Azeroth's traders restock once a month. The Trading Post is World of Warcraft's rotating cosmetic market: a stall where mounts, pets, transmog appearances and toys are bought with Trader's Tender, a shared currency you earn in game and cannot buy outright. Stock rotates on the first of the month, the activity list resets with it, and a free collectible waits at the end of a progress bar for anyone who fills it.
The earning rhythm barely changes: 500 Tender lands in a chest every month, the Traveler's Log pays up to 500 more, and whatever you do not spend simply banks. Four cities carry a branch. One item per month can be frozen, the yearly achievement wants twelve filled bars, and almost everything that rotates out eventually comes back.
Two rival trading families run the same business. Tawney and Wilder (T&W) serve the Alliance side of the street, the Zen'shiri Trading Post serves the Horde, and each month both restock a themed selection of transmog appearances, pets, mounts and toys. Everything on the shelves is cosmetic. Nothing there raises a character's power, which is why the currency is earned in game instead of sold. The feature arrived in Dragonflight with Patch 10.0.5 and has run every month since.
Three gates stand in front of it: an active subscription or game time, a character at level 10 or above, and the one-time Tour the Trading Post intro quest, which counts for the whole account once any character has finished it. Miss that last one and the stall simply is not there for you — the usual explanation when a player reports the Trading Post missing from their own capital. It also does not exist in WoW Classic.
Tender itself is shared. Its scope is the region rather than the character. Loot the Collector's Cache once and every other character you own in that Battle.net region sees the chest already claimed, a second WoW account included, and the 1,000 a month ceiling is counted the same way. Earn it on your main, spend it on a fresh alt; a second region has its own ceiling to earn against.
The catalog reaches past the current expansion. Blizzard stocks the Post with appearances from across Azeroth "and beyond", including cosmetics from expired promotions and items that otherwise cost real money on the in-game store. An ethereal transmogrifier sets up near the shops as well. That one takes gold, not Tender, and applies the appearance you just bought on the spot.
Four cities host a stall each. Stormwind and Orgrimmar carry the original faction branches, while Dornogal and Silvermoon City are neutral ground where representatives of both brands trade side by side. All four carry the same monthly rotation, and the Collector's Cache that pays your monthly Tender sits at each one, so for ordinary shopping pick whichever city you pass through most.
Event vendors are the exception. When the Post runs an Outlet or an anniversary sale, those extra vendors are placed in named cities, not at every branch. February 2026 put them in Dornogal alone; September 2026 used Dornogal and Silvermoon City. So a sale you read about may not be standing in your own capital, and the month's own announcement is what tells you where to ride.
| City | Stall | Waypoint |
|---|---|---|
| Stormwind City | T&W (Tawney and Wilder) | /way Stormwind City 51.1 71.9 |
| Orgrimmar | Zen'shiri Trading Post | /way Orgrimmar 48.4 75.7 |
| Dornogal, Isle of Dorn | Both brands, neutral | /way Dornogal 44.7 56.0 |
| Silvermoon City | Both brands, neutral | /way #2393 49.0 78.2 |
T&W set up just outside the Mage Quarter, on the open ground where the quarter meets the canal ring. It is hard to miss. From the Trade District the stall lies due west along the canal, level with it and not below it, and the banners show before the stall does. The Collector's Cache stands with them, so the monthly pickup and the shopping happen in a single stop. Drift south and you have gone past it into the Mage Quarter proper.
The Zen'shiri stall stands in the Valley of Strength, on the open ground just south of Grommash Hold. Ride in through the front gates and it sits ahead of you, before the road climbs toward the Drag. The hold is the landmark. Under forty yards separate the two, so it should be filling the view north of the counter, and if it is nowhere in sight you have left the valley.
Dornogal's outpost is the most convenient branch in the game. It sits just below the flight master on the terrace above The Forgegrounds: you land, drop down one level and you are at the counter. Faction does not matter here. Blizzard's own blog posts spell the district "Foregrounds", but the in-game map and the client's zone data both read The Forgegrounds.
The renewed Silvermoon City carries a neutral branch, and it sits on the city's upper level rather than at street height. Standing on the plaza at the waypoint and seeing nothing means you are one floor short; take the nearest ramp up and the stall is there, with both trading families sharing the space as they do in Dornogal.
Two sources run every month. A handful of one-time grants sit on top of them. The monthly pair is what the whole system is balanced around: 500 Tender arrives on its own, and the Traveler's Log is worth 500 more if you finish the bar. That is a standing ceiling of 1,000 per month, counted per Battle.net region, with promotions occasionally adding a little extra during events.
| Source | Tender | Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| Collector's Cache | 500 | Every month |
| Traveler's Log | Up to 500 | Every month |
| Midnight, Base Edition | 500 | Once per account |
| Midnight, Heroic Edition | 1,000 | Once per account |
| Midnight, Epic Edition | 2,000 | Once per account |
| Trading Post Enthusiast | 500 | Once per account |
| Seasonal promotions | Varies | Occasional |
The Cache sits at every branch. It pays accounts in good standing. Lapsed subscription at the turn of the month costs you nothing: the payout lands on the first day you have game time again, at the same amount everyone else received. The edition grants in the table are one-time, and this is where the rule catches people out: an upgrade pays a flat 500 on every path. Base to Heroic, Heroic to Epic, Base straight to Epic, all three hand over the same 500. Buying up from Base to Epic is worth 500, not the 1,500 gap between the two grants.
