Set up money, sell signs and player shops on your Minecraft server

The three pieces of a server economy

It helps to see an economy as three separate jobs. Most setups that do not work are missing one of them, rather than having a broken one.

All three are plugins, so the server runs Paper or Purpur; the comparison of Paper, Purpur and Spigot helps you pick.

What Vault does, and which Vault to install

Vault holds no money and gives players nothing to type. It is a shared language: a shop plugin asks Vault to take 40 from a player, and Vault passes that on to whichever economy plugin is installed.

The original Vault has not had a release since version 1.7.3 in July 2020. VaultUnlocked is a fork that is still kept up to date, and inside the server it registers under the name Vault, so plugins that look for Vault find it. EssentialsX treats Vault as optional and hands its balances over as soon as Vault is present.

Balances and payments with EssentialsX

EssentialsX brings an economy along with its homes, warps and kits. Installing it, LuckPerms and VaultUnlocked is covered in the EssentialsX guide, so this part starts with the plugin running.

Staff commands like eco are easiest in the console, where they go without the slash: eco give Wren 250. In the game each command needs its own permission, and EssentialsX gives none of them to ordinary players, not even /balance. Operators have them all; everyone else gets them through LuckPerms, which the operator levels guide introduces.

lp group default permission set essentials.balance true
lp group default permission set essentials.pay true
lp group default permission set essentials.balancetop true

/baltop reads from a list that EssentialsX rebuilds once it is older than two minutes, so a payment made a moment ago may not show yet. /baltop force rebuilds it on the spot; in the game that needs essentials.balancetop.force.

The starting balance and the limits

starting-balance: 0
currency-symbol: '$'
max-money: 10000000000000
min-money: -10000

starting-balance is what a player has on their first join, so raising it later does not top up anyone who joined before. min-money sits below zero, yet ordinary players still cannot pay or buy their way into the red. Restart the server after editing the file.

Buy and sell signs, line by line

An EssentialsX sign is the quickest admin shop: it hands out a fixed amount of an item for a fixed price, or takes it in and pays. The items come out of the server and vanish into it, so nobody restocks a chest. Every sign type starts switched off.

enabledSigns: [buy, sell]

In the file the whole list is there with a # in front of each name. Change the enabledSigns: line itself to the line above, leave the names with a # as they are, and restart the server.

When you finish writing a correct sign, its first line turns dark blue. Dark red means EssentialsX could not read it: the amount has to be a whole number of at least 1, and the item has to be a name it recognises. A right-click makes the trade. Sneaking while you click trades the whole stack in your hand, priced per item, because allow-bulk-buy-sell is on unless you turn it off.

Who may write the signs, and who may use them

Writing a sign takes essentials.signs.create.buy or essentials.signs.create.sell, and using one takes essentials.signs.use.buy or essentials.signs.use.sell. Give players the use permissions only. Anyone who can create a buy sign can also write one that hands out diamonds for 1.

lp group default permission set essentials.signs.use.buy true
lp group default permission set essentials.signs.use.sell true

Selling with /sell and worth.yml

/sell hand and /sell inventory sell straight to the server at the prices in plugins/Essentials/worth.yml. The file already holds prices, cobblestone at 1 and diamond at 200 among them, and anything it does not list cannot be sold at all. /worth hand shows what the item you hold would fetch, and /setworth <item> <price> changes a price from inside the game. Items with a custom name are refused by /sell until you switch on allow-selling-named-items.

Player shops with QuickShop-Hikari

Signs trade with the server. For shops that players run and stock themselves you need a chest shop plugin. QuickShop-Hikari is kept current: release 6.3.0.2 from 4 September 2026 supports 26.2 on Paper and Purpur, and it is in the plugin catalog.

1. 1

   Install the pieces

   From the Plugin catalog on the Plugins tab, install VaultUnlocked and QuickShop-Hikari next to your economy plugin, then restart the server once. On 26.2 EssentialsX comes from the build described in the EssentialsX guide rather than from the catalog.

2. 2

   Let players open shops

   Out of the box only operators may create shops. Give the default group the bundle quickshop.player with lp group default permission set quickshop.player true.

3. 3

   Open a shop

   Place a chest, hold the item you want to sell and left-click the chest with it. QuickShop-Hikari asks for the price in chat, and you answer with a number.

4. 4

   Stock the chest

   Put the goods inside. An ordinary shop can only sell what is actually in the chest, so an empty chest is a closed shop.

/quickshop price 25
/quickshop buy
/quickshop sell

/quickshop price changes the price, /quickshop buy turns the shop around so it buys that item from other players, and /quickshop sell switches it back. Customers who sneak while they click trade either one item or everything in one go. The floating item above a shop chest uses ProtocolLib or PacketEvents when one of them is installed.

Put a market street inside a claim so nobody digs into a shop from behind; the griefing guide shows how claims work.

An admin shop, player shops, or both

Running both works well: a small admin shop at spawn buys common farm goods at a low price and sells what nobody can make, and a market street handles the rest. Keep admin prices modest, because nobody sells to a player below what the server pays.

Where money enters and where it leaves

Prices climb when money keeps coming in and nothing takes it out. After a few weeks veterans sit on huge sums, player shops charge accordingly, and the starting balance buys nothing. The cure is knowing every tap and every drain.

Charge a little for convenience

command-costs:
  home: 25
  kit-tools: 1500

Each line charges that amount every time the command runs, and a kit is written as kit- followed by its name. A small price on something people do every evening, such as going home, drains more over a month than one expensive item. The numbers are only an example.

Switch on economy-log-enabled and EssentialsX records every trade on buy, sell and trade signs and every use of /sell. A week of that shows which item is the real tap.

Keeping prices steady for a whole season takes more than a config file. Minecraft server economy on astroworldmc.site goes further into faucets and sinks, fees on player shops and how to stop inflation before veterans run away with it.

Wiping balances, with a backup first

An exploit or a badly priced sign can leave a few players with absurd sums. EssentialsX keeps balances in plugins/Essentials/userdata, one file per player named after their UUID, with the amount under money. Homes live in that same file, so deleting the folder throws away everyone's homes along with the money.

1. 1

   Make a backup

   On a plan with backup slots, use Create backup on the Backups tab and give it a name such as before the balance wipe. Restore puts the whole server back to that moment if the wipe goes wrong. Without backup slots, tick the userdata folder in plugins/Essentials on the Files tab, press Zip and download the archive that appears next to it.

2. 2

   Warn the players

   Say when it happens, so nobody spends the evening saving up for a purchase that will not come.

3. 3

   Reset in the console

   eco set ** 0 sets the balance of every player the server has ever seen, offline players included. A single * would only reach the players who are online.

4. 4

   Check the result

   bal followed by a player name shows one balance, and baltop force rebuilds the list straight away.

Use your starting balance instead of 0 if old and new players should begin level.