You list a £45 item with free postage, it sells, and the payout is £37.36. Not £45, and not the £39 you penciled in when you set the price. On eBay.co.uk a business seller pays four charges on every sale: a final value fee set by category, a per-order fee, a 0.35% regulatory operating fee, and VAT at 20% on top of all three. Private sellers pay none of those on most items. This page is an eBay fee calculator for UK sellers in plain arithmetic: the formula, a lookup table, worked examples and the rates by category, all taken from eBay's own fee pages as of Sep 2026.
- The formula: for a business seller in a 12.9% category, fees including VAT = (total the buyer paid × 15.9%) + £0.48 on orders over £10.
- The catch: fees are charged on the total the buyer paid, postage included, not on the item price alone.
- The blind spot: a calculator prices one moment. Supplier costs keep moving after you list, and one £5 rise halves the profit on Order B below.
On this page: the formula · the fee stack · rates by category · lookup table · worked examples · private vs business · Shop subscriptions · your margin floor · FAQs
eBay fee calculator UK: the formula
Every eBay fee calculator does the same sum. For a UK business seller, eBay's business selling fees page sets out the parts:
- Final value fee: your category's percentage of the total amount of the sale, which eBay defines as the item price, postage and any applicable taxes.
- Per-order fee: £0.30 on orders of £10.00 or less, £0.40 on orders over £10.00.
- Regulatory operating fee: 0.35% of the same total.
- VAT: the business fee page says all its fees are shown exclusive of VAT, and eBay's private seller page shows its fees inclusive of VAT at 20%. Add 20% to the three lines above unless your accountant confirms you can reclaim it.
Put together:
Fees including VAT = [(total × category rate) + (total × 0.35%) + per-order fee] × 1.2
In a 12.9% category, which includes "Everything Else", Crafts, Pet Supplies and Wholesale & Job Lots, that simplifies to (total × 15.9%) + £0.48 for orders over £10. The 15.9% is 12.9% plus 0.35%, multiplied by 1.2. The £0.48 is the 40p per-order fee with VAT. Swap in your own category rate and the same method holds. It is quick enough to run in your head while you look at a supplier's page and decide whether a product is worth listing.
If you're VAT-registered and can reclaim the VAT on eBay's fees, drop the × 1.2 and your 12.9% rate becomes 13.25% plus 40p. For the step-by-step version with US and UK tables side by side, see our guide on how to calculate eBay fees.
The fee stack UK business sellers pay
Here is everything a business seller can be charged on one sale, in the order it builds up:
| Fee | What it is charged on | Rate (as of Sep 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Final value fee | Total amount of the sale: item price, postage and any applicable taxes | Set by category, from 5% to 14.9% on the first band (12.9% in most categories) |
| Per-order fee | Each order | £0.30 for orders of £10.00 or less, £0.40 over £10.00 |
| Regulatory operating fee | Total amount of the sale | 0.35% |
| VAT on fees | The fees above | 20% |
| Insertion fee | Each listing, whether or not it sells | 30p per listing without a Shop, with no free allowance |
| International fee | Total amount of the sale, when the buyer's address is outside the UK | 1.05% Eurozone and Northern Europe, 1.8% US and Canada, 2.0% all other countries |
Two lines in that table catch sellers out. First, the final value fee is charged on the total including postage, so "free postage" doesn't avoid it. You move the postage into the item price and pay the same percentage either way. Second, the insertion fee attaches to a listing, not a sale. It is charged when you list, and again each month a Good 'Til Cancelled listing renews, so a store with a few hundred live listings pays it every month whether or not they sell. Our breakdown of eBay business account fees for UK sellers goes through the listing side in more detail.
There are also penalty rates to know about. A seller whose level is Below Standard on the 20th of a month pays an extra 6 percentage points of final value fee on the next month's sales, and a "Very high" rate of item-not-as-described requests adds 4 points. A fee calculator assumes you are Above Standard. If you aren't, every number below is too low. Our guide to eBay seller performance metrics covers how to stay clear of those levels.