Unspent Tender never expires. The client sets no quantity cap and no weekly earning limit on it, so it accumulates month over month with no seasonal wipe, and veterans routinely sit on four figures before a big rotation. If a balance does look wrong, the Battle.net transaction history keeps your Tender lines under the Virtual Wallet, and a forgotten purchase is usually what turns up.
Prices track the item class, not its rarity, and the spread is wide enough to plan around. September 2026's rotation is a fair sample: single armour pieces ran 30 to 50 Tender, tabards and two-piece packs sat at 100, and the entire weapon block was flat at 150. The expensive lines are ensembles and mounts. Across that rotation and the 22 past bonus rewards returned to sale alongside it, ensembles ran 575 to 850 and mounts 325 to 900, with pets between 250 and 350. Set that against 1,000 a month and the arithmetic is blunt — one good mount is most of a month's income, while the same Tender spent on single pieces fills a lot of slots.
The mechanics on this page do not change; the stock does, every month. The current rotation, its prices, the bonus reward and any special event running right now live in the monthly guide.
Trading Post September 2026: All Items and Prices
The log lives in the Adventure Guide. Shift-J opens it, and the tab unlocks after the one-time Tour the Trading Post intro quest. A progress bar sits at the top of the window and fills as you complete activities; at set thresholds along the way, Tender is deposited into your Collector's Cache for pickup, not paid straight into the wallet. That last detail catches people out constantly — forgetting to click the chest is how players end up "missing" Tender they already earned.
Each month draws a themed, rotating set from the log's catalogue, which has run to 945 distinct activities across every month since launch. Holiday and event tasks make up the largest share, followed by questing, expansion-specific dungeon runs, world content, PvP, professions, pet battles and collection goals. The practical consequence is simple. The log almost always lists more objectives than the bar needs, so you pick the ones that overlap what you were going to play anyway and ignore the rest.
During the last week of every month, selected activities join a Final Surge that accelerates how fast the bar fills. Five of them exist. They cover quests, world quests and dungeon runs in Dragonflight, The War Within and Midnight. They exist for players who fell behind, and they are the reason a bar left unfinished going into the final week is still comfortably closable.
Filling the bar pays the log's remaining Tender and hands over the month's bonus reward, a collectible that costs no Tender at all. A mount is not the default. Of the 22 past bonus rewards put back on sale in September 2026, 10 were transmog: four full ensembles, three arsenals and three single-slot pieces. Mounts accounted for 7, pets for 4, and a single toy made up the rest. Progress does not survive the rotation, so an unfilled bar in the last hours of a month is Tender and a free collectible left on the table, and neither comes back next month.
The long game is Trading Post Enthusiast. Earn the monthly special reward twelve times. It pays 500 Tender and Ensemble: Burden of Unrelenting Justice, a full armour set. The twelve fills need not be consecutive months — which makes this the one Trading Post goal a casual player finishes by simply not skipping too many bars.
Every month you may freeze exactly one item from the current stock. You get one slot. A frozen item stays available month over month until you buy it or replace it with something else. That is the whole rule set — and it is the pressure valve for the classic Trading Post problem, an expensive mount competing with everything else you wanted that month.
Two details are easy to miss. Buying the frozen item does not clear the slot — it stays occupied until you freeze something else, so spending on it does not hand the slot straight back. And a frozen item whose appearance is already in your collection cannot be bought: the purchase fails with a server error instead of a clear message, and the usual cause is simply that you own it already.
A purchase you regret has a two-hour window. Go back to a trader, use the Refund button on the item, and the Tender lands back in your balance. Miss it and the sale is final. Past two hours, or where no Refund option appears at all, Customer Support does not reverse it either. One exception is worth knowing before you commit a freeze slot: an item carried over from a previous month cannot be refunded even inside the window, so a frozen purchase is a decision you make once.
It does not. Unspent Tender accumulates month after month without limit, with no decay, no seasonal wipe and no penalty for saving up for an expensive mount months in advance.
Not directly. Tender has no shop price. The only cash-adjacent route is an expansion edition, which grants a one-time amount at purchase, and the rest is earned in game through the Cache and the Traveler's Log.
Three gates control it, not one. Almost always the missing one is the account-wide Tour the Trading Post intro quest, which any character can finish on behalf of the whole account. The other two are active game time and level 10. Clear all three and the whole feature appears at once: the stall in your capital, the traders and their catalog, and the Traveler's Log tab in the Adventure Guide.
Yes, briefly. Two hours, at a Trading Post vendor, using the Refund button on the item. After that the sale is final and Customer Support will not undo it. One purchase can never be refunded, and that is an item you carried over on a freeze from a previous month, which is worth remembering before you spend the slot.
It is account-wide within a region. Earn it on your main, open the Collector's Cache and spend it on any character; the balance is shared across every WoW account you own in that region, and the monthly ceiling is counted per Battle.net region too.
In the Collector's Cache. Tender earned from log thresholds is deposited into the chest at your nearest branch for pickup instead of landing straight in your wallet, so it sits there until you click it.
Most likely, eventually. Blizzard has promised rotation "back into the inventory in future months", and the Outlet events of 2025 and 2026 have brought past stock back to the shelves, most recently over 300 items in September 2026. No per-item schedule exists, so a rerun is a reasonable hope and never a plan.
