eBay Fees UK: How Much eBay Takes From Private and Business Sellers

How much eBay takes depends on one question: are you a private seller or a business seller? If you are a UK private seller, eBay takes nothing on a normal sale. eBay's own fee page says selling is free for UK-based private sellers, excluding vehicles, with no final value fee and no regulatory operating fee, and 300 free listings a month. The cost has moved to the buyer, who pays a Buyer Protection fee that eBay builds into the price they see. Checked October 2026; every official page is linked in the Sources.

If you are a business seller, eBay takes a final value fee on the total sale amount including postage. Most general categories sit between 9.9% and 12.9%, Clothes, Shoes & Accessories is 11.9%, and on top of that there is a per-order fee of 30p on orders up to £10 or 40p on orders over £10, plus a 0.35% regulatory operating fee. Those business figures exclude VAT. Below: both sides in detail, what makes you a business in eBay's and HMRC's eyes, the optional fees, payout timing, two worked £45 examples, and how to pay less.

Private sellers: free to sell, with a fee on the buyer

eBay's fee page, checked October 2026, says UK private sellers pay no final value fee and no regulatory operating fee when items sell, and get 300 free listings a month (400 with a £19.99 a month eBay Shop). Extra listings are 35p each, but relists and automatic renewals are not charged again, so few private sellers ever pay it.

The things a private seller can still be charged for are all optional or unusual:

• International fee: 3% of the total sale (item, postage and taxes) if the buyer's delivery address is outside the UK.
• Listing upgrades. Reserve price 4% of the reserve (minimum £50 reserve, capped at £150, charged whether or not it sells). Subtitle £2. Gallery Plus £2.50, free in Clothes, Shoes & Accessories, Home, Furniture & DIY and Pet Supplies. Second category 35p.
• Promoted Listings. Covered below.
• Dispute fee: £16.80 per dispute where you are found responsible for a chargeback.
• Currency conversion: 2.5% if a payout is converted.

Private seller fees on eBay's page include VAT at 20%, so what you see is what you pay.

The Buyer Protection fee on private listings

This is where the money went. On every purchase from a UK private seller (except Cars, Motorcycles & Vehicles, Classified Ads and Property) the buyer pays a Buyer Protection fee to eBay. eBay's help pages give the formula, checked October 2026:

• A flat fee of £0.10 per item, charged once per listing even if the buyer takes several of the same item in one order.
• 7% of the item price up to £20.
• 4% of any portion of the price from £20 to £300.
• 2% of any portion from £300 to £4,000.
• Nothing on any portion above £4,000.

Three things matter for sellers. The fee is included in the price the buyer sees while browsing, bidding and at checkout. It is not optional. And it is refunded in full if the order is cancelled, returned or does not arrive, so it never comes out of your pocket.

The catch is offers and auctions. The amount a buyer offers or bids already contains the fee, and eBay shows you the price without it. eBay's own example: a buyer offers £250, which includes a £10.29 fee, so you see £239.71. Business listings are different: eBay says they include Buyer Protection at no additional cost to the buyer.

Business sellers: final value fee plus a per-order fee

Business sellers pay the traditional eBay model. eBay's business fee page, checked October 2026, charges three things on each sale:

• Final value fee: a percentage of the total sale amount, which eBay defines as item price plus postage plus any taxes. There is no single rate; most general categories are between 9.9% and 12.9%. Books, Music, Films and Video Games are 9.9%; Collectables, Toys & Games and Sporting Goods 10.9%; Clothes, Shoes & Accessories 11.9%, with Trainers at 7% if the item price is £100 or more; Everything Else 12.9%. Some categories are tiered: Jewellery & Watches is 14.9% up to £1,000 and 4% above; Mobile & Smart Phones 6.9% up to £1,000 and 3% above; Video Game Consoles 6.9% up to £400 and 2% above.
• Per-order fee: 30p on orders of £10 or less, 40p on orders over £10.
• Regulatory operating fee: 0.35% of the total sale amount.

eBay's business fee page quotes every figure excluding VAT. If your business is not VAT registered, budget for VAT at 20% on top of the fees; if it is, check how eBay invoices you and account for it accordingly.

