Reselling on eBay in 2026: What It Really Costs

Quick answer: Reselling on eBay costs you a final value fee of 13.6% in most categories plus $0.40 per order over $10, and eBay charges it on the whole sale: item price, the shipping the buyer paid and sales tax. On a $100 sale that is $14.00. On a $1,000 sale it is $136.40. After that come the item itself, the shipping label, packaging, the odd return and your time. Time is the cost that decides whether reselling stays worth doing, and it is the one software can cut. Ecomli makes a tool for that, a non-API browser extension for eBay dropshippers, and it is our pick for sellers who want each new listing to cost fewer minutes than the last.

• Fees are charged on the total. 13.6% of a $45 sale with free shipping is $6.12. Charge the buyer $8 for shipping and the fee grows with it.
• Category changes the rate. Books, movies and music pay 15.3%. Guitars pay 6.7%. Athletic shoes at $150 or more pay 8% with no per-order fee.
• Margin per sale decides the outcome. The sale price is only the starting line.
• Sourcing is the real ceiling. Most resellers run out of stock ideas and hours before they run out of buyers.

This guide lays out every eBay fee a reseller meets, what eBay takes from a $100 and a $1,000 sale, a worked example with every cost stated, how to check what refurbished electronics and other items actually sell for, the three ways to source stock, and how much work $1,000 a month really takes.

What reselling on eBay costs before you keep a dollar

eBay charges a final value fee when an item sells. It is calculated on the total amount of the sale, which eBay defines as the item price plus any handling charge, any shipping the buyer paid and sales tax. So it is not 13.6% of your item price. It is 13.6% of everything that went through checkout.

These are the rates on eBay's selling fees page for sellers without an eBay Store, in the categories resellers touch most:

Listing is usually free. You get up to 250 zero insertion fee listings a month, then pay $0.35 per listing. Four other charges catch new sellers:

• Dispute fee: $20 when you are found responsible for a disputed amount, such as a chargeback.
• International fee: 1.65% of the total sale when the buyer or the delivery address is outside the US and you are not using eBay International Shipping.
• Below Standard fee: if your account is evaluated as Below Standard, eBay adds an extra 6% on your final value fees the following month.
• High return rate fee: a Very High rate of "item not as described" returns in a category adds an extra 5% on final value fees in that category.

Our breakdown of eBay selling fees covers Store subscriptions and the rarer categories, and the eBay profit calculator runs the numbers for a single item.

How much eBay takes from a $100 or $1,000 sale

Here is the fee on a sale total of $100 and $1,000 at the basic rates, before sales tax widens the base:

A $100 pair of athletic shoes falls below the $150 line, so it pays the standard 13.6% plus $0.40. Sales tax the buyer pays is added to the base in every row, so your real fee runs a little higher than the table.

A worked example with every cost stated

You buy an item for $12. It sells for $45 with free shipping, and your label costs $7.

That is a 43% margin on the sale price. It is a good result, not a typical one. Sales tax widens the fee base slightly, packaging costs something, and one return can wipe out the profit from three good sales. Your numbers will move with your category, the condition of what you sell and how well you sourced it. Our eBay shipping calculator helps you price the label before you list, and the income math behind eBay flipping applies the same arithmetic to a full month.

The costs that don't appear on eBay's fee page

The fee table is the easy part. These costs are just as real and harder to see:

• Returns. A "not as described" case can cost the item, the outbound label and the return label. Accurate photos and plain condition notes are the cheapest protection. Our guide to what eBay returns really cost runs the numbers.
• Packaging. Boxes, mailers, tape and padding add up across a month even when each one feels free.
• Cancellations. Selling something you can't ship forces a cancellation, and our guide on cancelling an order as a seller explains how that affects your account.
• Optional advertising. Promoted Listings charge an ad rate you choose, and it comes out of the same margin.
• Your time. Sourcing, photos, listing, packing and buyer messages. Nobody bills you for it, which is why it gets left out of most reselling math.

Where your inventory comes from: three supply routes

Fees are fixed. Sourcing is the part you control, and it is where reselling businesses split apart. There are three practical routes, and they trade cash, time and growth differently.