UK final value fees by category
These are business seller rates from eBay's fee page for common categories, as of Sep 2026. Each adds the per-order fee, the 0.35% regulatory operating fee and VAT.
| Category | Final value fee |
|---|---|
| Everything Else, Crafts, Pet Supplies, Wholesale & Job Lots | 12.9% |
| Business, Office & Industrial | 12.5% |
| Clothes, Shoes & Accessories (most subcategories) | 11.9% |
| Home, Furniture & DIY (most subcategories) | 11.9% up to £500, 7.9% on the portion above |
| Health & Beauty, Garden & Patio, Sporting Goods, Toys & Games, Baby, Collectables | 10.9% |
| Computers, Tablets & Networking (most subcategories), Books, Sound & Vision, Video Games | 9.9% |
| Vehicle Parts & Accessories (most subcategories) | 9.5% up to £750, 3% on the portion above |
| Laptops, tablets, mobile and smart phones, televisions, digital cameras | 6.9% up to £1,000, 3% on the portion above |
| Jewellery & Watches (most subcategories) | 14.9% up to £1,000, 4% on the portion above |
If you list an item in two categories, eBay charges the higher of the two rates. The full table, including every subcategory exception, is on the eBay business fee page.
eBay fee calculator UK: quick lookup table
For a business seller in a 12.9% category, selling to a UK buyer, with VAT added to fees. "Total" is what the buyer paid, postage included.
| Total | Final value fee | Per-order fee | Regulatory operating fee | VAT | Total fees | You receive | Effective rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £10.00 | £1.29 | £0.30 | £0.04 | £0.33 | £1.96 | £8.04 | 19.6% |
| £20.00 | £2.58 | £0.40 | £0.07 | £0.61 | £3.66 | £16.34 | 18.3% |
| £50.00 | £6.45 | £0.40 | £0.18 | £1.41 | £8.44 | £41.56 | 16.9% |
| £100.00 | £12.90 | £0.40 | £0.35 | £2.73 | £16.38 | £83.62 | 16.4% |
| £250.00 | £32.25 | £0.40 | £0.88 | £6.71 | £40.24 | £209.76 | 16.1% |
| £500.00 | £64.50 | £0.40 | £1.75 | £13.33 | £79.98 | £420.02 | 16.0% |
The effective rate falls as the order grows because the fixed per-order fee is spread across a bigger sale. On cheap items it bites hard: at £10 nearly a fifth of the sale goes in fees. That is one reason low-price products need a wider markup than the headline rate suggests.
Worked examples: £15, £45 and £120 orders
A fee figure on its own isn't enough to price against. What you need is the full path from what the buyer paid to what you keep. These three orders are in a 12.9% category. The supplier and postage costs are example figures for a dropshipped product, not quotes from a real supplier.
| Line | Order A | Order B | Order C |
|---|---|---|---|
| Item price | £15.00 | £45.00 | £120.00 |
| Postage charged to the buyer | £3.95 | £0.00 | £0.00 |
| Total the buyer paid | £18.95 | £45.00 | £120.00 |
| Final value fee (12.9%) | £2.44 | £5.81 | £15.48 |
| Per-order fee | £0.40 | £0.40 | £0.40 |
| Regulatory operating fee (0.35%) | £0.07 | £0.16 | £0.42 |
| VAT on fees (20%) | £0.58 | £1.27 | £3.26 |
| Total fees | £3.49 | £7.64 | £19.56 |
| Your payout | £15.46 | £37.36 | £100.44 |
| Supplier cost (example) | £8.50 | £24.00 | £78.00 |
| Your postage cost (example) | £3.20 | £3.20 | £6.50 |
| Net profit | £3.76 | £10.16 | £15.94 |
| Margin on the total | 19.8% | 22.6% | 13.3% |
| Effective fee rate | 18.4% | 17.0% | 16.3% |
Read the bottom two rows together. The effective fee rate falls as the order value rises, from 18.4% to 16.3%, but margin doesn't follow it. Order C has the lowest fee rate and the worst margin, because the supplier cost grew with the sale price while the buffer didn't.
That is the case against chasing high-ticket items because the fee percentage looks better. A £15.94 profit on a £120 order means one return, one partial refund or one supplier price rise wipes out the sale. Our guide to how eBay payouts work and when they land covers what happens to these numbers once refunds come in.
Postage matters more than the table suggests. Order A charges the buyer £3.95 and costs £3.20 to send, so postage adds 75p to a £3.76 profit, about a fifth of it. If you sell abroad, the international fee comes on top, and our walkthrough of the eBay International Shipping program covers the delivery side.
