Two currencies: money and speed
Steal an Egg runs on two numbers. Money comes from pets in your pen, every second, including while you're away from the keyboard. Speed decides which biomes you can rob. Everything you buy with money (treadmills, trails, pen space) exists to make one of those numbers grow faster, and that loop is the whole Steal an Egg economy.
The sooner you see it as a loop, the faster you progress: better pets → more money → better treadmill → more speed → better biome → better pets. Wherever you're stuck, find the weakest link.
How speed is earned
Speed comes from five places:
- Treadmill. Stand on it and run. Each step adds the "per step" value on the treadmill's label. You unlock the first treadmill for $1,000 right after the tutorial.
- Trail. Multiplies your per-step gain. Bought with cash in the trail shop.
- Speed multiplier upgrades. A Robux-only ladder from x2 (3 Robux) up to x4,000 (tier 12), multiplying treadmill gain.
- Index rewards. Every new pet you hatch pays a lump of speed and cash. For a new account this beats the treadmill by a mile.
- One-offs. Joining the game's community group (+10,000 speed), Admin Abuse treadmills (4x–8x) and speed potions.
One free-to-play creator summed it up mid-run: "treadmills are lowkey such a bad way to get speed towards the start when they're not fully upgraded. Indexing is genuinely the strat."
Treadmill ladder
The table above lists the treadmills in order with the per-step values and prices we saw. The pattern: each treadmill costs roughly what a good pen earns in 10–30 minutes at that stage, and the jump to the next tier usually pays for itself within a session. Late-game prices go absurd. The Demonic treadmill is $50 trillion, and the Angelic and Astral are 1 and 2.5 quadrillion. The developers have since cut treadmill prices for newer accounts. One creator noticed the top treadmill at half its old price in October.
Trails
Trails multiply your treadmill gain and are bought with in-game cash: $100 and $5K starters, a 3x purple trail at $3.5M, the Orange at $30M, the 3.5x Golden at $39M, the 5x Galaxy Cosmic at $20B, 7x trails at $500B and the Moon Bloom at the top. Several players in our sources forgot trails existed for their first half hour. Buy one as soon as you can afford it; at the start it's the best speed-per-dollar purchase.
Pen upgrades
Your pen starts with a handful of slots. Upgrading it adds more slots. It doesn't boost income by itself, a fact one player learned mid-race. More slots only help when you have pets worth placing. Prices climb from a million to $50B and beyond. A common mistake is accidentally buying a pen upgrade while saving for a treadmill, so watch which button you press.
Selling
Pets you don't need can be sold for cash at the sell spot, one at a time or with Sell All. Sell values are small next to income, so selling is about clearing inventory, not making money. Before you sell, make sure each pet is in your index and think about whether three copies could go into the Fuse Machine.
Robux: what's worth it
The table above lists the main Robux purchases. Our take, based on watching creators spend 14,000, 24,000, 42,000 and 100,000+ Robux:
- 2x Money pass. The best first buy. It doubles every pet forever. Seen as low as 190 Robux in a regional sale.
- 2x Growth pass. Halves egg timers. Great if you play daily.
- Speed multipliers. Expensive (roughly 3,000–4,000 Robux for the whole ladder; the last tier alone is about 1,238), but permanent and they compound with every treadmill upgrade. One creator called the max speed pass "game-breaking".
- "1 billion speed" packs (2,300–3,000 Robux). Skip these. One creator spent 14,000 Robux reaching 7B speed, still got caught at the Titan Temple, then realised the treadmill was giving them a billion speed for free every few minutes.
- Grow All (160–200). Good with a full pen of big eggs, bad for one egg.
- Egg packs (2,800–3,400 for 50). Pure gambling. Fifty brainrot eggs produced one Strawberry Elephant, a Beluga and a lot of $100/s filler.
The number one player spent about 30,000 Robux total. A creator who'd spent over 100,000 was nowhere near her. Robux speeds things up; it doesn't replace knowing what to steal.
Free-to-play benchmarks
To show what's possible without spending, here's one free-to-play run from a fresh account: $18K/s after about 15 minutes, $300K/s at 20 minutes, a first eternal egg stolen within 30 minutes, $15M/s after a few hours and $2B/s with a silver Oni Tiger and a Cosmic Dragon. The full route is in the free-to-play guide.