How Does Best Offer Work on eBay? A 2026 Seller's Playbook

How does Best Offer work on eBay? A buyer names a price below your Buy It Now price, eBay tells you, and you have 24 hours to accept it, counter it or decline it before it lapses. That is the whole mechanism. Whether it makes you money comes down to two amounts you set in the listing's Pricing section, and to whether those amounts still match what the item costs you.

This playbook uses the rules as eBay's own help pages state them in September 2026. Several popular guides still quote a 48-hour response window, and eBay's seller help now says 24 hours. Below you'll find how to set the auto-accept and minimum offer amounts from your costs, how counteroffers run, how Promoted Listings fees reach an offer sale, and what changes when your cost belongs to a supplier.

Quick answer: Best Offer adds a Make Offer button to a fixed-price listing. When an offer arrives you can accept it, send a counteroffer, decline it, or let it expire, which happens automatically after 24 hours or when the listing ends. An offer at or above your auto-accept amount is accepted for you, and one below your minimum offer amount is declined for you. The item stays available to other buyers until someone pays, and the final value fee is charged on the sale at the accepted price.

How Does Best Offer Work on eBay? The Mechanics

On the buyer's side, Best Offer is a Make Offer button next to Buy It Now. The buyer enters an amount, can add a message to you, may be asked to confirm payment and shipping details, and sends it. Shoppers can also tick "Accepts offers" in search results, so a listing with Best Offer turned on shows up for buyers who filter that way.

On your side, eBay emails you and lists the offer in Seller Hub under active listings with offers. You then have four possible responses:

• Accept. The buyer is told to pay. In most cases eBay requires immediate payment on Best Offer listings, and a buyer who switched on autopay when making the offer pays the moment you accept.
• Counter. Send a price above the buyer's offer and below your Buy It Now price. The buyer then has 96 hours to accept, decline or offer again.
• Decline. The offer closes. On most items a buyer can make up to three offers, and declined, expired and retracted offers all count toward that limit.
• Do nothing. The offer expires after 24 hours, or sooner if the listing ends. A lapsed offer is a buyer who was ready to pay and heard nothing back, so this is the response to avoid.

Two details catch new sellers out. An open or accepted offer doesn't reserve the item: another shopper can pay the full Buy It Now price, and whoever completes payment first gets it. And the offer covers the item price only. Your shipping charge and every other term in the listing stay as they are.

Fees follow the price that was paid, not the price you listed. On eBay.com the final value fee in most categories is 13.6% of the total amount of the sale, which includes the item price, any shipping the buyer pays and sales tax, plus a per-order fee of $0.40 on orders over $10 ($0.30 on orders of $10 or less). eBay's selling fees page doesn't list Best Offer among its paid listing upgrades, so the feature adds no fee of its own. Other eBay sites publish their own fee tables, so check yours before you set any numbers.

Offers can only come from buyers who found the listing in the first place. That part of the job starts with keyword research for eBay listings.

Where Best Offer Works, and Where It Doesn't

Best Offer is built for fixed-price listings. In eBay's quick listing form you list in the fixed-price format, open More options under Pricing, select Allow offers and enter the lowest amount you'll accept. In the advanced listing tool it's a switch called Allow offers in the Pricing section, with optional fields for a Minimum offer amount and an Auto accept amount. eBay's guide to adding Best Offer to your listing walks through both forms.

Auction-style listings are more limited:

• An auction that has a Buy It Now price can't take offers at all.
• On an auction with Best Offer, the first bid automatically declines every open offer and counteroffer and stops new ones. A buyer whose offer was higher than that bid has to place a bid instead.
• If the bidder retracts, Best Offer switches back on.
• eBay lists cell phones, motors, real estate, tablets and tickets as categories where Best Offer on auction-style listings isn't available.

Automatic responses have their own exceptions. They won't run while the item is in a sale event created in Discounts Manager, when the buyer added terms to the offer that you need to read, or in categories that don't offer them. If you run markdowns through eBay listing promotions, expect offers on those items to wait for a manual answer.

Auto-Accept and Auto-Decline: The Two Numbers That Do the Work

eBay calls them the Auto accept amount and the Minimum offer amount. Buyers never see either one. This is how eBay applies them:

• An offer at or above your auto-accept amount is accepted, and eBay emails you and the buyer to say it's time to pay.
• An offer below your minimum is declined automatically. The buyer can try a higher offer, or you can send a counteroffer.
• Anything in between comes to you to decide.

That middle band is the only part that needs a person. At 40 listings, answering every offer by hand is a morning job. At 400 it's a part-time one, and an offer left for a day is gone. Set the two amounts well and most offers settle themselves.

