No, eBay: it isn’t “free to sell”
Note: in July 2025, eBay announced further changes to its fee structure, which they claim will benefit small sellers. And, indeed, these changes will improve the seller’s return, on many low-value items. However, this article isn’t about whether the seller does better or worse, but about how eBay is misleading sellers into thinking they can sell on eBay without cost. That hasn’t changed: eBay is still lying. The only difference is the amount they’re scalping the seller for, in different price bands. Because I want to be transparent, even though eBay is not, I have updated the article to indicate how the new (post-July) changes affect the actual fees. None of this actually changes the point I’m trying to raise, but I want my calculations to be up-to-date.
In October 2024, the UK division of on-line auction site eBay made a big announcement that it would no longer charge fees to private sellers. It would be “free to sell” on eBay. This was, and remains, the exact wording eBay uses on its website.
This was a (mostly) true claim until February 2025, when eBay started charging fees to buyers instead. While superficially it looks as if buyers will bear eBay’s costs, in reality the burden will continue to fall mostly on sellers, but in a less transparent way.
Of course, eBay isn’t a charity. Somebody, either the buyer, or the seller, or both, has to pay to run eBay. The problem is that eBay persists in saying that it’s “free to sell” when, in fact, it isn’t. For some sales, the seller will end up getting less of the value of the item than before.
Let me explain why.
Suppose I put an item up for auction, and it sells for £10. Under eBay’s earlier fee structure, eBay would have taken about 10% in fees on this final value: £1. I would have made £9 on the sale.
With the new, so-called ‘buyer protection’ fee arrangement, the buyer pays fees of 4% of the final bid, plus 75p.
[Update: Under the new fee structure eBay announced in July 2025, eBay will take 7% of the first £20 bid, plus 10p, and 4% of the rest. Compared to the pre-2025 fees, this change will benefit very low-value sales – up to about £10. Beyond £10, the fixed part of the fee will dominate the final charge. Sales between £10 and £20 are the worst hit by the July changes.]
But this eBay fee is concealed from the buyer when bidding on an item: if the item previously sold for £10 then, all other things being equal, it will still sell for £10, because that’s the price that the bidding user will see, the price a buyer is willing to pay. But the seller will get only £8.85, because the price paid by the winning bidder included eBay’s fees which amount, in this particular case, to £1.15.
[Update: After July 2025, this fee will be 80p, so the buyer will be better off by 35p when the buyer pays £10. But the buyer will still be worse off than under the pre-2024 fees, when eBay would have charged a flat 10%, or £1 in this case.]
So, as the seller, I’m paying eBay about the same amount under the new fee structure as I did under the old (pre-2024) one. The exact amount I pay will depend on the value of the item, as the new fee structure includes a fixed element of 75p, while the old one did not. This fixed fee element will have a greater impact on low-value items.
Fixed-price sales will also incur a loss to the seller, not the buyer, but here it’s even less transparent.
Suppose I sell an item for a fixed price of £2, this being what I’ve learned buyers are willing to pay. With eBay’s earlier fee structure, I would again have paid fees of about 10% on the sale price – 20p in this case.
With the new fee scheme, if I list the item for sale at £2, eBay will actually charge the buyer £2.83 – that’s my £2, plus eBay’s 4% + 75p. If the buyer made the purchase at that price then it’s true that I wouldn’t be paying to sell: I would receive the full £2 I listed the item for, and the buyer will have paid a bit more. But I won’t make the sale. I know from experience that £2 is what buyers will pay for this specific item.
The only way I will sell the item is to reduce my price such that the amount eBay charges the buyer is the one I think the buyer is willing to pay. If I believe that buyers are willing to pay £2, then I would have to list my item for £1.20. Then eBay’s fees would lead to the buyer seeing a sale price of £2, of which 80p will be eBay’s fees. So an item I could previously have sold for £2, and paid 20p in fees, I now sell for £1.20. eBay is right, in a way – I haven’t been charged fees as such. But eBay’s fees have the effect that I end up making only £1.60 on an item on which I would previously have made £1.80.
[Update: Under the new fee structure eBay announced in July 2025, I would have to list this item for £1.77, for eBay to charge the buyer £2. For very low-value items like this, eBay’s reduction of the fixed fee more than compensates for the increased final value fee and, as a seller, I would make a bit more. However, I would still make less than with the pre-2024 fee structure: eBay would have taken 20p of my £2 sale price.]
It isn’t just these fees – transparent or not – that create a selling cost for private sellers. For example, eBay will always allow buyers to return items they don’t want, for any reason or no reason at all, with the seller covering the cost of return postage. There’s no way a seller can decline to accept returns, even where it would be perfectly legal to do so: eBay now retains the seller’s income for a period of time, to make it easier for them to enact this policy.
[Update: eBay announced that as of August 2025, eBay will stop holding the funds for sellers with a near-perfect sales record. But you only need to have two sales issues within a year for eBay to renege on this apparent generosity. Since eBay always sides with buyers, maintaining such a good record will be difficult, unless you’re willing to refund buyers at your own expense whenever they demand it. So this announcement isn’t really good news for small, private sellers, because they’ll still bear postage costs for returns.]
In short, when eBay says it’s “free to sell”, they are lying liars who lie. Sellers still pay eBay’s costs, but in a way that is now non-transparent. eBay’s previous fees were ruinously high, but at least eBay was up-front about them. Now they hide sellers’ fees behind complicated, ever-changing, charging policies.