Selling what you already own is the right first move for almost everyone. It teaches you the listing, packing and buyer-message routine on items that cost you nothing. It also ends fast, because a closet clear-out happens once. Our step-by-step guide to starting a reselling business covers that first phase, and our guide to flipping items for profit covers thrift and garage-sale sourcing.

Thrift and clearance sourcing is the route most reselling videos show, and it works. Its limit is arithmetic. Every item is a separate hunt, a separate photo shoot and a separate description. Double your income and you double your Saturdays.

The supplier-fulfilled route breaks that link. You list products a supplier holds, and you buy the item only after a buyer has paid you. No cash sits in unsold stock, and you can list the same product again and again. The trade-off is that you now depend on a supplier you don't control. If their price rises or their stock runs out while your listing is live, you are holding a sale you can't fill at a profit.

What refurbished electronics sell for on eBay, and how to check

Resellers who work electronics often ask for the average selling price of a refurbished phone, laptop or console. There is no single number worth quoting. Prices swing with the model, storage size, condition grade, what comes in the box and how many sellers are listing the same thing that week. What you can get is the real figure for the exact item you plan to buy, from eBay's own data.

Use Product research. eBay's Product research tool in Seller Hub draws on the last 3 years of eBay sales data. Search the model, filter by item condition, and it shows the average sales price, the sold price range, average shipping cost and, for items sold in the last 90 days, the sell-through rate. Sell-through tells you how fast the item moves, which matters as much as the price.

Check sold listings. Search eBay for the model and filter the results to sold items. Match the storage size, color and condition to what you would be selling, and ignore asking prices on unsold listings.

Know the condition labels. In electronics categories, eBay's item condition definitions separate these grades:

• Certified - Refurbished: refurbished by the manufacturer or a manufacturer-approved vendor, in new packaging.
• Excellent, Very Good and Good - Refurbished: professionally refurbished by qualified sellers and backed by a one-year warranty.
• Seller refurbished: restored to working order by the eBay seller or a third party.
• Used and For parts or not working, which sell at their own, usually lower, prices.

Compare prices within one grade, never across them. A phone listed as Good - Refurbished with a warranty and one listed as Used are different products to a buyer.

What to resell as a beginner

The instinct is to chase whatever sold well for someone on YouTube last month. The better filter is boring: pick items that are light, hard to break, easy to describe accurately, and priced high enough that the fee and the label don't eat the whole margin.

• Above about $25. Below that, the per-order fee plus a label leaves very little.
• Light. Shipping cost climbs with weight faster than the sale price does.
• Not fragile. One broken item can cost more than a week of margin.
• Specific and searchable. A model number in the title does more work than a clever description.
• Not brand-sensitive. Designer and luxury categories carry authentication and rights-owner complications a first-time seller does not need.

Category matters as much as the item. Books, movies and music pay 15.3% rather than 13.6%, which adds up on low-price stock. We keep wider lists of categories that hold their margin in which items actually sell for a profit and the most profitable items to sell on eBay.

Can you make $1,000 a month reselling on eBay?

It is the most common question about reselling on eBay, and it deserves arithmetic rather than a pep talk.

Take the $19.48 from the worked example and hold it constant. Reaching $1,000 in a month takes 52 sales, which comes to $1,012.96. That is 52 items sourced, listed, packed and shipped, plus the buyer messages and the occasional return.

Now price the time. At 15 minutes per item end to end, which is optimistic for hand-sourced stock, that is 13 hours a month before sourcing trips. At 30 minutes per item, closer to reality when every piece is unique, it is 26 hours. That is a real second job, and the fair comparison is against other ways to earn without a traditional job, not against zero.

Only two levers move that result. You can raise the margin per sale by sourcing better or selling into a higher-value category. Or you can cut the minutes per sale so the same hours cover more volume. Every reselling "secret" is one of those two. Nobody can promise you a monthly figure. Demand, competition, your sourcing and your pricing all decide it, and results vary widely between sellers.