Listing is not free for a business without a Shop: 30p per listing. A Basic Shop is £27 a month with 250 free fixed price listings and 100 free auctions, Featured is £77 with 1,500, and Anchor is £437 with unlimited fixed price listings. The business international fee is 1.05% for the Eurozone and Northern Europe, 1.8% for the US and Canada and 2% elsewhere, and the dispute fee is £14.

What makes you a business seller

eBay's business seller policy has no volume threshold. You must register as a business if you sell items you bought to resell, make items in order to sell them, or buy items for your business. Business sellers cannot present themselves as private individuals, and eBay can remove listings or restrict accounts that do not comply.

HMRC's view lines up: if you buy or make goods to sell at a profit you are likely to be trading, while selling personal items from your home is unlikely to be taxed. Separately, platforms including eBay report sellers to HMRC once they pass 30 sales or around £1,700 (2,000 euros) in a calendar year. Being reported is not a tax bill, you have a £1,000 trading allowance first, and our side hustle tax calculator works out where you stand.

The honest position is that if you buy stock to flip, you are a business seller on eBay and to HMRC, even at small volumes. Plenty of people run a private account anyway; the risk is eBay requiring a switch, with business fees from that point. Our sole trader vs limited company post covers setting up properly, and the step-by-step starter guide covers the first month.

Optional fees: promoted listings, upgrades, international

Promoted Listings General quietly eats margin. You pick an ad rate between 2% and 100% of the total sale amount (including postage), and eBay charges it only when the item sells within 30 days of a click on your ad. No sale, no charge. Members who use it keep the rate in the low single digits and only on items not selling organically; a 10% ad rate on a business sale roughly doubles your eBay fee. The Priority strategy charges per click whether or not the item sells, which we would leave to large sellers.

Listing upgrades are listed above and rarely worth it for ordinary stock. The reserve fee is the trap: 4% of the reserve, charged even if the item does not sell.

International. A buyer outside the UK adds the international fee (3% for private sellers, 1.05% to 2% for businesses) and, if your payout is converted, 2.5% currency conversion. Most UK resellers are better off selling to UK buyers only until the margins justify it.

Postage: Simple Delivery for private sellers

eBay says Simple Delivery is the only delivery method for private sellers listing eligible items on eBay.co.uk, meaning items priced £750 or less, with some electronics over £300 excluded. You choose "Buyer pays", where the buyer pays for the label at checkout, or "Seller pays", where you offer free postage and the label cost is deducted from your account. eBay generates a prepaid label and QR code and you drop the parcel off. There is no extra cost for the programme and no transaction fee on the delivery cost. Unused labels are refunded: automatically if the buyer paid, on request within 14 days if you did.

Business sellers set their own postage and pay the final value fee percentage on it, because the fee is calculated on the total sale amount; free postage just moves the cost into the item price.

Managed payments and payout timing

eBay handles all payments itself and deducts fees before paying you. The payout timings, from eBay's getting-paid page, checked October 2026:

• Business sellers: funds typically available for payout 24 hours after the buyer's payment is confirmed. Payouts are daily by default and can take up to 4 business days to clear in your bank.
• Private sellers: funds typically become available in your eBay balance 2 days after delivery for tracked items, or 14 calendar days from the order date for untracked items. Private sellers with at least 10 completed sales totalling £150 or more in the last 5 years, and no more than 2 open requests, cases or defects in the last 12 months, get funds typically within 24 hours of payment. Withdrawals then take 0 to 4 business days to reach your bank.

New private sellers should plan for cash being tied up for a few days after each delivery, which is why many members keep Vinted, where the balance can be spent straight away, as their fast-turnover platform.

eBay fee types at a glance

UK figures from eBay's help pages, checked October 2026. Business fees exclude VAT.

Worked example: a £45 sale, private and business

Say you are selling a pair of trainers that you want £45 for, buyer pays postage.

Private seller. You list at £45. eBay adds the Buyer Protection fee for the buyer: 10p, plus 7% of the first £20 (£1.40), plus 4% of the remaining £25 (£1.00), so £2.50. The buyer sees £47.50 plus the label they pay at checkout. You post with the prepaid label, and two days after delivery £45.00 is in your eBay balance. Your eBay fees: £0.00. If the trainers cost you £20, your profit before tax is £25.