Set both amounts from your cost, not from the list price

Anchoring on a percentage of the list price is how sellers end up auto-accepting sales that lose money on their thinnest-margin products. Work from the cost instead:

1. Minimum offer amount at break-even. Landed cost (supplier price plus delivery to the buyer) plus eBay's fee on that sale. An offer below it loses money, so let eBay decline it.
2. Auto accept amount at break-even plus the smallest profit you'd take without thinking about it.
3. The band between them holds offers that make some money but not enough to take on reflex. Those get a counteroffer.

Here is a worked example using eBay.com's standard fee for most categories (13.6% plus $0.40 per order) on a free-shipping listing, before sales tax or any ad fee:

Sales tax sits inside eBay's fee base, and a Promoted Listings ad fee can reach an offer sale too (see below), so round the minimum up rather than setting it to the cent. The same arithmetic, run automatically every time a cost moves, is what a repricer that defends a margin floor does.

The Counteroffer Math Most Sellers Get Wrong

eBay's rules for counters are short. Your counter has to be higher than the buyer's offer and lower than your Buy It Now price. You can counter several buyers on the same item. Each counteroffer lasts 96 hours, and the first buyer to accept and pay wins the item.

Using the example above, a buyer offers $29. After the fee that sale would earn $2.66, so it lands in your band and eBay passes it to you. Countering at $35 would earn $7.84 if accepted, sits above your auto-accept amount, and still takes $4.99 off the list price. Attach a reason that is true of your listing, such as free tracked shipping or a new, unopened item. A reason gives the buyer something to say yes to besides your stubbornness.

Three habits separate sellers who make money on offers from sellers who just discount:

• Answer the same day. You have 24 hours, but the buyer is looking at the item now.
• Counter once, with a number and a reason. A buyer can make several offers on most items, and every extra round is another chance for them to buy from someone else.
• Know your walk-away number before you open the message. If you're working out margin while typing a reply, you'll round in the buyer's favor.

Which items deserve room to negotiate is a data question. An item with a low sell-through rate can afford a generous band. One that sells every week at full price may not need Best Offer at all.

Best Offer and Promoted Listings Fees

Promoted Listings can add a second fee to an offer sale. If any buyer clicked one of your Promoted Listings general ads in the 30 days before you accept a Best Offer, eBay charges the ad fee on the final total sale amount (item price, shipping, taxes and other applicable fees) at the ad rate in effect when the item sells. The item has to be promoted both when the ad was clicked and when it sells.

That makes a promoted item's break-even higher than the fee table alone suggests. Add your ad rate to the final value fee before you work out the minimum offer amount, or the discount and the ad fee together can wipe out the margin. For choosing ad rates, see our guide to running profitable Promoted Listings campaigns.

Best Offer vs Sending Offers to Buyers

eBay runs two offer tools that are easy to mix up. Best Offer is a listing setting that lets the buyer make the first move. Offers to Buyers works the other way round: you send a discount to shoppers who have watched the item or added it to their cart.

The two work together. If you accept Best Offers on a listing, you can still send an offer to a watcher unless that buyer has already sent you a Best Offer. eBay Store subscribers can also set rules that send offers automatically to interested buyers on matching listings, for up to 150 days. The step-by-step is in our guide to sending offers to watchers, and if you send one you regret, here is how to cancel an offer on eBay.

How Does Best Offer Work on eBay for Dropshippers?

Everything above assumes your cost stays still. For a dropshipper it doesn't. A supplier can raise a price overnight, and a minimum offer amount worked out against last month's cost will quietly accept offers that now lose money. The threshold was right when you set it. The supplier moved.

Three things keep offer sales profitable when the cost is someone else's:

• Keep the list price tied to cost. Ecomli's Stock Monitoring checks supplier stock and prices for your Ecomli listings, then updates the eBay price and quantity by your markup or ends out-of-stock items by your out-of-stock rule. Your Best Offer amounts are separate eBay settings, so revisit them on any item whose supplier cost has moved.
• Check what offer sales actually earned. The Overview dashboard shows eBay sales, fees, Promoted Listings costs, refunds, supplier costs and recorded profit by day or period, with a comparison to the previous period. Profit there is only as complete as the supplier costs you've recorded.
• Put a ceiling on the supplier order. On Pro, Auto Ordering places the supplier order in your own browser when you click Auto Order. On Scale, you can also turn on optional server ordering, so Auto Ordering places the supplier order from Ecomli's servers, as long as each order is within your buying limits. Those limits are a maximum purchase price and a maximum loss, so an offer sale that falls outside them after a supplier price jump is left for you to handle by hand. Auto Ordering has the details.

