Crime Simulator Money Guide: Steal $10,000, Get Paid Like an Intern
The best way to make spending money in Crime Simulator is to increase your base cut, complete profitable jobs and item requests, and save valuable loot for quotas offering better payouts. Meeting your quota keeps the operation running, but your actual earnings depend on how much stolen property you submit and what percentage you get to keep. Because stealing $10,000 doesn't make you $10,000 richer. Apparently, even organised crime has discovered the joys of unpaid labour.
Making money in Crime Simulator is one thing. Deciding whether the burglary career is actually worth the grind is another. Read our Crime Simulator review for the verdict on progression, equipment and life as a professional household inconvenience.
Why Your $10,000 Robbery Doesn't Pay $10,000
Crime Simulator's quota system has a rather insulting arrangement. You're given a target, steal enough valuables to meet it, and receive a percentage of what you've delivered. The rest presumably disappears into management expenses. Developer Raintek confirmed on Steam that your earnings depend on a difficulty-based percentage called the base cut.
Spending credits = Total submitted loot value × Base cut percentage
Here's what that looks like without additional bonuses:
Loot submitted | Base cut | Credits earned |
$5,000 | 25% | 1,250 |
$10,000 | 35% | 3,500 |
$15,000 | 40% | 6,000 |
$20,000 | 50% | 10,000 |
These are mathematical examples, not independent gameplay tests. According to community explanations, your cut applies to everything submitted, including loot exceeding the quota. If you need $8,000 but deliver $12,000, the calculation uses the full $12,000. Exceeding your quota therefore isn't wasting money. You're deciding to cash in your stolen goods at today's rate, which can become expensive.
Should You Submit Everything or Hoard Valuable Loot?
Suppose you've collected $20,000 in valuables against a $10,000 quota, with a base cut of 25%. Submit everything and you'll receive 5,000 credits. Submit only $10,000 and you'll receive 2,500 credits, leaving the rest in your hideout. If your cut later increases to 50%, selling that remaining loot produces another 5,000 credits. Your combined earnings become 7,500 instead of 5,000. Same burglaries, same loot, an extra 2,500 credits because you understood when to sell.
These percentages are illustrative, and the strategy depends on your cut genuinely improving. Players have discussed this approach on the Crime Simulator subreddit. One reported storing expensive VIP items while submitting only enough for earlier quotas, eventually claiming almost 100,000 spending credits. That's a personal report, not a guaranteed result.
Still, there's something magnificent about this development in your criminal career. You've broken into somebody's home, stolen their valuables, escaped the police and returned to your hideout. You should be drinking champagne from a stolen vase. Instead, you're considering whether market conditions favour liquidating your inventory or retaining assets until the next accounting period. Congratulations. You've become a warehouse manager with a criminal record.
Meet your quota reliably, retain valuable surplus loot when better payouts are realistically available, and never hoard so aggressively that you miss your deadline.
Does Higher Difficulty Make You More Money?
Higher difficulty can improve your base cut, but don't assume you can rob everything on Easy and switch to Master moments before collecting the money. An October 2025 community explanation describes difficulty becoming locked for an active quota, reportedly to prevent exactly that exploit.
Later players discussed storing valuables, changing difficulty at a quota boundary and submitting their stockpile. However, difficulty-switching behaviour has changed between versions. Check your options when beginning a new quota and confirm the displayed cut before selling valuable items.
And remember that higher difficulty means nothing if you're repeatedly failing robberies. A 60% cut of absolutely fuck all remains absolutely fuck all.
Tired of stealing microwaves for a percentage of their value? Discover the 25 best heist games, featuring bigger scores, better targets and criminal crews whose financial planning usually ends in gunfire.
Golden Cards Can Make Your Crimes More Profitable
The community-maintained Golden Cards Guide, updated for version 1.57, documents several potentially valuable bonuses:
Dollar Golden Card: Adds five percentage points to your base cut.
Credits Golden Card: Increases credits earned from jobs and item requests by 20%.
Swift Golden Card: Increases early-completion bonuses by 50%.
Diamond Golden Card: Reduces eligible store prices by 25%.
The Dollar card becomes particularly interesting when you're sitting on a mountain of stolen property. On a $20,000 submission, another five percentage points means 1,000 additional credits, before other modifiers. The Diamond card works differently: an eligible $20,000 purchase with a 25% discount saves 5,000 credits. That's five grand you don't have to steal.
The guide also documents a permanent two-percentage-point base-cut increase associated with an item request. These are community-documented bonuses rather than independently retested CRIMENET results for version 1.58.
Is Completing Quotas Early Worth It?
Early completion can provide additional credits, but finishing immediately isn't necessarily the most profitable decision. Older community research describes a bonus based on the quota requirement and days remaining, although the precise formula hasn't been confirmed for version 1.58.
The question is whether that reward exceeds what another night of stealing could reasonably earn. If you've got a profitable location available and can safely bring home more valuables, continuing might pay better. If another failed outing could jeopardise your quota, take the guaranteed progress instead. Efficiency isn't finishing everything as quickly as possible. It's getting the best return from your remaining time.
Jobs, Item Requests and the Money Printer
Jobs and item requests provide rewards separate from ordinary quota payouts, making them useful for building spending money. The documented Credits Golden Card can improve those earnings further.
Then there's the Money Printer, which sounds wonderfully straightforward until you discover its history. Players previously reported that its expected bonus wasn't arriving. Official Crime Simulator update notes documented fixes in August 2026, including another attempt on August 28. The developers had essentially invented a machine for printing money and then needed to repair its inability to print money. It's difficult to imagine a more appropriate financial crisis.
The precise post-fix payout hasn't been independently verified here, so historical percentage claims shouldn't be treated as guaranteed current earnings.
For expensive equipment purchases, concentrate on what you can control: improve your cut, time valuable submissions sensibly, collect profitable job rewards and use relevant discounts. Crime Simulator gives you a burglar's job, a subcontractor's pay and a warehouse manager's responsibilities.
All that's missing is an annual performance review explaining why you've failed to meet the company's expectations despite personally stealing its entire revenue.
If burglary has taught you anything, it's that crime apparently comes with paperwork. Perhaps it's time for a promotion. Explore our 25 best crime games, from petty theft to running entire criminal empires. Because somebody has to make management's life miserable.
Crime Simulator Money FAQ
How do you make more spending money in Crime Simulator?
Increase your base cut, complete profitable jobs and item requests, and save valuable loot for quotas offering better payouts. Don't confuse meeting your quota with maximising your earnings.
Should you sell all your loot immediately?
Not necessarily. If your base cut is likely to improve, holding valuable surplus loot can earn you more credits later. Just make sure you still meet your current quota.
Does higher difficulty give you more money?
Yes, higher difficulty can increase your base cut. However, difficulty changes may be restricted during active quotas, so check your settings before starting a new one.
What happens if you exceed your quota?
According to community reports, your base cut applies to the total submitted loot value, including anything above the required quota. Extra loot can therefore generate additional spending credits.
Is it better to complete quotas early?
It depends. Early completion can reward bonus credits, but another successful robbery might earn more. Compare the potential reward with the remaining time and risk.
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