How to use it

1. Get your upkeep. Either describe your base, piece by piece and grade by grade, or switch to Copy from my TC and type in the upkeep your Tool Cupboard shows for 24 hours. Copying from the TC is exact; the estimate is for planning a base you haven't built yet, or checking what an upgrade will cost to keep.
2. Enter what is in your Tool Cupboard now.
3. Read how long you are protected, which resource runs out first, how much to add for the days you will be away, and the most a single TC can hold.

Copy link to this base saves everything in a link you can send to your team.

How upkeep works

A Tool Cupboard protects every building piece in its range from decay, as long as it holds the resources to pay for them. It charges a share of each piece's build cost every 24 hours, taken from the cupboard a little at a time: every piece pays a few minutes ahead, every ten minutes.

The share depends on how many building blocks the base has (foundations, walls, floors, frames, stairs and roofs, twig included), in brackets:

Pieces	Charged per 24 h
First 15	10% of their cost
Next 50 (16–65)	15%
Next 125 (66–190)	20%
Every piece after 190	33.3%

The cupboard doesn't charge the first 15 blocks less than the rest: it blends the brackets into one rate for the whole base, and every piece pays that rate. So upkeep grows faster than the base. A 2×2 house of 28 blocks pays about 12% of its build cost a day; a compound of 300 blocks pays about 23.5%.

Each piece pays in the material of its grade: wood, stone, metal fragments or high quality metal. A stone wall costs 300 stones to build and roughly 30 to 100 stones a day to keep, depending on how big the base is. The game keeps fractions and takes whole units as they add up, so the calculator doesn't round daily amounts.

Doors, hatches, garage doors and window bars pay the same rate on the resources they were crafted from, but they don't count as blocks, so adding doors never pushes the base into a higher bracket. Gears and ladders in a recipe don't count.

High External Walls and Gates have paid a fixed 20% since the August 2026 update, whatever the size of the base. A stone or wooden high wall works out to about 267 a day each, a gate to 600.

Bigger groups pay more

Since the September 2026 update, upkeep also rises with the size of the group. Everyone authorised on the Tool Cupboard or on the base's code locks counts, guest codes included, and so does anyone removed in the last 24 hours. Up to 4 players pay nothing extra. Each of players 5 to 10 adds 2%, and every player after that adds 4%, up to a maximum of +300%. A group of 6 pays 4% more; a group of 12 pays 20% more. Set the number of players in the calculator; hovering the upkeep cost in your TC shows the rate you are paying.

When one resource runs out

The cupboard keeps paying from whatever it has. If it runs out of one resource, only the pieces that need that resource start to decay; a stone base with metal doors loses its doors first when the metal is gone. That is why the calculator shows the limiting resource, and the time each resource lasts on its own.

Filling a Tool Cupboard

A Tool Cupboard has 24 slots for upkeep resources. Wood, stones and metal fragments stack to 1,000 per slot, high quality metal to 100. For a large base, the slots run out before your patience does. Most a full TC can hold works out the mix that gives the longest protection in 24 slots.

Server settings

Servers can change how upkeep works: the length of the upkeep period, the bracket sizes and percentages, building costs, or switch upkeep off. If your TC shows different numbers from the estimate, trust the TC and use Copy from my TC.

Where the numbers come from

Building costs come from the game's own item data (build of 10 October 2026). The bracket model and defaults come from the server code and its 2026 settings. The high wall and group changes come from Facepunch's August and September 2026 update notes. Some 2026 calculators add multipliers for distance from the TC or how full it is; those don't exist in the game.

Keep an eye on it from your phone or Discord

This calculator is for planning. To watch the real thing, put a Storage Monitor on your Tool Cupboard and pair it with Rust+: the app then shows what is inside the cupboard and how long it lasts, without logging in. With the rustplusplus Discord bot, the monitor posts to the storagemonitors channel and the in-game !upkeep command reports the time left on every monitored cupboard in team chat. Pairing smart devices shows how.