Marketplace Fees Explained

01

Why this guide has no percentages in it

Marketplace fee rates change. They change by category, by seller tier, by store subscription, by country, by promotion, and by year. Any specific number published in a guide has a shelf life measured in months, and a stale fee number is worse than no number at all because people build prices on it.

So this guide teaches the structure — the components that make up a deduction, and which ones sellers routinely miss. Get the current rates from the marketplace's own published fee schedule for your category and country, then put them into a calculator. Our eBay fee calculator and Discogs fee calculator both take the rates as inputs for exactly this reason.

02

The anatomy of a marketplace deduction

A single sale can be reduced by six distinct things. They are separate mechanisms with separate rules, which is why "what percentage does this site take" is not really an answerable question.

There are usually two more deductions that are not "fees" but hit the same number: the shipping label if you cover postage, and packaging materials. Both are real per-sale costs, and packaging is the one sellers almost universally omit from their margin math.

03

The detail that costs the most: what the commission is charged on

This is the single most consequential structural difference between platforms, and it gets almost no attention.

If a marketplace charges commission on the buyer's total — item plus shipping — then every dollar of shipping you charge is also taxed by the commission. The seller who charges $12 postage separately pays commission on that $12. The seller offering free shipping has folded the same postage into the item price, and pays commission on it there. Either way it is in the commission base.

The practical consequences:

• Heavy, low-value items are worse than they look. Postage is a large fraction of the total, and you pay commission on the postage.
• Free shipping is a pricing decision, not a generosity decision. It converts better in most categories and it is fully absorbed by you, commission included.
• "I'll just charge shipping separately to avoid the fee" does not work on platforms that include shipping in the base. Check before you restructure your listings around it.

04

How to compare two marketplaces honestly

Comparing headline rates tells you very little. Compare a specific, representative sale instead — same item, same price, same shipping — all the way down to what lands in your bank account.

1. Pick a real item you actually sell Use a median item, not your best one. Note its sale price, your typical shipping charge, and its actual packed weight.
2. Look up the current category rate on each platform Category, not headline. Note whether commission applies to shipping, and whether payment processing is bundled or separate.
3. Add every fixed component Per-order fees, listing fees if any, and the monthly subscription divided by your realistic monthly order count on that channel.
4. Subtract the real costs Label cost at the actual weight, packaging, and the item's cost basis. What remains is the number to compare.

Do that twice and the comparison is usually decisive, and frequently surprising — a platform with a higher commission can win on net if its per-order fee is lower or its buyers pay more for the same goods.

05

Why cheap items lose money

Percentage fees scale with price. Fixed fees do not. That asymmetry is what makes low-value items structurally unattractive, and it is why experienced sellers set a floor price rather than a floor margin.

On a low-priced sale, the per-order fixed fee, the label, and the packaging can consume most of the sale price before the commission is applied at all. Add fifteen minutes of photography and listing time and the item is a net loss measured in labor even when it shows a technical profit.

Two ways out, both legitimate: raise the price floor and simply refuse items below it, or bundle low-value items into lots so one order carries several units. Lots are the standard answer in media and clothing categories for exactly this reason.

06

Building fees into your price

Fees should be an input to your listing price, not a discovery you make when the payout arrives. The order of operations that works:

1. Start from what the item realistically sells for on that channel, based on recent completed sales — not what you would like to get.
2. Subtract the full fee stack for that channel and category, plus the label at real weight and the packaging.
3. Subtract the item's cost basis.
4. If what remains does not clear your minimum profit per item in absolute dollars, the item does not get listed on that channel at that price.

Note that this runs backwards from how most sellers price. Marking up from cost tells you nothing about whether the market will pay it; working back from the market price tells you whether the item is worth owning. Our pricing strategy guide covers this in depth, including what to do when the answer is no.

The same item can carry a different price on each channel, and usually should — different fee structures and different buyer expectations produce different correct prices for identical goods.

07

Checking that you were charged what you expected

Payouts arrive aggregated and already net of fees. That bundling is why fee errors go unnoticed for months: nothing on the deposit line tells you a category was reclassified or an ad fee applied to a sale you did not expect.

Once a month, take a handful of orders and reconcile them individually: gross sale price, minus each deduction, should equal the net for that order. If it does not, find out why before it becomes a pattern. Common culprits are a category assignment that carries a different rate than you assumed, promoted listing fees on sales you thought were organic, and refunds landing in a different period than the original sale.

Recording gross, fees, and net as three separate figures rather than booking the deposit as income is what makes this possible at all — and it is the same record-keeping that makes fees deductible. Our bookkeeping guide covers that structure, and why eBay payouts in particular confuse people goes into the aggregation behavior.