eBay vs Poshmark vs Mercari Fees: Which One Keeps More of Your Sale

List the same hoodie on three platforms and three different payouts come back. Most sellers assume the one with the lowest advertised commission is the one that pays best. It is not that simple, because the three platforms do not charge their fee on the same number, and one of them adds a flat fee per order on top.

Here is what each one takes, and what is left on a real sale.

What the three actually charge

Platform	Commission	Charged on	Per-order fee
eBay	13.6 percent, most categories, up to $7,500 per item	Item price plus the shipping the buyer pays	$0.30 on orders of $10 or less, $0.40 above $10
Poshmark	20 percent at $15 and up, flat $2.95 under $15	The sale price only	None
Mercari	10 percent	Item price plus the shipping the buyer pays	None

Sources: eBay seller fees, Poshmark selling fees, fees on Mercari.

Two details in that table do more work than the headline percentages.

The first is what the fee is charged on. eBay and Mercari both run their percentage across the item price and the buyer-paid shipping, so every dollar of postage the buyer covers gets taxed on the way through. Poshmark charges only on the sale price, and the buyer pays Poshmark's label directly, so shipping never touches your fee.

The second is the per-order fee. eBay is the only one of the three that charges one. It is small, but it lands on every single order, which means it hits cheap items hardest.

The same $30 sale on all three

Take a $30 item. Assume the buyer pays $5.95 for shipping and the label costs you $5.95, so postage breaks even. On Poshmark the buyer pays the platform's label, so there is no label line on your side at all.

	eBay	Poshmark	Mercari
Item price	$30.00	$30.00	$30.00
Shipping collected	$5.95	Paid by buyer	$5.95
Commission	$4.89	$6.00	$3.60
Per-order fee	$0.40	None	None
Label you buy	$5.95	None	$5.95
You keep	$24.71	$24.00	$26.40

Mercari pays $2.40 more than eBay on the identical sale, and $2.40 more than Poshmark. That is eight percent of the item price, on one item. Twenty sales a month and the gap is real money.

Notice that Poshmark's 20 percent, the scariest number in the table, does not finish last by much. It charges double eBay's rate but on a smaller base, with no per-order fee and no cut of postage. The headline rate told you almost nothing.

Under $15 the math changes again

Poshmark's flat $2.95 is the fee people get wrong in the other direction. On a $12 item it is 24.6 percent of the sale price, worse than the 20 percent rate it replaces.

Run the same $12 item, same $5.95 shipping:

	eBay	Poshmark	Mercari
Commission	$2.44	$2.95 flat	$1.80
Per-order fee	$0.40	None	None
You keep	$9.16	$9.05	$10.20

Mercari wins again. The useful takeaway is not that one platform always pays best, it is that cheap items are where fees do the most damage as a share of the sale. Nine dollars back on a $12 item means your buy cost has to be under about three dollars for the flip to be worth the twenty minutes of listing and packing. That is the real reason to pass on most sub-$15 items, and it has nothing to do with which app you use.

One eBay note worth knowing: hitting Top Rated Plus takes 10 percent off your final value fee, which drops the 13.6 percent rate to a little over 12. The requirements are in our Top Rated Seller breakdown.

Depop and Vinted charge the seller nothing

Both of these moved off seller commission entirely and put a protection fee on the buyer's side of checkout instead. Your listed price is close to your payout, which sounds like the obvious winner until you remember the buyer is comparing a total that is higher than the number you set.

They have each changed their structure more than once in the last couple of years, so read their current fee page before you price for them rather than trusting a figure you saw in a video. We are not printing percentages here that we cannot source today.

Fees are the small half of the decision

Here is the part the comparison tables leave out. A 10 percent fee on an item that sits for six months is worse than a 20 percent fee on an item that sells in nine days.

eBay has the buyer traffic and sells nearly any category. Poshmark moves women's clothing and shoes through sharing, and buyers there expect to negotiate. Mercari is the cheapest of the three and also the quietest, so the savings only matter if the item gets seen. Sell-through beats fee rate every time.

Which is why the answer for most of this is to stop choosing. List the item on all three and let whichever one has the buyer pay you. The only thing you have to manage is pulling the listing everywhere else the moment it sells, and we walk through that in cross listing without overselling.

The short version

Rank platforms by what lands in your account, not by the percentage on the fee page. On a $30 clothing sale the order is Mercari, then eBay, then Poshmark, separated by about $2.40. Under $15 the gaps tighten and every platform takes a bite big enough to question the flip. Price with the fee already subtracted and you will never be surprised by a payout again.

Running the fee math is one piece of it. Knowing what to buy, what to pay, and where to list it is the whole system, and that is what we build step by step inside The Income Lab. These posts are the free half.