Best food for each stage
There is no single best food. The right pick depends on how much damage you take, how many inventory slots you can spare and your membership status. This is where most players land.
| Situation | Food | Heals | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| New free-to-play account | Trout, salmon, tuna | 7 to 10 | Cheap, easy to catch and cook yourself |
| Free-to-play bossing or PvP | Swordfish, anchovy pizza | 14, 9 per bite | Best single-bite and two-bite free options |
| Mid-level members | Monkfish | 16 | Good heal for the price after Swan Song |
| Most bossing | Shark | 20 | The long-standing default |
| Hard bosses | Manta ray, anglerfish | 22, up to 22 | Most healing per slot, anglerfish can overheal |
| Any fight with burst damage | Cooked karambwan | 18 | Can be eaten in the same tick as other food |
| Wilderness | Dark crab, blighted food | 22 | Blighted food only works in PvP areas |
Heal per slot or heal per coin
These are two different questions. Per slot, the winners heal 22 or more: manta ray, dark crab, tuna potato, and the two-bite foods such as pineapple pizza, wild pie and summer pie at 11 per bite. Two-bite food also lets you eat half and keep the rest for later. Per coin, the answer moves with the market. Sort the table above by gp per hitpoint to see which food is cheapest to heal with today; cheaper fish such as lobster and swordfish are often the better deal when you only need volume.
Use per-slot thinking for bosses and raids where every space counts. Use per-coin thinking for slayer, low-risk bossing and training where you bank often.
Eating speed and combo eating
Most food delays your next attack by 3 game ticks (1.8 seconds). A few foods break that rule, and good players use them to survive big hits:
- Cooked karambwan and halibut can be eaten in the same tick as a normal food. Shark then karambwan heals 38 at once.
- Potions do not add the usual 3-tick attack delay, and a sip of any non-mix potion can go in the same tick as a food and a karambwan, so a quick restore costs you no attack time.
- Pies such as mushroom, botanical and admiral pie have a 1-tick eat delay on each bite, which makes them handy fillers.
Anglerfish and overhealing
Anglerfish heal more as your Hitpoints level rises, and they can take you above your maximum by the same amount they heal. At 99 Hitpoints that cap is 121. Below 93 Hitpoints a manta ray heals more.
| Hitpoints level | Anglerfish heals |
|---|---|
| 50 to 59 | 11 |
| 70 to 74 | 13 |
| 80 to 89 | 16 |
| 90 to 92 | 17 |
| 93 to 99 | 22 |
Overheal is switched off while you are in combat in the Wilderness and other PvP areas, so anglerfish lose their edge there.
Fish from Sailing
Sailing added a new set of fish that compete with the old favourites. Yellowfin heals 19 and restores run energy, halibut heals 20 and can be combo eaten like a karambwan, bluefin heals 22 and restores some Prayer points, and marlin heals 24, the most of any single-bite fish. Marlin needs an eternal brazier on your boat to catch, so supply is thinner.
To cook your own supply, the Cooking calculator shows the xp and cost of each fish, and the OSRS fishing guide covers where to catch them. Price pages for the staples include shark price, manta ray and anglerfish price history. Cooking a batch for profit is covered on Cooking money makers.