Private seller or business seller: two different fee structures
This is the fork that makes UK fee math different from the US, and the reason a US calculator will mislead you however carefully you convert the currency. Check which account type a calculator assumes before you trust it.
eBay's private seller fee page says it is free for UK-based private sellers to sell on eBay, excluding cars, motorcycles and vehicles: no final value fee and no regulatory operating fee. Private sellers get 300 free listings a month (400 with an eBay Shop), then pay 35p per listing, and optional upgrades and promoted listings still cost extra. The buyer pays a Buyer Protection fee on private sellers' items instead: £0.10 plus 7% of the price up to £20, 4% from £20 to £300 and 2% from £300 to £4,000, according to eBay's Buyer Protection fee page. The seller still receives the full item price. On a £45 item, the buyer pays £2.50 on top.
| What differs | Private seller (UK-based) | Business seller |
|---|---|---|
| Final value fee | None on most items (vehicles excluded) | Category rate plus per-order fee |
| Regulatory operating fee | None | 0.35% of the total |
| Free listings each month | 300 (400 with a Shop), then 35p each | None without a Shop, 30p each |
| VAT | Included in the fees shown | Added to the fees shown |
| Buyer Protection fee | Paid by the buyer | No charge to the buyer |
| Fits dropshipping | No | Yes |
eBay's business seller policy says you need to register as a business seller if you sell items you have bought to resell, make items in order to sell them, or buy items for your business. Buying from a supplier and reselling puts a dropshipper in that group, so everything on this page from the formula onwards assumes a business account. Your tax position is a separate question for your accountant.
Shop subscriptions and listing fees
On the current fee page, a Shop subscription changes what you pay to list, not the final value fee table. Without a Shop, each fixed-price listing costs 30p with no free allowance. The Shop tiers, shown before VAT, are:
| Shop | Monthly price | Free fixed-price listings | Each extra fixed-price listing |
|---|---|---|---|
| No Shop | None | None | 30p |
| Basic | £27 | 250 | 10p |
| Featured | £77 | 1,500 | 5p |
| Anchor | £437 | Unlimited | Free |
Because Good 'Til Cancelled listings are charged again each month they renew, the math turns on live listings, not new ones. A store with 300 live fixed-price listings pays £90 a month in insertion fees without a Shop (300 × 30p), against £32 on Basic (£27 plus 50 extra listings at 10p). Basic pays for itself once you have more than 90 listings renewing or going live in a month. Run your own count through the table before you choose, and keep in mind that Shop tiers add other tools as well.
Other charges that change the result
- Promoted Listings. Charged per click, as a percentage after the sale, or upfront, depending on the campaign type. Add your ad rate to the category rate when you price promoted items.
- International fee. 1.05% to 2.0% of the total when the buyer is outside the UK.
- Currency conversion. If eBay converts your funds for a listing or payout on another eBay site, a UK-registered seller pays a 2.5% conversion charge.
- Disputes. A £14 dispute fee applies when you are found responsible for a chargeback or other disputed amount.
- Optional upgrades. A subtitle, Gallery Plus or international site visibility can add a per-listing fee, charged whether or not the item sells.
If you sell on eBay.com instead
US fees work differently. On eBay.com, a seller without a Store pays 13.6% of the total in most categories up to $7,500 per item and 2.35% on the portion above, plus a per-order fee of $0.30 on orders of $10 or less and $0.40 above $10. The first 250 listings each month carry no insertion fee, then $0.35 each. On a $100 total that is $14.00 in fees. Our explainer on how much eBay takes on a sale covers the US side in full.
The number a calculator can't give you: your margin floor
Every eBay fee calculator shares one assumption: that the supplier cost you typed in is still true. On a live dropshipping catalog it often isn't. You priced Order B against a £24 supplier cost. If that supplier moves to £29 next week and your listing doesn't change, your £10.16 profit becomes £5.16, and a calculator won't tell you, because it is a snapshot of a moment that has already passed.
So work out your price from a target margin, then keep it there. To price backwards, add your supplier cost and your postage cost, add the £0.48 fixed fee, and divide by (1 minus your target margin minus 15.9%). For a £24 supplier cost, £3.20 postage and a 20% margin target, that is £27.68 ÷ 0.641, or about £43.18. At that price the fees come to £7.34 and the profit to £8.64, which is 20% of the sale. Round up for headroom against supplier movement.
Holding that margin across hundreds of listings is where the work is. A seller with forty listings across three categories is really keeping three effective rates, three break-even prices and forty supplier costs up to date, and each one drifts on its own schedule. Our guide to repricing rules that defend a margin floor goes deeper on the rule logic, and our eBay profit calculator guide adds the costs beyond fees.
How to keep your margin in Ecomli
Ecomli is a non-API browser extension for eBay dropshippers. It works through the eBay seller account signed in to your desktop Chrome browser and uses Amazon and AliExpress as suppliers. For fee math, three parts of it matter:
- Price with your markup at listing time. Create Listings reads each supplier product and prices it with your markup, and AliExpress items are priced from the exact per-variant item and delivery cost. Build your effective fee rate and margin target into that markup once, using the formula above.
