BitLife Business Update Guide: How to Start or Buy a Business (Plus Cheats & Tips)
Quick Answer
- Starting a business in BitLife is cheaper and fully customizable, but takes longer to turn a profit.
- Buying an existing business costs more upfront but comes with a ready-made customer base.
- Begin every life with a character who has 90+ stats for the easiest path to success.
- Use the job shuffle trick (age up or restart the app) to refresh available careers.
01What Is BitLife?
BitLife is a text-based life simulator from Candywriter LLC that lets you live out an entire digital life from birth to death, right from your phone. Every choice — school, career, relationships, even a plunge into crime — branches your story in a new direction, and no two lives ever play out the same way.
As you age up, you'll navigate job hunting, family building, and money management, all while shaping your character's look, name, and personality. One of the deepest systems in the game is business ownership, added in the Business Update, which lets you build real wealth instead of relying on a salary alone.
02Getting Started
When you start a new life, you can play as a random character or build a custom one and set your gender, country, and starting city. Every character is born with random stats — happiness, health, smarts, and looks — and those numbers matter more than almost anything else you'll do in the game.
03Progressing Through Life
Tap the age button to move your character forward a year, triggering new random events along the way. You'll move from infancy through primary school, secondary school, and university, with the option to continue into law school, medical school, or another specialty afterward.
Along the way you can start relationships, raise kids, travel, buy cars and property, and keep pets. With more than 140 careers in the game, it pays to decide early what kind of life you're chasing — money, fame, family, or all three.
04Start vs. Buy a Business
The Business Update gave players a second way to build wealth beyond a regular paycheck: open a brand-new business or buy one that's already running. Neither option is strictly better — it comes down to how much risk you're willing to take on.
Start Fresh
- Full creative control — choose exactly what kind of business you open.
- Lower starting cost than buying an established business.
- Slower payoff — you're building a customer base from zero.
Buy Existing
- Instant customer base and a proven track record.
- Lower risk since the business is already stable.
- Higher upfront cost and less control over how it's already being run.
If your bank balance is tight, starting from scratch keeps costs down while you learn the ropes. If you've got the capital and want to skip the slow early years, buying an established business is the faster route to steady income.
05Top Tips & Cheats
Protect your statsUse the Activities tab every year to maintain happiness, smarts, looks, and health — there's no limit to how many you can do.
Shuffle stale job listingsIf none of the open jobs interest you, age up or restart the app — the available careers refresh each time.
Use the "Mind and Body" diet tabIt's the fastest way to recover health and happiness between major life decisions.
Check job prerequisitesSome careers — like brain surgeon or certain entertainment roles — require specific schooling or stats before they'll appear.
Rename your savesLabel each life by what happened in it so you can find your favorites later.
Restore purchases on a new deviceUse the "Restore Purchase" button in Settings to carry your BitLife purchases over.
06Playing a Villain Playthrough
BitLife doesn't force you to stay on the straight and narrow. If you'd rather explore the game's darker storylines — crime, gang life, or a fully villainous character arc — the mechanics fully support it, and a lot of players find it leads to the game's most unpredictable random events.
A few things worth knowing before you go down this road:
- Criminal choices raise your odds of jail time or an early death, so build a safety net first — bail money, a lawyer relationship, and some martial arts training go a long way.
- Crime and violence decisions move your stats differently than law-abiding ones, so keep an eye on happiness and relationships as you play.
- If you join a mafia or gang storyline, extra martial arts classes give you more options when conflicts come up.
07Video Walkthrough
Prefer to watch it play out? This video walks through the Business Update in action.
08Frequently Asked Questions
Is it better to start a business or buy one in BitLife?
Starting from scratch costs less and lets you pick the exact business type, but takes longer to turn a profit. Buying an existing business costs more upfront but comes with an established customer base, so it's the lower-risk option if you can afford it.
What stats do I need before starting a business in BitLife?
There's no strict stat requirement to open a business, but higher smarts and happiness make it easier to manage once it's running and to make good calls on the decisions it throws at you.
Can my business fail in BitLife?
Yes. Mismanagement, poor decisions, or bad random events can cause a business to lose money or shut down, so check in on it regularly.
How many businesses can I own at once?
You can own more than one at a time, but running several simultaneously means more decisions to stay on top of each year.
Conclusion
Whether you're weighing a new business against buying an established one, or just trying to keep your stats high enough to land the career you want, the fundamentals stay the same: protect your stats, choose a career path on purpose, and don't be afraid to restart a job search or a life if the start isn't working out. Good luck out there.