Rust Upkeep Calculator

Quick answerRust upkeep is a daily share of your base’s build cost that the Tool Cupboard takes from the resources inside it. Every building block, door and window pays 10% to 33.3% of its cost every 24 hours, depending on how big the base is, and high external walls pay a flat 20%. Since September 2026, groups with more than four players on the TC also pay an extra group tax. Enter your pieces in the calculator above to get the exact wood, stone, metal fragments and HQM per day.

How to use the upkeep calculator

1. Load a preset or start empty. The presets are a stone 2×1 starter, a stone 2×2 two storey, a 2×2 with a stone honeycomb around a sheet metal core, and a 12 player clan base with an armored core and a stone compound. Change any number after you load one.
2. Pick a grade and count your pieces. Click Twig, Wood, Stone, Sheet Metal or Armored, then add foundations, walls, doorways, floors and the rest for that grade. Each grade keeps its own counts, so a stone shell with a metal core is easy. Type a number or use the plus and minus buttons.
3. Add doors, windows and high walls. Doors, window bars and embrasures cost upkeep too. High external walls and gates inside the TC range are on their own list because they use a different rate.
4. Set the players on the TC. Count everyone authorised on the cupboard and your code locks. The calculator adds the group tax on top.
5. Type what is in your TC. The calculator shows how long the base is protected and which resource runs out first.
6. Pick how long to stock up for. 1 day, 3 days, 7 days or until the next Rust force wipe, and it tells you how much more of each resource to put in.

How upkeep works in Rust

Your Tool Cupboard protects every piece connected to its building. Once a day it takes a share of each piece’s build cost, in the same material the piece is made of: wood for twig and wood, stone for stone, metal fragments for sheet metal and HQM for armored. While the TC has enough, nothing decays. When one resource runs out, the pieces that need it start to lose health.

The share is not flat. The game sorts your building blocks into brackets, and every bracket past the first one pays a higher rate:

The game blends the brackets into one rate for the whole base and applies it to every piece. A 10 block starter pays 10%. A 100 block base pays 16%. A 400 block clan base pays about 26%, so every piece in it, even the first 15, costs more than double what it would in a small base. That is why two medium bases are often cheaper to keep than one huge one.

Only building blocks count toward the brackets. Doors, windows and embrasures do not push you into a higher bracket, but they pay the same blended rate as the blocks around them.

Upkeep per building piece

Here is what every building piece costs per day, from the small base rate (10%) to the top rate (33.3%). Doorways and windows cost 70% of a wall, and floors, frames, low walls, ramps, roofs and triangle foundations cost half.

Twig is cheap to keep but dies in an hour with no upkeep and breaks to a hatchet, so upgrade anything you want to keep. See our Rust building guide for build costs, health and upgrade times per grade.

Do doors cost upkeep in Rust?

Yes. Doors, window bars, glass windows and embrasures all take upkeep from the TC, at the same blended rate as your building blocks. Code locks, the Tool Cupboard itself and normal deployables like boxes, furnaces and sleeping bags cost nothing.

Item	Upkeep cost based on	Upkeep per day
Wooden Door	300 wood	30–100 wood
Wood Double Door	350 wood	35–117 wood
Sheet Metal Door	150 frags	15–50 frags
Sheet Metal Double Door	200 frags	20–67 frags
Garage Door	300 frags	30–100 frags
Armored Door	20 HQM	2–7 HQM
Armored Double Door	25 HQM	3–8 HQM
Ladder Hatch	300 frags	30–100 frags
Wooden Window Bars	50 wood	5–17 wood
Metal Window Bars	25 frags	3–8 frags
Strengthened Glass Window	50 frags	5–17 frags
Reinforced Glass Window	4 HQM	1–1 HQM
Metal Embrasure	100 frags	10–33 frags
Wood Shutters	200 wood	20–67 wood

Every door has a cheaper raid than the wall it sits in, so see the Rust raid calculator before you decide where to spend HQM on an armored door.

High external wall upkeep

High walls used to be free to keep. Since the Power Trip update (August 6, 2026), every high external wall and gate connected to your base adds a flat 20% of its cost per day. Walls craft three at a time for 4,000 wood or stone, so each wall counts as 1,333 and pays about 267 a day. A gate costs 3,000 and pays 600.

Piece	Cost per piece	Upkeep per day	20 walls + 1 gate
High External Wooden Wall	1,333 wood	267 wood	5,933 a day
High External Stone Wall	1,333 stone	267 stone
High External Wooden Gate	3,000 wood	600 wood	—
High External Stone Gate	3,000 stone	600 stone	—

A 20 wall compound with one gate costs almost 6,000 stone a day, more than most 2×2 bases. Keep the compound tight, or skip it until you have a quarry running.

Group upkeep tax for teams and clans

The Breach and Clear update (September 3, 2026) added a tax on top of normal upkeep for bigger groups. The first 4 players are free. Players 5 to 10 add 2% each, and every player after 10 adds 4%, up to a maximum tax of 300%. The count includes everyone authorised on the TC, anyone removed from it in the last 24 hours, and players authorised or using guest access on your code locks, so you cannot dodge it by clearing the cupboard before an upkeep tick.

Hover over the upkeep cost in the TC in game to see the tax your base is paying right now. Servers can change or turn off the group tax with server settings, so modded servers may differ. Full details are in the official Breach and Clear patch notes, and our code lock guide covers who counts on a lock.

Upkeep for common bases

These are the calculator presets, so you can load them above and change anything. Upkeep is per 24 hours with the group size shown.

Want a layout that is cheap to hold and hard to raid? Our Rust base designs list the build cost and daily upkeep of 40 popular solo, duo, trio and clan bases.

How long does your TC last, and what happens when it runs out?

Open the TC and it shows how long the base is protected. The calculator does the same sum: each resource in the cupboard divided by what the base uses of it per day. The resource that runs out first decides the time, so a base can be “protected” for days on stone while its sheet metal core is already decaying because the frags ran out.

Once a resource runs out, the pieces that need it start to decay. From full health, with no upkeep at all, they last about:

Grade	Time to decay with no upkeep
Twig	1 hour
Wood	3 hours
Stone	5 hours
Sheet Metal	8 hours
Armored	12 hours

Our Rust decay guide explains decay in more detail, including how foundations far from the TC go first.

How to lower your upkeep

• Stay under the brackets. The 66th and 191st blocks are where the rate jumps. Trimming a few roof pieces or spare floors can drop the whole base into a cheaper bracket.
• Use external TCs for the shell. A separate building with its own TC starts again at 10%. Many base designs put the honeycomb or bunkers on external TCs for this reason.
• Do not over-armor. Armored pieces only cost 3 to 8 HQM a day each, but HQM is the hardest resource to farm. Armor the TC room and the loot room, and keep the shell stone.
• Clean up the auth list. Players you removed still count for 24 hours, and old code lock auths count until you clear them. A 15 player auth list pays 32% more than a group of 4.
• Think twice about a compound. Each high stone wall costs about 267 stone a day, more than a stone wall in the biggest base.
• Stock before you log off. Pick 7 days or Until wipe in the calculator and fill the TC to that number. Monthly force wipe resets everything anyway, so there is no point stocking past it.

Rust upkeep FAQ

Building costs, crafting costs and upkeep rates come from the current Rust game files and the Breach and Clear and Power Trip patch notes. Checked October 2026. Values are for vanilla servers.