The real downsides of selling on eBay

eBay has real buyer traffic, which is exactly why it is competitive. Four things catch new sellers off guard.

Returns land on you. Buyers expect the item to match the listing, and the cost of a mismatch comes out of your margin.

New sellers have limits. eBay sets selling limits on accounts and raises them as you show you can meet buyer demand, so early listing slots are scarce and spending them on items that never sell is a real cost. Our guide to growing your eBay selling limits covers how sellers get them raised.

Pricing needs attention. Competitors undercut, supplier costs move, and a listing priced well in March can be losing money by June.

Fees compound quietly. The percentage covers shipping and tax as well as the item, so a "free shipping" listing does not mean fee-free shipping. If you are weighing eBay against other platforms, we compared the cut each one takes in how fees stack up across reselling websites, and selling on eBay vs Amazon sets the two largest side by side.

None of this makes reselling a bad idea. It makes it a business rather than a hobby, and businesses respond to systems. Our explainer on how reselling works and what it pays covers the wider model.

How to do this in Ecomli

Ecomli is a non-API browser extension for eBay dropshippers. It works through the eBay seller account already signed in to your desktop Chrome browser, so there is no API connection to authorize, and it uses Amazon and AliExpress as suppliers. It does not change eBay's fees. What it changes is the time column, one cost at a time:

1. Research time. Product Hunting researches an eBay seller's sold history or current listings and matches those products to Amazon or AliExpress. It can also search Amazon keywords, Best Sellers and store pages, or collect the products from an AliExpress store link, with filters for price, reviews, Amazon FBA and AliExpress Choice. When your selling limits are tight, you want evidence of demand before you spend a slot. A match is still a lead to check, not proof of profit.
2. Listing time. Create Listings reads the supplier product, prices it with your markup (for AliExpress, from the exact item and delivery cost of each variant), writes optional AI titles and AI descriptions from supplier facts, applies your description template and fills eBay's listing form in your seller session, up to 10 listings at once.
3. Repricing time. Stock Monitoring checks supplier stock and prices for your Ecomli listings and updates the eBay price and quantity, or ends out-of-stock items, using the markup, price-change tolerance and out-of-stock rule you set.
4. The cost of a risky listing. Safety Shield screens products, AI copy and the eBay draft for flagged brands and restricted items before publishing, with Soft, Balanced and Strong settings. It is a checkpoint, and the decision to publish stays yours.
5. Order time. Starter orders from the supplier manually. On Pro, you click Auto Order and Basic Auto Ordering places the Amazon or AliExpress order in your own browser. On Scale, once you turn it on, Advanced Auto Ordering runs on Ecomli's servers and places the supplier order for new eBay orders without a click, as long as each order is within your buying limits (a maximum purchase price and a maximum loss). Tracking Conversions then converts supported supplier tracking into eBay-compatible tracking. Orders outside your limits stay with you.
6. Bookkeeping time. The Overview dashboard shows eBay sales, fees, Promoted Listings costs, refunds, supplier costs and recorded profit by day or period, which puts the fee math from the top of this article next to your real numbers. That profit figure is only as complete as the supplier costs you record.

Most of these tasks run in your desktop browser while it is open, with Scale's Advanced Auto Ordering the one part that runs on Ecomli's servers. eBay is the only selling channel, and Scale adds 3 eBay account seats and a VA seat for sellers growing past one account. You can see how the automated workflow fits together, and Starter at $29 a month, Pro at $99 and Scale at $199 are laid out on the Ecomli pricing page if you want to compare what each plan covers.

Your first 60 days

A sequence that puts the learning first and the spending last:

1. Days 1 to 7: list what you own. Ten items from around the house. The aim is to complete the full loop once: photograph, list, sell, pack, ship and get feedback.
2. Days 8 to 21: find your category. Note which of the ten sold fastest and at what margin, then source more in that area on purpose.
3. Days 22 to 40: measure your minutes. Time yourself on ten more items and multiply by the volume your income target needs. That number, more than the sale price, tells you whether hand-sourcing works for you.
4. Days 41 to 60: decide your supply route. If the minutes work, keep hunting. If they don't, move to supplier-fulfilled listings and let software handle the monitoring and repricing, so volume isn't capped by your evenings.

