For clicker players who hate guessing.

For idle game number-crunchers. Enter each upgrade's cost and income; we rank your best next buy.

Free on iPhone

Cash Empire Clicker shows payback for you

We built this calculator because the same idea sits inside our game. Cash Empire Clicker's "Best next" card shows cost, income gained and payback time, so every purchase is a clear choice. In the screenshot below, a $15 Hand Crank Printer adds $0.10 a second and "pays back in 2m 30s". That is $15 ÷ $0.10 = 150 seconds, the same sum this page runs.

Payback time is cost divided by the income it adds. Lower wins.

The $100 farm or four more printers?

Early on, you are holding $20 and earning $0.40 a second. The shop offers another Hand Crank Printer for $15 and an Ink Cartridge Farm for $100 that earns $1 a second. The printer feels sensible because you can buy it now. The farm feels out of reach.

Run the numbers in the table above, which loads with this exact choice. The printer pays for itself in 150 seconds. The farm makes you wait 200 seconds to afford it, then pays back in 100, so 300 seconds in all. The printer wins this round, and buying it raises your income, which shortens the wait for the farm. The answer changes as you grow, which is why we check at every purchase.

Re-check your best next buy after every purchase; the winner moves.

Honest limits of a payback number

• Milestones break the simple math. In Anthony Pecorella's "The Math of Idle Games, Part I" (Game Developer, 2016), the best buy is the one with the best income-to-cost ratio, but he notes players rush to ownership thresholds that trigger multipliers. Cash Empire Clicker has x1.5 ownership milestones, so the unit that hits a milestone is worth more than its plain payback suggests.
• Research and managers multiply. Each Research Lab project doubles an asset's income, and managers automate and multiply. Enter the boosted income if you know it.
• Taps are not counted. Printer upgrades raise tap value, which depends on how fast you tap. This calculator only ranks per-second income.
• Costs rise every time. Version 1.3 rebalanced the game so costs rise with every purchase, so the next unit of the same asset always pays back a little slower.

Kongregate's own talk notes on idle game math explain why designers do this on purpose: thresholds keep the "best" generator changing, which keeps choices interesting.

Use payback as a strong default, then break the rule for milestones.

Quiz: which upgrade should you buy first?

Three rounds, real payback math. Pick the upgrade that earns back its cost sooner.

Big numbers are not big deals; cost per dollar per second is.

Who should skip Cash Empire Clicker

• Anyone hoping to earn real money. All money in the game is fictional. It offers no cash-outs, gambling or investment services, and in-game currency has no real-world value.
• Players who want a short game. The listing says reaching the top stages takes days, not minutes.
• People who dislike any purchases. There are no forced ads and no launch paywall, and everything can be earned free, but optional one-time purchases such as Founder Lifetime exist.

It is a pretend empire built from real math, and it says so.

How Cash Empire Clicker works, in 3 steps

1. Tap to print cash. Start with one broken money printer. Lucky critical taps and a combo streak worth up to +50% speed things up.
2. Buy the best next asset. Choose from 12 income assets, from a Hand Crank Printer to a Multiverse Mint, and hire 11 managers to automate them.
3. Prestige with IPO Reset. See your multiplier now versus after before you confirm, then spend Investors on permanent upgrades. Your assets keep producing while you are offline.

Tap, buy the best next asset, reset for a bigger multiplier, repeat.