How to Make Money in Cities Skylines 2

Learn How to Make Money in Cities Skylines 2.

We all know that feeling, you’re playing Cities Skylines 2 but struggling to make your city profitable. Building up your city costs a lot of money and the more you expand, the more you’ll have to consider your budget. If you build up your city too fast, chances are you’ll never catch up with rising upkeep costs, eventually bankrupting you.

So we’ve collected some tips and tricks to help you turn your city profitable.

How to Make Money in Cities Skylines 2

Raise Your Taxes

In Cities Skylines 2 the most obvious but arguably not most sustainable way of raising your income is to raise your taxes. At first, the revenue won’t be much but once you exceed a population of 2000 this will rake in some serious cash. Just be careful, your citizens won’t like heavy taxation so it’s a balancing act of keeping them happy and covering your cost.

Later, you can Tax individual groups of citizens depending on their education. Be careful though, depending on how you tax these individual groups the more or less attractive your city will become to potential new citizens. The same goes for businesses and factories.

To raise happiness in order to counterbalance high taxes you’ll need to improve the city’s infrastructure, offer means of recreation, or build things that make your citizens happy. There is no real answer if you’re looking for the perfect setting, just play around with it whenever you drop into negative income to balance the scales.

Rank Up

Another self-explanatory way of gaining money is ranking up your city in Cities Skylines 2. But this isn’t the most reliable way of getting income but it will give you some headroom if you want to improve your city. The money you gain from ranking up with scale with rank so don’t spend everything at once just because you get a big check cashed.

On that note, the new buildings you unlock via the milestones gained from ranking up are also something to consider. Don’t spend them on something you don’t have the money to build and support. Most of the bigger buildings aren’t really worth it early on due to the upkeep cost. So focus on upgrades that will improve your city while keeping costs to a minimum.

Cut Costs

Ron Swanson loves to cut city budgets and it’s something you should also consider if you want to keep your Cities Skylines 2 city running. We of course don’t ask you to dial down every budget to 0% and watch as your city spirals into a Mad Max-type wasteland (but it would be funny).

Under Economy > Services you’ll find various meters you can tinker around with. You can cut the budget for electricity, its maintenance, and various other goods and services. As long as you put them around 80% it shouldn’t cause too much trouble just keep an eye on your citizen’s happiness and don’t overdo it.

The Export Business

If you build a powerplant early on, chances are it’ll produce way more power than your city needs. Now you can simply hook it up to the powerlines on the edge of your map and export your electricity for some profits. This isn’t always worth it but at least early on it’s a great way to get some money into your city’s pockets.

Later on, you can handle the undesirable waste and water supply of other cities which can also be used to turn a quick profit.

And that’s how to make money in Cities Skylines 2. For more on the citybuilder check out our performance guide for PC players and our Tips and Tricks for Beginners.