Trade Hub Analysis - November 2013

There are 5 main trade hubs in Eve Online. In order of market size they are, Jita, Amarr, Dodixie, Rens and Hek.

In terms of how profitable they are for me I rank them Jita, Amarr, Dodixie, Hek and Rens.

In order of profit vs time and effort required to make that profit I rank them Hek, Dodixie, Amarr, Jita, Rens.

Top 10 Trade Hubs

The following is a list of the top 10 trade hubs ranked by market value pulled from the "all regions" station ranking list at Eve MarketData

1	Jita IV - Moon 4 - Caldari Navy Assembly Plant	100,265	26,638,220,288,848ISK	View Rank History
2	Amarr VIII (Oris) - Emperor Family Academy	50,917	6,553,472,837,645ISK	View Rank History
3	Dodixie IX - Moon 20 - Federation Navy Assembly Plant	36,169	3,822,492,279,422ISK	View Rank History
4	Rens VI - Moon 8 - Brutor Tribe Treasury	31,104	3,396,734,263,963ISK	View Rank History
5	Hek VIII - Moon 12 - Boundless Creation Factory	22,103	2,429,866,852,989ISK	View Rank History
6	Oursulaert III - Federation Navy Testing Facilities	6,496	823,477,865,437ISK	View Rank History
7	VFK-IV VI - Moon 1 - Mittanigrad	5,461	611,705,630,438ISK	View Rank History
8	Motsu VII - Moon 6 - Caldari Navy Logistic Support	3,689	570,562,427,019ISK	View Rank History
9	Tash-Murkon Prime II - Moon 1 - Kaalakiota Corporation Factory	5,481	529,766,043,636ISK	View Rank History
10	Agil VI - Moon 2 - CONCORD Logistic Support	5,767	510,694,901,963ISK	View Rank History

The 5 main trade hubs stand out due to having much larger markets (both in number of orders and total value of those orders) than the others. The smallest main hub (Hek) is 3 times larger than the next largest market hub (Oursulaert).

Jita

By far the largest of the main trade hubs with a bigger market than all the other main trade hubs combined. Usually has more than twice as many pilots around than all the other main hubs combined too. Far and away the most active of all the major hubs. Too many no-lifers and bots perpetually playing the 0.01 ISK game. Profit margins tend to be slimmer than in other places but if you have enough isk to play with and the patience to deal with the 0.01 ISK campers you can make more total profit through sales volume here than anywhere else.

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

Jita is 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 by a fair bit. One of the most consistently profitable and reliably performing markets 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. Rens is very heavily camped, especially considering it's the second smallest of the major hubs and not much bigger than the smallest (Hek). Even some regions without a major hub are more profitable than Rens and for a whole lot less work too. Definitely, without a doubt, my least favorite main trade hub.

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

Hek

Hek is the smallest of the main hubs but often has the best profit margins of the main 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 a year and a half 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 the older posts. I figure it's been a main hub for 2-3 years now.

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

Secondary Hubs

Rounding out the top 10 are:

Oursulaert

VFK-IV VI

Motsu

Tash-Murkon Prime

Agil

I was on Oursulaert for a while but I found the no-lifers and bots camping Ours were even worse than the ones on Rens. So I moved 1 jump over to Renyn and found much better business there.

VFK-IV (Mittanigrad) is in nullsec and I don't have station access so I can't say anything about business there. I find Motsu and Tash are both good for business and though I haven't been on Agil very long yet, so far it's looking good too..

Other secondary hubs of note include:

Sobaseki

Ichoriya

Teonusude

Alentene

Renyn

Kor-Azor Prime
Atlanins

Orvolle

Cistuvaert

Stacmon

Tar
Kamela (low sec)
Solaria Vehan (low sec)
Octanneve
Esescama

The first bunch are ones I've been actively trading on for a while and I'm happy with the business on all of them except Orvolle which is a bit disappointing. But then again it's in a PvP region and my product mix is more PvE oriented, with a more PvP oriented mix business would probably be just fine.

Cistuvaert reminded me so much of Oursulaert I never even tried it (Alentene right next door suits me just fine). Stacmon I was on for a short time but I wasn't happy with the business there so I moved to Orvolle. Business doesn't seem to be any better there.

The last bunch are in regions I have little or no experience in but look to me like the best places to trade from in their regions. I have just placed a new trade alt on Kamela (still needs a lot of training) and plan on expanding to the others eventually too.

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, Akainavas, Umokka, 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 and many of the largest secondary 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.

IMO, the best way to find trade hubs is going to Eve MarketData and perusing the station rank lists there. You can have it show ranked lists of stations in a solar system, a single region or all regions.

Other methods of finding stations to trade from can be found in this link: Choosing a Trading Station.

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

Hub Clusters

Large secondary trade hubs tend to be clustered together around the main hubs. You can find clusters of several large secondary hubs, spread across multiple regions, all within a few jumps of each other and with one of the main hubs more or less central to the cluster.

Here's a link to a more in-depth post about Trade Hub Clusters.