Probably Stolen Difficulty Guide: All 4 Modes Compared

Quick answer

Probably Stolen has four difficulty options. Price Gouge is the gentlest, Mark Up is the normal game, and Thin Margins and Red Ink remove rent grace, raise rent faster and make the deed far more expensive. Start on Mark Up unless you only want to relax.

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The four modes compared

	Price Gouge	Mark Up	Thin Margins	Red Ink
Label	Cozy	Normal	Hard	Challenge
Retail markup	+20%	+15%	None	None
Rent rise per week	2%	5%	10%	10%
Rent grace	Yes	Yes	No	No
Deed at the start	12,000	12,000	24,000	36,000
Deed cap	15,000	17,000	34,000	56,000
Network upgrade prices	×1	×1	×1.5	×2
Mortgage term	8 weeks	12 weeks	16 weeks	16 weeks

Thin Margins and Red Ink also list higher nightly service fees, and Red Ink reduces Wild's favor on top of doubling upgrade costs.

Which should you choose?

Price Gouge suits you if you want to learn the shop with little pressure. Rent barely moves, and the deed rises slowly.

Mark Up is the best first run for most players. You still feel the rent, but one grace gives you room to recover from a bad week.

Thin Margins is for your second or third run. Doubling the deed is the obvious change, but losing grace matters more: refusing your first rent ends the run.

Red Ink needs a plan from Day 1. You have to clear 36,000 credits or more while rent climbs 10% a week.

Compare your own numbers

Switch difficulty in the Rent & Buyout Calculator to see how far your income would go on each mode.

Difficulty and achievements

From Nothing, the Hard Way asks for a Rock Bottom win on hard mode. The Achievement Tracker lists the rest.

Aug Menace and Sentinel Collapse are separate perks, not difficulty modes, and they add their own ways to lose. The developers specifically warn against using Sentinel Collapse on your first run.