- Let Stock Monitoring hold the floor. Stock Monitoring checks the Amazon or AliExpress supplier behind each Ecomli listing and, when a supplier changes price or runs out, updates the eBay price and quantity by your rules: your markup, a price-change tolerance, and an out-of-stock rule that sets quantity to 0 or ends the listing. If a supplier read fails, the listing is held unchanged rather than ended.
- Check the result on the Overview dashboard. The Overview dashboard shows eBay sales, fees, Promoted Listings costs, refunds, supplier costs and recorded profit by day or period across your whole eBay store, with comparisons to the previous period. It syncs the last 90 days of orders, and you can import older eBay CSV reports. Profit there is only as complete as the supplier costs recorded.
That turns the fee math from a one-off sum into a standing rule. Instead of "this item made 22.6% when I listed it", you get "every monitored listing is repriced from its current supplier cost with the markup I set". Most tasks run in your desktop browser while it is open. Plans start at $29 a month, billed in USD, and the Ecomli pricing page compares Starter, Pro and Scale. You can see how the pieces connect on the automation overview, and where Ecomli sits among other tools in our eBay seller tools comparison.
Supplier choice feeds the same equation from the other side. A supplier whose prices swing weekly can cost you more in lost margin than a steadier one with a slightly higher price. Start with our list of UK dropshipping suppliers for eBay sellers, and if you're still choosing what to list, the product research tools UK sellers use is the companion to this page.
Frequently asked questions
How much does eBay take from a £100 sale in the UK?
For a business seller in a 12.9% category, with no separate postage charge, £16.38 including VAT: £12.90 final value fee, £0.40 per-order fee, £0.35 regulatory operating fee and £2.73 VAT. You receive £83.62. A UK-based private seller pays no final value fee on the same sale (vehicles aside). On eBay.com, a $100 total in most categories costs $14.00: 13.6% plus the $0.40 per-order fee.
Are eBay fees 15%?
Close, for UK business sellers. In a 12.9% category the fees come to 15.9% of the total plus 48p once VAT is added, which is 16.4% on a £100 order. Lower-rate categories such as Toys & Games (10.9%) come in under that, and Jewellery & Watches (14.9% up to £1,000) comes in over it. On eBay.com most categories are 13.6% plus the per-order fee, so a $100 sale costs 14%.
How much does eBay take on a £2,500 or $2,500 sale?
In a 12.9% UK category, a business seller pays £322.50 final value fee, £0.40 per-order fee and £8.75 regulatory operating fee, which is £331.65 before VAT or £397.98 with it. Many higher-value categories use a lower rate above a threshold, such as 3% above £1,000 on laptops and phones, so check your category. On eBay.com, a $2,500 total in most categories costs $340.40 (13.6% plus $0.40).
How do I calculate my eBay fees?
Take the total the buyer paid, postage included. Multiply it by your category rate plus 0.35%, add the per-order fee (£0.30 up to £10, £0.40 above), and multiply by 1.2 if you pay VAT on fees. In a 12.9% category that is total × 15.9% + £0.48 for orders over £10. Private sellers based in the UK skip all of it on most items.
Does eBay charge fees on postage in the UK?
Yes, for business sellers. The final value fee and the regulatory operating fee are both charged on the total amount of the sale, which includes the item price, postage and any applicable taxes. Offering free postage doesn't avoid the fee. It moves the postage into the item price, which is charged at the same rate.
What is the eBay regulatory operating fee?
It is a 0.35% charge on the total amount of each sale, including postage and any applicable taxes, listed on eBay's business fee page. UK-based private sellers don't pay it. With VAT added it works out at 0.42%, so on a £20 order it is about 8p.
Why is my payout lower than my calculator said?
There are four usual causes. The calculator used a US fee model and left out VAT and the regulatory operating fee. It used an average rate rather than your category's rate. It used the 30p per-order fee on an order over £10, where the fee is 40p. Or the supplier cost changed after you set the price, which no calculator can catch. That last one is solved by monitoring, not arithmetic.
How do I work out a listing price from a target margin?
Work backwards. Add your supplier cost, your postage cost and the £0.48 fixed fee, then divide by (1 minus your target margin minus your effective fee rate). With a £24 supplier cost, £3.20 postage, a 20% target and a 12.9% category, that is £27.68 ÷ 0.641 = about £43.18. Rounding up to £44.99 leaves room for the supplier price to move.
Sources
- eBay UK: Fees for business sellers
- eBay UK: Fees for private sellers
- eBay UK: Buyer Protection fee
- eBay UK: Business seller policy
- eBay: eBay.com selling fees
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