If you'd like those checks running on your own catalog, compare what each Ecomli plan includes against the margin one mispriced auto-accept can cost you.

How to do this in Ecomli

1. Find items with a track record. Product Hunting researches an eBay seller's sold history or current listings and matches the products to Amazon or AliExpress. A match is a lead to check, not proof of profit.
2. Send the picks to Create Listings with your markup rule, so each listing is priced from the current supplier cost (for AliExpress, the exact per-variant item and delivery cost).
3. In Stock Monitoring, set the markup, the out-of-stock rule (quantity 0 or end the listing), the restock quantity and a price-change tolerance.
4. After a supplier price change, reset that listing's Minimum offer amount and Auto accept amount in Seller Hub from the new cost.
5. Once a month, open the Overview dashboard and check whether recorded profit held up in the periods you accepted offers.
6. On any plan, set your buying limits before you use Auto Ordering.

When to Turn Best Offer On, and When to Leave It Off

Best Offer isn't a store-wide switch. You decide per listing, and the decision comes down to how much room the item has and how fast it moves.

Turning Best Offer on makes a listing eligible for the "Accepts offers" filter. Where it ranks in ordinary search is a separate matter of relevance and listing quality, covered in our breakdown of how eBay's Cassini search engine ranks listings. Accepted offers are completed sales, so clearing aged stock through offers also adds to the sales history that helps when you're raising your eBay selling limits.

Sellers who run offers well treat them as inventory management rather than discounting. Ecomli's Auto Pruner (Basic on Pro, Advanced with automatic relisting on Scale) works on stale stock from the other end: in one click it ends listings with zero views or zero sales over the period you choose, by your rules, so the catalog stays made of items worth negotiating over. You can see how the pieces fit on the automation overview, and our practical eBay seller tips cover the rest of the basics.

So, in practice: a buyer names a price, you have 24 hours, and two amounts decide most cases without you. Set the minimum offer amount at break-even, set auto-accept at break-even plus the profit you'd happily take, counter once and quickly in the band between, and leave the feature off on products whose margin can't absorb a discount. If your costs come from a supplier, recheck both amounts whenever that cost moves.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if an eBay seller doesn't respond to a Best Offer?

The offer expires. eBay gives the seller 24 hours to accept, decline or counter, and an offer with no answer lapses automatically after that or when the listing ends, whichever comes first. The buyer can make another offer if they haven't used up their offers on that item, or buy at the listed price.

How does Buy It Now or Best Offer work on eBay?

A listing marked "or Best Offer" gives the buyer two choices. They can pay the Buy It Now price straight away, or select Make Offer and propose a lower price for the seller to accept, counter or decline. Until someone completes payment the item stays available, so a full-price buyer can still take it while an offer is pending.

How much should I offer on eBay's Best Offer?

There is no fixed percentage. eBay's own tips are to be reasonable, add a short message, and check how long the item has been listed, because a seller whose item has sat for a while may be more flexible. Sellers can set a hidden minimum, and an offer below it is declined automatically. On most items you get up to three offers, and declined, expired and retracted offers count toward that limit.

How do I get rid of Best Offer on an eBay listing?

Revise the listing and switch off Allow offers in the Pricing section, the same setting you used to turn it on. Answer any open offer first so a waiting buyer isn't left without a reply. If you want to withdraw an offer you sent rather than switch the feature off, see our guide on canceling an offer on eBay.

Can buyers still use Buy It Now while a Best Offer is pending?

Yes. An open offer doesn't lock the item. If another shopper buys at the full price while an offer is open, they get the item and the unaccepted offers are canceled. Even an accepted offer only secures the item once that buyer completes payment, unless they switched on autopay when making the offer.

How long does a buyer have to respond to a counteroffer?

96 hours, which is 4 days. In that time the buyer can accept by going to checkout and paying, decline, or make another offer. If you counter several buyers on the same item, the first one to accept and pay gets it.

Does using Best Offer cost the seller anything extra?

There is no separate fee. eBay's fee page doesn't list Best Offer among its paid listing upgrades, and you pay the normal final value fee on the sale at the accepted price. The one extra to watch is Promoted Listings: if a buyer clicked your general ad in the 30 days before you accept an offer, the ad fee applies to that sale too.

How do I stop lowball offers without turning the feature off?

Set a Minimum offer amount. eBay declines anything below it automatically, and the buyer can come back with a higher offer. Set it at your break-even price (landed cost plus eBay's fee) rather than at a percentage of the list price, so the filter tracks what the item actually costs you.

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