Tick what you would take into a single life. Prices are the Season 1 list of 9 September 2026 【B】; the in-game vendor is the final word.
Shareable link: add ?cash=50000&preset=scout to the address to open this page on a specific kit and balance.
What this planner actually does
The planner is a plain front-end calculator. It adds up the price of whatever you tick, divides your cash by that total, and reports how many lives that bankroll covers at that spend level, what is left over, and which item to drop first if the answer is discouraging.
It is deliberately not a price-entry form. Every figure comes from the reference table lower down this page, so two people comparing kits are comparing the same numbers rather than their own inputs. If the vendor in game shows something different, that is useful information too — the price list here is what has gone out of date, and the patch notes page is where a change gets recorded.
Nothing the planner does leaves your browser. There is no account, no upload, no network request, and no storage of what you typed.
Why it opens with an answer
Most calculators make you fill a form before they tell you anything, and most visitors never do. This one prices a mid kit the moment the page loads, and the presets exist so the first useful interaction is a comparison rather than an entry:
| Preset | What it holds | Cost per life | Lives funded by $10,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free start | Bushmaster M17S (free) | $0 | Unlimited 【C】 |
| Scout | Free rifle plus binoculars (~$75) | About $75 | About 133 【C】 |
| Mid kit | T-21 rifle ($600) plus binoculars (~$75) | About $675 | About 14 【C】 |
| Full kit | T-21, binoculars, Large Hammer, 6–10x MRAD scope, Little Bird | About $93,075 | 0 — no starting bankroll funds it 【C】 |
The preset totals are this site’s arithmetic on single-source item prices 【B】, which is why they carry a 【C】 grade. Every individual price is graded in the tick list above.
The arithmetic, written out
The planner applies three operations and nothing else:
- Per-life cost = the sum of every ticked item’s price.
- Lives funded = floor( your cash ÷ per-life cost ).
- Left over = your cash − ( lives funded × per-life cost ).
Then it does one more thing that a plain calculator would not: it sorts the ticked items by price and reports the effect of removing the most expensive one. That produces the downgrade line, which is usually the most actionable sentence in the result — “drop this item and your cash funds this many lives instead”.
The fallback kit is fixed and stated: the T-21 rifle at $600 plus binoculars at about $75, roughly $675 per life 【C】. If your selected kit cannot be funded at all, the planner points at that kit rather than leaving you with a refusal.
How to read the output
A “life” in WARDOGS is one deployment. Cash is kept between matches, but the gear you buy for a life is lost when you die 【A】, so the per-life figure is the number that actually drains the bankroll. A common shape of the mistake: a player with the $10,000 starting balance 【A】 ticks the Little Bird at $50,000 【B】 and discovers the tool refuses. That is not a bug; it is the whole point of the arithmetic.
Two further figures change what “affordable” means, and neither is a vendor price:
- Survival refund. Reaching the end of a match refunds about 90 percent of the carried gear value 【B】, so a kit you keep alive is far cheaper in practice than the per-life sum suggests. The planner notes this line in every result rather than pretending the sum is the whole truth.
- Population-scaled income. Settlement scales with server population — a roughly 10-player server pays almost nothing, 45 pays about 80 percent, and 60 or more pays the full rate 【B】. A kit that looks affordable on paper is not affordable if you are earning on an empty server. The money per hour page prints the hourly bands to compare against.
What the tool does not do
- It does not rank weapons. No damage, recoil or handling figure is in the traced source list, so any ranking would be an opinion with a number attached. The weapons page explains the refusal.
- It does not check slot or eligibility rules. The Artillery Tank’s career-90 gate 【B】 is a separate wall; the planner will happily add the price of something the vendor would refuse to sell you.
- It does not include the level-9 store discount 【B】, which is applied in game and not published as a percentage this site could verify 【Unconfirmed】.
- It cannot see live prices. The Season 1 list is single-source 【B】 and moves between patches.
Common input mistakes
- Leaving the cash box empty returns a prompt rather than a guess; the planner never invents a balance.
- Ticking nothing returns an empty state with a next step, not a blank panel.
- Assuming a vehicle is an asset. It is per-life gear 【A】. A $35,000 vehicle costs $35,000 every life you bring it to.
- Forgetting the discount window. Gear is discounted below level 9 【B】 and that window closes permanently; the starter loadout page is built around it.
Where to go next
For the full itemised list with the traps flagged, open the vehicle and gear prices page. For the fastest legitimate ways to grow the cash you are planning with, the make money fast guide covers the verified payout rates, and the squad play page covers which of those lines need a second person.