Boat Smuggling

Figures checked: August 30, 2026

The three run tiers

Run tiers, unlock thresholds, payouts and the 8-minute cooldown from HeyLunex's boat smuggling guide (published 21 August 2026); mission structure, the wanted star, boat health and Coast Guard ramming from DustPlays' boat smuggling walkthrough (mid-August 2026). Per-hour figures are 7.5 runs an hour on the 8-minute cooldown, which is our arithmetic on those payouts, not a number anyone stated.

Conflicting observation: DustPlays reports about $15,000 from an early mission taking roughly two minutes, against HeyLunex's about $25,000 for a dinghy run. Both were recorded before the 29 August patch and neither states which tier the other was running, so we list HeyLunex's figures as the tiered table and flag the lower observation here rather than averaging them.

The run, step by step

1. Pick your server first. A busy public server pays more — the run bonus scales with how many Coast Guard players are in it — but it also means people actively trying to sink you. Grind servers are the usual compromise.
2. Buy goods before you sail. Five fake Mona Lisa paintings is the load the guide we sourced this from carries; they sell for about $10,000 on the far side and ride along with the run for free.
3. Drive to the smuggling docks and talk to the smuggler NPC. Take the run your tier allows.
4. Sail for the black market docks. Crossing the maritime border gives you one wanted star automatically — that is the cost of doing business, not a mistake you made.
5. Watch the boat health bar in the middle of your screen. Coast Guard players ram rather than shoot; if the bar empties, the boat sinks and the run is gone.
6. Turn the boat in at the docks to collect the run payment, then drive the goods to the smuggled goods buyer for the second payout.
7. Wait out the 8-minute cooldown and repeat. Run the cooldown at your beach house farm or your printer apartment rather than idling at the docks.

Why this beats everything else

The catch is the grind to reach it: the go-fast tier is 100 completed runs away, and at 8 minutes each that is over thirteen hours of sailing before the best rate unlocks. The dinghy tier is available immediately and already outearns a fully built printer apartment, which makes boat running the correct answer for a new account with no capital — the only high earner here that does not need a million dollars up front.

Boats and your immigration record

One serious caveat, and it is the reason this page does not simply say "do this instead of everything else". Every boat run gives you a wanted star. Stars are what let police obtain a warrant, and a warrant is what empties an apartment holding up to $1,000,000 of money printers. Running boats and holding a large printer farm on the same account is a live risk, not a theoretical one.

The clean pattern most players land on: run boats hard while you are building capital, then switch to the farm and printers once you have a build worth protecting, and keep boat sessions to accounts or nights where you have nothing sitting in an apartment. See wanted stars and heat for how the meters interact.