Managing Your Inventory in Star Citizen (2026)

Types of storage

Star Citizen inventory has three distinct layers. Understanding which is which prevents a lot of frustration.

• Personal inventory: The items your character is carrying — armor, weapons, consumables, tools. This storage travels with you everywhere. How much you can carry depends on the armor you are wearing and whether you have a backpack equipped.
• Backpack: An additional storage item you wear. Equipping one significantly increases how much you can carry in your personal inventory.
• Local storage: Storage at a specific location — your habitation room, an outpost storage terminal, or a city locker. Large capacity but the items stay at that location until you go back for them. These persist between sessions.
• Ship inventory and cargo hold: Storage attached to your ship. Small personal-size items go in the ship's inventory panel. Large trade goods (measured in SCUSCUStandard Cargo Unit — a 1.25m cube that's the standard cargo measurement in SC. Ship capacity is rated in SCU. 1 SCU = 100 microSCU., the standard cargo unit) go in the physical cargo hold. Items in the hold are lost if the ship is destroyed.

How to transfer items

1. Press I to open the inventory screen.
2. Make sure you are near your ship or storage terminal. Items can only be transferred when both inventories are physically close enough to interact with.
3. Drag items from the left panel (personal inventory) to the right panel (ship or station) or the other direction.
4. For moving a whole stack at once, right-click an item and choose Transfer all, or use the stack transfer button.

What persists between sessions

• Personal inventory: Persists. Items on your character survive logout and server changes.
• Local storage: Persists. Items in habitation rooms and outpost terminals stay there until you retrieve them.
• Ship cargo hold: Persists as long as the ship is not destroyed. If the ship is destroyed, the cargo in the hold is lost.
• Insurance reclaim warning: If you submit an insurance claim on a ship (because it was destroyed), the ship is replaced but everything inside it is gone. Always unload your cargo before claiming.

Organisation tips

• Pick one home base. Keep your main loadout and valuable items at a single station you visit regularly. Spreading gear across many locations gets confusing fast.
• Dedicate ships to roles. Do not mix your combat loadout with cargoCargoBuying goods cheap at one station and selling them high at another. The classic trader loop. Hangar size and SCU capacity are your limits. hauling inventory in the same ship. One ship, one purpose.
• Sell loot regularly. Looted items and trade goods pile up quickly. Visit a Trade & Development Division (TDD) terminal or a commodity kiosk to sell excess.
• Know your cargo capacity. One SCUSCUStandard Cargo Unit — a 1.25m cube that's the standard cargo measurement in SC. Ship capacity is rated in SCU. 1 SCU = 100 microSCU. is roughly two cubic metres. Check your ship's hold size before buying trade goods — overfilling is a common mistake.

Common questions