Trade Hub Analysis

There are 5 major trade hubs in Eve Online. Roughly in order of market size they are, Jita, Amarr, Dodixie, Rens and Hek. In terms of how profitable they are for me it's Jita, Amarr, Dodixie, Hek and Rens. In order of profit vs how much time and effort it takes to make that profit (or iow, how much I like working the markets) I rank them Amarr, Hek, Dodixie, Jita, Rens.

Updated version: http://merchantmonarchy.blogspot.ca/2013/11/trade-hub-anylisis-updated-for-2013.html

Jita

By far the largest of the main trade hubs with a bigger market than all the other main trade hubs added together. Usually has more than twice as many pilots around than all the other main hubs combined too. Far and away the most active and most heavily camped of all the major hubs. Profit margins tend to be smaller than on the other hubs but if you have enough isk to play with you can make more total profit through sales volume than anywhere else.

You'll usually see 1200+ pilots docked and active in Jita, sometimes over 2000.

Jita is very good for buying most items in bulk, especially manufactured items. It's also great for finding things you're having trouble finding anywhere else.

Amarr

The second largest market. Easily the most consistently profitable and reliably performing market in my experience. The market is larger and more active than anywhere except Jita. It's not as heavily camped as Jita or Rens either so it takes less effort to make the same isk here. Along with Hek this is one of my favorite markets.

Usually has 150-200 pilots docked and active, 250+ during peak times.

Dodixie

The third largest market. I found Dodixie a very poor performer at first but as I got more isk and more orders to play with it got better. Now it's almost as good as Amarr for me. I guess Dodixie is just a tough market for smaller, newer players to break into but for larger, more established players it's fine.

Usually has 150+ pilots docked and active, 200+ during peak times.

Rens

Fourth largest market by market order value. The least profitable in my experience. Very heavily camped considering it's the second smallest market of the major hubs and not much bigger than the smallest (Hek). Even some regions without a major hub are more profit for less work than Rens. Definitely, without a doubt my least favorite major trade hub.

Though I haven't any data to prove it I believe Rens is in decline and slowly losing business to Hek. I expect Rens will soon be the smallest of the main trade hubs, though since it's in a different region than Hek it will still be quite a bit larger than any of the smaller hubs and remain a main trade hub.

Usually has 100-150 pilots docked and active, 150-200 during peak times.

Hek

Hek is a boom town that's still growing. It's the smallest market but has probably the best profit margins of all the major hubs. This is one of my favorite markets. The market isn't that much smaller than Rens but Hek isn't camped very much at all, meaning you can update orders less often yet still move items in decent volume and for bigger margins than on the other hubs.

Hek is the newest of the major hubs. I've only been playing for 10 months or so myself so I'm not sure just exactly how long it's been around but when doing google research Hek is never mentioned as a main trade hub in older posts. I figure it's been a main hub for at least 1 maybe 2 years.

Considering Hek hasn't been a main hub very long, yet is already almost as big as Rens, I believe it'll soon surpass Rens as the main trade hub in Minmatar space. In fact due to it's central position among the hubs (close to both Dodixie and Rens and closer to Jita than Rens is) I expect within a year Hek will be as big as Dodixie. Though I wouldn't bet on it (at least not yet) I wouldn't be surprised if it starts pulling a little business away from Jita and eventually grows as large Amarr.

Usually has 100 or so pilots docked and active, 150 plus during peak times.

Smaller hubs

Besides the 5 main trade hubs there are many smaller hubs. Most of the smaller hubs are mission hubs, FW hubs, industrial centers, systems where miners flock and the like. There is a reason why pilots tend to congregate in these systems. If you figure out why they're there you should have a pretty good idea of what they have to sell and what they need to buy too.

Some of the smaller hubs (listed in no particular order) are Arnon, Aldrat, Osmon, Oursulaert, Akainavas, Umokka, Sobaseki, Clellinon, Couster, Deepari, Penigrman. Experienced regional traders will recognize many of these systems as places where a lot of their buy orders get filled. They make great places for new traders to get their feet wet before diving into the deep end with the obsessive overly competitive station traders found on the major trade hubs.

Pretty much any system that normally has 20-30 pilots docked and active is a good place to do business. The more pilots around the better, quite a few of these smaller hubs have 50, 60 or more pilots in system during peak times. A handful frequently have those numbers during off peak times and occasionally hit 100 or more during peak times.

The simplest and best way to find smaller hubs is to open the map and set it to Starmap > Stars > Statistics > Number of pilots currently docked and actived. The huge red blob towards top center is Jita, The next biggest circles are Amarr, Dodixie, Rens, Hek (the other 4 main trade hubs) and depending on the time maybe Osmon too. After that are the smaller hubs.

Osmon is a special case, it frequently has 150+ pilots but it's often well under 100 too. Osmon is a major mission hub for level 4 Sister's of Eve agents (the best missions for repairing faction standings) and a major ice mining center that's notorious for botting operations too. It's not a major trade hub though. It's really not any better than other small hubs in spite of it's greater size and activity mainly because it's in the same region as (and very close to) Jita. There are a lot of items sold on Osmon, the problem is you're buying them in competition with regional buy orders on Jita and there are a LOT of buyers on Jita.

Bulk hauling supplies mission runners and ice miners need (ammo, modules, even ships) into Osmon to sell is probably quite lucrative.

Certain null sec hubs can get very busy at times, usually due to being staging points for war operations. When this happens they can rival the best of the smaller hubs. However the busy times tend to be short lived as war fronts move and wars end.

Listing null sec hubs is really beyond the scope of this article, however if you find a war staging hub, it'd be a great place to use remote order skills from a cloaked ship to do a little ninja trading (buy up all their cheap war supplies and sell it back to them for big profits). If you're part of the alliance staging out of the system, don't jack prices up on your main, that'll just get you yelled at and possibly kicked.