Biosurfactants are molecules that exhibit pronounced surface and emulsifying activities, produced by a variety of microorganisms. A host of interesting features of biosurfactants, such as higher biodegradability, lower toxicity, and effectiveness at extremes of temperature, pH and salinity; have led to a wide range of potential applications in the fields of oil recovery, environmental bioremediation, food processing and medicine. In spite of the immense potential of biosurfactants, their use still remains limited, mainly due to their high production and extraction costs, low yields in production processes and lack of information on their toxicity towards human systems. However, the use of cheaper substrates and optimal growth and production conditions coupled with novel and efficient multistep downstream processing methods and the use of recombinant and mutant hyper producing microbial strains can make biosurfactant production economically feasible. Often, the amount and type of a raw material can contribute considerably to the production cost; it is estimated that raw materials account for 10 to 30% of the total production costs in most biotechnological processes. Thus, to reduce this cost it is desirable to use low-cost raw materials. One possibility explored extensively is the use of cheap and agro-based raw materials as substrates for biosurfactant production. A variety of cheap raw materials, including plant-derived oils, oil wastes, starchy substances, cheese whey and distillery wastes have been reported to support biosurfactant production. Future biosurfactant research should, therefore, be more focused on the economics of biosurfactant production processes, particularly through the use of alternative low-cost fermentative media. This review looks at the future perspectives of large-scale profitable production of biosurfactants.