eBay Fees Explained: Final Value Fees and Promoted Listings
Guide · 2026-10-17
eBay's fee model is simpler than Amazon's, which makes the mistakes easier to spot and easier to make.
The final value fee
A percentage of the total sale amount, including shipping and handling. Most categories charge 13.25% on the first $7,500 of the sale, then 2.35% on the portion above that. There is also a flat $0.30 per-order fee.
Two details matter more than the headline rate. First, the fee applies to shipping, so "free shipping" listings still pay commission on the postage you absorbed. Second, the per-order fee is charged per transaction, not per item, which rewards combining multiple items into one order.
Store subscriptions
| Store tier | Monthly | Final value fee |
|---|---|---|
| No store | $0 | 13.25% |
| Starter | $7.95 | ~12.7% |
| Basic | $21.95 | ~11.7% |
| Premium | $59.95 | ~10.7% |
The break-even is straightforward: if the fee reduction multiplied by your monthly sales exceeds the subscription, the store pays for itself. At a 1.5 point reduction, you need about $1,460 of monthly sales to justify a Basic Store, and $3,900 for Premium.
Store tiers also include free listings, which matters if you list slow-moving inventory that renews frequently.
Promoted listings
An ad rate charged as a percentage of the sale price, but only when the item sells through the promotion. That makes it a cost-per-sale model rather than a budget model.
The break-even ad rate is your margin percentage. On a $60 item with $22 cost and a 13.25% final value fee, the margin is 45%, so any ad rate below 45% still leaves profit. Above it, the promoted sale loses money even though revenue went up.
What is not charged
There is no monthly fee without a store, no listing fee for most categories up to a monthly allowance, and no separate payment processing fee. That last point is easy to miss when comparing against Etsy, where payment processing is a separate line item.
A worked example
$50 item, $8 shipping, $20 cost, no store, no promotion:
- Revenue: $58.00
- Final value fee (13.25% of $58): $7.69
- Per-order fee: $0.30
- Product cost: $20.00
- Net: $30.02 (51.7%)
Add a 5% promoted listing rate and the ad fee is $2.90, taking net to $27.12.
Where sellers lose money on eBay
- Free shipping on heavy items. The fee applies to the shipping you absorbed, and the postage itself can exceed the margin.
- Ignoring the per-order fee on cheap items. $0.30 on a $5 sale is 6%.
- Promoted listings above margin. Revenue grows while profit shrinks, which looks like success on a dashboard.