Ore sorting has the potential to reduce the feed to wet plants and in the case of complex orebodies that can significantly reduce the water, energy and reagent consumptions and resulting operating costs for the project. The application of ore sorters has sparked renewed interest and application in the precious and base metals mining industry in recent years as a result of the continuing development of new sensing technology and very fast information processing that is making ore sorters applicable to a much wider range of ores and larger scale operations. The application of ore sorters involves a range of trade-off decisions that have economic impact upon the benefits of ores sorting to the project under consideration. This paper will present some typical tradeoffs to be considered and their impact in a particular project setting. CITATION: Kendall, W, 2018. How economics drive the application of ore sorting, in Proceedings Complex Orebodies Conference 2018, pp 24-27 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).