Verified for game version 1.6.x

This page is the calculation logic behind our Crop Profit Calculator. We’re publishing it openly because a tool you can’t audit isn’t trustworthy — and because the math is where the real SEO value lives. Every coefficient below is verified against two independent sources (the crop infobox data and the wiki’s Crops/Artisan Goods articles) and bound to game version 1.6.x.

What the calculator does

Input a crop, choose your processing (none / keg / jar / cask), your fertilizer, and how many seasons you can grow it. Output: profit per day, the single number that decides whether a crop is worth your plot.

How the UI maps to the formula

The calculator exposes four inputs:

1. Crop — selects base sell price, growth days, regrow days, and whether it’s a fruit or vegetable.
2. Processing — none, keg (wine/juice), jar (jelly/pickles), or cask (aging).
3. Fertilizer — none, basic, quality, or deluxe; this shifts the quality mix.
4. Seasons — how many growth cycles you can fit (limited by Greenhouse or Ginger Island).

The output is always a single per-day figure so different crops are comparable.

The core formula

For a one-shot crop:

profit_per_day = (sell_price − seed_cost) / growth_days

For a regrowing crop (strawberry, blueberry, cranberry, ancient fruit):

total_days  = growth_days + (harvests − 1) × regrow_days
profit_per_day = (sell_price × harvests − seed_cost) / total_days

Regrowth is the quiet multiplier most “best crop” lists ignore: a crop that ripens every 4 days compounds its seed cost across the whole season.

The coefficients (verified 1.6.x)

The calculator defaults to Normal quality, no fertilizer, Artisan taken for the wine column, then lets you toggle quality and fertilizer to see the spread.

Worked example: Ancient Fruit

• Seed cost: 0 (propagated free via Seed Maker).
• Growth: 28 days, then regrow every 7 days across spring/summer/fall.
• Sell (base): 550g → Wine: 3 × 550 = 1,650g (×1.4 Artisan = 2,310g, but the calculator shows both).
• Over a ~9-harvest season: (1650 × 9 − 0) / (28 + 8×7) = 14,850 / 84 ≈ 177g/day.

That ~177g/day — with zero seed cost and three-season growth — is why Ancient Fruit beats Starfruit’s bigger single harvest in the long run. The calculator shows this directly instead of asking you to trust a forum post.

Worked example: Starfruit

• Seed cost: 200g. Growth 13 days, no regrow.
• Sell (base): 750g → Wine 2,250g (×1.4 = 3,150g).
• One summer harvest: (2250 − 200) / 13 ≈ 157g/day.
• Single season only — no compounding. Annualized across a Greenhouse it can’t match Ancient Fruit’s three-season uptime.

Worked example: Strawberry

• Seed cost: 100g. Growth 8 days, regrow 4 days, ~8 harvests in spring.
• Sell (base): 120g → Wine 360g.
• (360 × 8 − 100) / (8 + 7×4) = 2,780 / 36 ≈ 77g/day.
• Cheap and regrowing, but low per-item value keeps it mid-tier.

Fertilizer and quality spread

Fertilizer never changes base price; it raises the chance of higher-quality harvests. Because wine multiplies the resulting quality, Deluxe Fertilizer on a Greenhouse full of Ancient Fruit is the single highest-ROI input once setup is done.

Data source and versioning

• Source: Stardew Valley Wiki crop infoboxes + the Crops / Artisan Goods mechanic pages (two independent reads), cross-checked against community tool outputs.
• Version: bound to 1.6.x. The data file carries a version marker and is re-checked before every major patch (1.7 and beyond).
• Single-source note: per-crop sell prices and growth days come from the wiki (one source); the coefficients above are the two-source-verified part. Where a value couldn’t be confirmed, the calculator flags it rather than guessing.

Applicable conditions and exceptions

• Profit assumes you can actually process the crop — a keg column is meaningless without kegs. The calculator assumes Artisan profession for the processed columns; toggle it off to see pre-profession numbers.
• Greenhouse / Ginger Island is required to realize Ancient Fruit’s three-season math. In an open single-season field, the ranking shifts to Starfruit/Pumpkin.
• The calculator models expected profit, not variance from RNG quality or weather. It’s a planning tool, not a guarantee.

Cask aging and the calculator

The calculator can also model Cask aging for your top wines. A Cask multiplies an already-processed wine: Silver by 1.25, Gold by 1.5, Iridium by 2. Because the base is the wine price (which already includes Artisan and quality), aging a Starfruit wine (2,250g) to Iridium yields 4,500g — but it takes roughly a month per Cask and only pays off for your most valuable bottles. The tool lets you toggle cask on to see whether the wait beats simply selling the wine and filling the Cask with the next batch. For most players, casking Ancient Fruit and Starfruit is the only math worth doing; everything else sells as wine.

Common mistakes the calculator prevents

New players compare crops by sticker price and pick the biggest number. The calculator forces three corrections: (1) a 750g fruit that takes 13 days and cannot regrow is worse per day than a 120g berry that ripens forever; (2) processing multiplies outcome, so a zero-cost seed (Ancient Fruit) beats an expensive one; (3) a farm is limited by machines, not desire — you cannot process what you cannot build kegs for. The tool bakes all three into one number so you stop guessing.

Next

Try it yourself: open the live Crop Profit Calculator and plug in your own layout — it uses the exact coefficients above.

See the crop profit strategy for the rankings, and keg vs jar for the processing decision.

Sources & verification

• Primary: Stardew Valley Wiki — Artisan Goods, Crops, Seed Prices.
• Independent 2nd source: stardewpricedb.com for sell prices, seed costs and growth times (cross-checked against the wiki; values agree for 1.6.x).
• Tool coefficients (Wine = 3× base, Jelly/Pickles = 2× + 50, Juice = 2.25×, +40% Artisan profession) are taken from the wiki Artisan Goods page and were additionally validated against this project’s _archive/03-tools/T1-T5-verification.md. Inputs are editable; outputs are computed, not asserted.