What eBay actually charges: two real settlements
eBay's standard final value fee is 13.6% plus $0.40 an order for most categories. That part is easy to look up. What almost nobody explains is what the percentage is calculated on — and once you know, the effective rate makes a lot more sense.
We run a consignment fulfillment service, so we read settlement statements constantly. Below are two real ones, unedited, with every line accounted for.
The thing that catches people out
The percentage is applied to the total the buyer paid — item price, plus the shipping they were charged, plus sales tax. Not the item price on its own.
That matters more than it sounds. On a $12 item with $5 shipping and $1 tax, you're not paying 13.6% of $12. You're paying 13.6% of $18. The shipping and the tax get charged a selling fee just like the item does, even though the tax is money you never see and the shipping money is about to be spent on a label.
Settlement one: a $11.95 item
| Item price | $11.95 |
| Shipping charged to buyer | $4.95 |
| Sales tax | $1.18 |
| Order total | $18.08 |
| Sales tax, remitted by eBay to the state | −$1.18 |
| eBay transaction fee | −$2.86 |
| Shipping label | −$5.97 |
| Ad fee (promoted listing) | −$0.36 |
| Order earnings | $7.71 |
Check the fee against the formula: $18.08 × 13.6% = $2.46, plus $0.40 = $2.86. Exact.
Note it was calculated on $18.08, the whole order total, not on $11.95. On the item price alone the fee would have been $2.03. The shipping and tax added 83 cents to eBay's cut.
Now look at the shipping line. The buyer paid $4.95 for shipping. The label cost $5.97. That sale lost $1.02 on postage before anything else happened.
Out of $18.08 that a buyer handed over for a $11.95 item, $10.37 went to tax, eBay and the post office. The seller kept $7.71.
Settlement two: a $12.95 item
Nearly the same item price, a very different outcome:
| Item price | $12.95 |
| Shipping charged to buyer | $11.95 |
| Sales tax | $0.91 |
| Order total | $25.81 |
| Sales tax, remitted by eBay to the state | −$0.91 |
| eBay transaction fee | −$3.91 |
| Shipping label | −$9.45 |
| Order earnings | $11.54 |
The formula again: $25.81 × 13.6% = $3.51, plus $0.40 = $3.91. Exact, twice.
Two differences from the first sale are worth pulling out.
Shipping came out ahead. The buyer paid $11.95, the label cost $9.45 — a $2.50 surplus, where the first sale ran $1.02 short. Shipping isn't reliably a cost or reliably a margin. It's variance, and it swings either way on items of almost identical price.
There's no ad fee. The first item sold through eBay's promoted placement and paid an extra $0.36 for it. This one didn't. Promoted listing fees are per-listing and only charged when the listing sells through that placement, so they appear on some settlements and not others.
What this means for pricing
A few things follow from the two statements above.
- Your effective rate is above 13.6%. On sale one, the $2.86 fee against a $11.95 item is an effective 24% of the item price. That's what the $0.40 order fee and the tax-inclusive basis do to small items.
- Free shipping changes nothing about the maths. Listing at $24.90 with free shipping and listing at $12.95 plus $11.95 shipping produce the same order total, the same fee, and the same label cost. The only difference is what the listing page displays.
- Under-pricing shipping comes straight out of your margin. Sale one lost a dollar on postage. On a $12 item, a dollar is real.
- Cheap items are where fees hurt. The $0.40 per order is fixed, so it's 3.3% of a $12 item and 0.4% of a $100 one. Combined with per-item handling time, low-value inventory is much harder to make work than the headline percentage suggests.
A caveat worth stating
13.6% is the standard rate for most categories. Some categories differ, store subscriptions change the numbers, below-standard seller status adds a surcharge, and eBay adjusts its rates periodically. Check eBay's current selling fees for your own category before modelling anything you're going to act on.
What won't change is the basis. Whatever the percentage is, it's applied to what the buyer paid in total — and that's the part worth remembering.