eBay fees UK explained, with worked examples

The most common question we get from people starting out is some version of 'how much does eBay actually take?' The honest answer is: it depends entirely on whether you're selling as a private individual or as a business seller, because eBay UK runs two different fee models side by side. Mixing them up is the single biggest reason people's own maths doesn't match what lands in their bank account.

This page lays out both, with a worked £50 sale for each, so you can see the real numbers rather than a vague percentage.

Private sellers: no final value fee

Since October 2024, private sellers on eBay UK pay £0 final value fee on most items. There's no listing fee for most categories either. That's a genuine change from the old model, and it's why 'eBay takes about 12%' answers you'll find online are now out of date for anyone selling as a private individual.

The cost hasn't disappeared, it's just moved. eBay now charges the buyer a 'buyer protection fee' at checkout on private-seller purchases: broadly a small percentage of the item price plus a small fixed amount (that fixed amount was cut from 75p to 10p in mid-2025). You'll sometimes see buyers factor this in when deciding what to offer, but it doesn't come out of your payout.

Private seller means selling your own things, or occasional resale below the trading threshold (see our guide on the £1,000 trading allowance). If you're regularly buying stock specifically to resell, eBay and HMRC both expect you to register as a business seller, whatever the fee difference looks like on paper.

Business sellers: the fee stack

Add it up and most business sellers land somewhere around 15% to 17% of the sale value, plus the per-order fee, depending on category. That matches the range quoted in our beginner's guide for a typical business-seller sale.

These are eBay's own published rates as researched at the time of writing. Fee tables change, sometimes more than once a year, so always check eBay's current seller fees page for your exact category before you rely on a number for pricing.

• Final value fee, charged as a percentage of the total the buyer pays (item plus postage). It's category-based, and most general categories sit somewhere in a 6.9% to 12.9% band, with a handful of categories outside that range.
• VAT at 20% on top of the final value fee (reclaimable if you're VAT-registered).
• A per-order fee: 30p on orders of £10 or less, 40p on orders above £10.
• A regulatory operating fee, a small charge (around 0.35%, plus VAT) that covers eBay's compliance costs under UK digital-platform rules.

Two worked examples on the same £50 sale

Say you sell an item for £50, postage included, in a general category with a 10.9% final value fee.

• As a private seller: final value fee £0. You keep the full £50 (minus whatever you spent on packaging and postage). The buyer, not you, covers eBay's buyer protection fee.
• As a business seller: final value fee 10.9% of £50 = £5.45, plus 20% VAT on that fee (£1.09), plus the 40p per-order fee, plus the regulatory operating fee (roughly 0.35% + VAT, about 21p). Total fees: around £7.15. You keep about £42.85 before packaging and postage.

So which should you be?

If you're clearing your own possessions or selling occasionally below £1,000 a year in trading income, private seller is the honest, correct and cheaper route. If you're buying stock specifically to resell at any real volume, register as a business seller: it's free to do, it's what the rules require, and the fee difference is the cost of doing it properly rather than a reason to avoid it.

Whichever you are, price from real eBay sold listings, not the asking price, and always work backwards from the fee-adjusted number, not the headline sale price. RedGem already builds every fee into its profit numbers, house by house and product by product, so the figure on the page is what you actually keep, not what you sold for. There's a free, fully unlocked deal on the homepage every day if you want to see the full working.

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