If you are still weighing reselling against other options, see how it compares with the side hustles most people start with and other ways to earn extra income from home. Reselling gets you a first dollar quickly and costs more effort per dollar until you build a system around it.

Frequently asked questions

How much does eBay take from a sale of $1,000?

In most categories, $136.40: a 13.6% final value fee ($136.00) plus a $0.40 per-order fee. The fee is charged on the total sale, so sales tax and any shipping the buyer paid raise it. Books, movies and music pay 15.3%, or $153.40, and guitars and basses pay 6.7%, or $67.40.

How much does eBay take from a $100 sale?

In most categories, $14.00: a 13.6% final value fee ($13.60) plus a $0.40 per-order fee. Books, movies and music pay $15.70. Listing is free for your first 250 listings each month, then $0.35 each.

What is the cheapest site to sell stuff on?

A local sale paid in cash has no platform fee, so local pickup is usually the cheapest way to sell, as long as someone nearby wants the item. For shipped sales, compare each platform's percentage and per-order fees on the kind of item you sell. Our guide to reselling websites and their fees sets them side by side.

What is the most profitable item to resell on eBay?

There isn't one item that wins for everyone. The most profitable items for you are ones you can buy well below their recent sold price, that are light and hard to break, and that sell quickly. Product research in Seller Hub shows the average sales price and sell-through rate for any item, and our list of the most profitable items to sell on eBay is a starting point.

What is hot to resell right now?

Trends change quickly, so check current data rather than last month's videos. Search the item in Product research, look at the sales trend and sell-through rate, and confirm with sold listings. An item with a steady sell-through rate at a price that clears your fees and shipping is a better bet than one that spiked for a week.

How do I find average selling prices for refurbished electronics on eBay?

Open Product research in Seller Hub, search the exact model and filter by item condition. It shows the average sales price and sold price range from eBay sales data. Then check sold listings for the same storage size and condition grade, because Certified - Refurbished, Good - Refurbished and Used items sell at different prices.

Can I resell on eBay without holding inventory?

Yes. In the supplier-fulfilled model you list a product a supplier holds and buy it only after a buyer has paid you. That removes the cash tied up in unsold stock and the storage problem. In exchange you take on the job of keeping listings in line with the supplier's stock and price.

What happens when a supplier runs out of stock after a sale?

You end up cancelling the order or buying the item elsewhere at a worse price, and cancellations affect your seller standing. That is the main reason to monitor supplier stock rather than checking it when you remember. Ecomli's Stock Monitoring checks supplier stock and prices for your Ecomli listings and, by your rules, sets the quantity to 0 or ends the listing when the supplier runs out, so the problem is far less likely to reach a buyer.

How many listings do I need before sales feel steady?

There is no fixed number, and anyone quoting one is guessing. Sell-through depends on category, price and competition more than on catalog size. Track how many of your live listings sell each month, and grow the catalog in the categories where that rate is highest.

Do I have to pay tax on reselling income?

Income from reselling is generally taxable. eBay's Form 1099-K page lists the 2025 reporting threshold as gross payments over $20,000 and more than 200 transactions, and that threshold only decides whether eBay sends the form. Keep records of what you paid for each item, your shipping costs and your fees from day one, and confirm your position with a qualified tax professional.

Is reselling on eBay still worth starting in 2026?

Buyer demand isn't the constraint. US retail e-commerce sales were $340.2 billion in the second quarter of 2026, 17.1% of all retail sales and 12.2% more than a year earlier, according to US Census Bureau estimates. The constraint is margin and time per sale. If you can source at a real discount, or cut the listing and monitoring work so volume isn't limited by your evenings, the model still works. If you can do neither, the hours will outrun the income.

Sources

• eBay: Selling fees
• eBay: Product research
• eBay: Item condition by category
• eBay: Selling limits
• eBay: Form 1099-K and other US tax forms
• US Census Bureau: Quarterly retail e-commerce sales

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