're off exploring. Some work, some are way more effort than they're worth, and the ones I'm sharing here are the ones I still use every time I start a new save.
How to Make Money Fast in No Man's Sky for Brand New Players
If you just started your playthrough and don't have any upgrades, base building parts, or a fancy hyperdrive, discovery scanning is by far the easiest way to rack up Units fast. You only need the default scanner that comes with your starting multi-tool, no extra supplies required. When you land on a new planet, pull out your scanner and tag every undiscovered plant, animal, and mineral you come across.
The biggest payouts come from scanning rare predatory fauna and extreme weather planet flora, so don't skip those weird, glowing plants on radioactive or frozen worlds. Each undiscovered fauna gives you anywhere from 1,500 to 15,000 Units just for scanning it, and if you upload the discovery to the network, you get a bonus payout that can be 2-3x that amount. I once made 200,000 Units in 15 minutes just scanning a frozen planet with 12 undiscovered animal species, no combat, no mining required.
The only downside is you have to actually find undiscovered planets, which gets harder in more populated systems, but if you jump to uncharted systems marked with a question mark on the galaxy map, you'll almost always find planets no one has touched before. Upload all your discoveries before you leave the system – if you die before uploading, you lose all those potential payouts entirely.
Mid-Game Chlorine Farming for Passive Million Unit Payouts
Once you unlock base building and have a couple of basic construction blueprints, you can set up a chlorine farm that makes you millions of Units while you do other parts of the game. Chlorine refining is one of the most consistent mid-game money makers, because it requires very little maintenance and has a huge profit margin compared to other refined resources.
First, find a planet with a chlorine atmosphere – they're usually gas giants' moons, or desert/arid worlds marked with chlorine in the system resource list. Drop your harvesters, power them, and let them collect raw chlorine while you run story missions or explore other planets. To get started, you only need a few simple items:
Each harvester will pull 250+ chlorine every hour you're online, even if you're exploring other parts of the system. Then, take that chlorine to a refiner, add oxygen, and you get refined chlorine that sells for 602 Units per unit – that's 3x the value of raw chlorine. I usually let my harvesters run for 3 hours while I do story missions, then come back, refine the chlorine, and sell it at a space station for 2-3 million Units every run.
Just don't dump all your refined chlorine at one space station. Selling more than 5,000 units of a single resource at once will crash the local market, and you'll get 20% less per unit. Sell 2,000 at a time, jump to the next system, sell another 2,000, and you'll get full price every time.
Late-Game Activated Indium Farming for Unlimited Units
Once you have a hyperdrive that can jump to blue star systems, you can start farming activated indium, which is the highest selling natural resource in the game. You don't even need to refine it to make a huge profit, which cuts down on extra work entirely. First, you need to find a blue star system, then locate a planet with activated indium deposits – these are usually extreme weather or extreme sentinel planets, so make sure you have enough hazard protection and a decent multi-tool before you land.
Once you find a large activated indium deposit, drop 5-10 mineral extractors on top of it, connect them to supply depots, power them with solar panels or electromagnetic generators, and let them run. Activated indium sells for 945 Units per unit when sold raw, so even small farms make huge payouts. I have a farm with 12 extractors that makes 10,000 activated indium every 4 hours, which sells for almost 9.5 million Units every time I collect. That's enough to buy any S-class ship, freighter, or upgrade you could ever want in just a couple of runs.
The downside here is the upfront cost – each mineral extractor costs 200 metal plating and 100 chromatic metal to build, so you'll need to sink a little money into the farm first before you start seeing returns. But it pays for itself in less than a week of casual play, and you never have to worry about running out of Units again. Build your farm near an electromagnetic hotspot if you can – that way you don't have to mess with solar panels and batteries, and the extractors run 24/7 without any extra effort on your part.
Quick Flip Methods for Fast Cash When You're Short On Time
If you don't have time to set up a farm or explore a whole planet, there are a couple of quick flip tricks you can use to make 500k to 1 million Units in 10 minutes or less. First, look for trade terminals in space stations that sell cobalt for less than 150 Units per unit. Buy as much as you can carry, then jump to the next system, and sell it at the trade terminal there – cobalt always sells for at least 300 Units per unit in most systems, so you double your money instantly. You can do the same with tritium, which sells for a premium in systems without gas giants.
Another trick is to hunt for abandoned crashed ships on planets. You can find their locations by using a signal booster and scanning for distress signals. Once you find a crashed ship, you can take all the upgrade modules off it, fix the broken slots, and either sell the ship outright for 1-2 million Units, or trade it in for a better ship at a space station for a huge discount. Always check the class of the crashed ship before you waste resources fixing it – S-class and A-class ships give you way more profit when you sell or trade them, while C-class ships are barely worth the effort of fixing. I once found an S-class crashed fighter on a toxic planet, fixed it for 200k Units worth of resources, and sold it for 3.2 million Units 20 minutes later.
These quick flips are perfect if you're just a couple hundred thousand Units short of buying an upgrade or ship you found, and don't want to wait for your farm to produce resources.
At the end of the day, the best method for you will depend on how far you are in the game, how much time you have to play, and whether you prefer building, exploring, or trading. None of these methods require cheats, mods, or grinding for 10 hours straight, and all of them have been tested by me and thousands of other players to work consistently. Whether you're a new player just trying to fix your first ship, or a veteran looking to buy that dream S-class freighter, these methods make it easy to figure out how to make money fast in No Man's Sky without sucking all the fun out of exploring the galaxy. Just remember not to get so focused on making Units that you forget to stop and check out the weird, wonderful planets you pass along the way.