Business seller, Clothes, Shoes & Accessories. You list at £45 with buyer-paid postage of £3.50, our illustrative figure. The final value fee is 11.9% of the total sale amount including that postage: 11.9% of £48.50 is £5.77. Add the 40p per-order fee and the 0.35% regulatory operating fee on £48.50 (£0.17): £6.34 before VAT, or about £7.61 with VAT at 20% if you are not registered, our calculation from eBay's rates. You collected £48.50, paid £3.50 to post it and keep roughly £37.39. On the same £20 trainers your profit is about £17.39 instead of £25. The buyer paid no protection fee.

Promote that listing at a 5% ad rate and, if the sale follows an ad click, add another £2.43 plus VAT. That is how a "cheap" ad rate pushes an 11.9% fee towards 20% of the sale. The RP app tracks fees against sale price per item so you can see the real margin.

How to reduce eBay fees

• Pick the right category. Business rates range from 6.9% to 14.9%. Use the correct category; miscategorising to get a lower rate is not allowed, and eBay applies the higher rate if you list in two.
• Watch the tiers. Trainers at £100 or more drop to 7%; phones, computers and consoles have low rates above thresholds, so high-value electronics are cheaper to sell than the headline rates suggest.
• Keep ad rates low and targeted. Promote slow movers only, at the lowest rate that gets impressions, and switch it off once an item has momentum.
• Skip upgrades. Good photos and a keyword-rich title beat a subtitle. Never set a reserve on ordinary stock.
• Get a Shop when the maths says so. A business listing more than about 90 items a month pays less with a £27 Basic Shop than at 30p a listing. Below that, it does not.
• Stay above Standard. A Below Standard rating adds 6 percentage points to every sale for a month. Post on time, describe honestly, answer messages.
• Sell the right things on the right platform. Clothing and trainers under £100 usually do better on Vinted, where there is no seller fee. Electronics and collectables usually do better on eBay. Our best things to resell post goes through this by category.

eBay versus Vinted on fees

For a private seller the two now look alike: no seller fee, a buyer fee, a prepaid label. We cover Vinted's side in Vinted fees UK. Vinted's buyer fee is a percentage plus a fixed amount shown at checkout; eBay's is a published banded formula built into the displayed price. Vinted postage is always buyer-paid and the balance can be spent immediately; eBay lets you choose who pays postage and holds private sellers' funds until a couple of days after delivery.

For a business seller the gap is wide. Vinted Pro is free to the seller; eBay charges a percentage of every sale plus a per-order fee plus VAT. For business clothing sellers Vinted Pro is materially cheaper. For electronics, collectables and higher-value items, eBay's buyer base, sold-price history and tiered rates often justify the fee. Many members use both, with the eBay bot and Vinted bot to source underpriced stock on each; the free live monitor shows the Vinted feed working, and the three-way comparison goes deeper.

Fees are a cost of doing business and deductible against profit for tax, along with postage, packaging and tools, including a Resellers Paradise membership at £25 a month, everything included, cancel any time. The guide to reselling in the UK covers margins and the side hustle UK guide covers tax.

Sources

• eBay, Fees for private sellers: free selling for UK private sellers excluding vehicles, 300 free listings, 35p extra listings, £19.99 Shop, 3% international fee, upgrade fees, £16.80 dispute fee, 2.5% currency conversion. Checked October 2026.
• eBay, Buyer Protection fee and Buyer Protection: information for sellers: £0.10 + 7% to £20, 4% £20 to £300, 2% £300 to £4,000; included in displayed price; £250 offer example. Checked October 2026.
• eBay, Fees for business sellers: final value fee rates by category, 30p/40p per-order fee, 0.35% regulatory operating fee, Shop tiers, 1.05%/1.8%/2% international fee, £14 dispute fee, fees exclusive of VAT. Checked October 2026.
• eBay, General campaign strategy and Promoted Listings overview: 2% to 100% ad rate, charged only on sale within 30 days of a click; Priority is per click.
• eBay, Simple Delivery: only method for private sellers on eligible items £750 or less, buyer pays or seller pays, no transaction fee on label cost.
• eBay, Getting paid for items you've sold: payout timings for business and private sellers.
• eBay, Business seller policy: who must register as a business.
• HMRC, Selling goods or services on a digital platform: trading test, reporting above 30 sales or 2,000 euros (about £1,700).
• Vinted Help Centre, Is using Vinted free? and Vinted fee. Checked October 2026.
• Worked-example totals are our calculations from the published rates above; the £3.50 postage and the VAT-inclusive figures are illustrative.