eBay Best Offer · the arithmetic
Take it, unless a full-price sale is close to certain. The reason is arithmetic almost nobody does: a discount is partly paid by the fee you no longer owe, so it costs less than its face value — and the money you spent buying the item does not belong in the decision at all.
Full price The offer Item price $42.00 $35.00 Shipping the buyer paid $8.00 $8.00 ------- ------- Buyer pays $50.00 $43.00 Fee, 13.6% + $0.40 -$7.20 -$6.25 ------- ------- You receive $42.80 $36.75 Label and packaging -$7.00 -$7.00 ------- ------- Cash in hand $35.80 $29.75
The $7 you came down cost you $6.05, not $7. eBay's fee fell by $0.95 when the price did, so the marketplace paid that much of your discount for you — 86% of the face value reaches your pocket as a loss, and the rest never existed. The item cost sits outside this table on purpose: it is spent either way, and the section below explains why putting it in here leads people to the wrong answer.
| Offer | You receive | Profit | The discount costs | Odds that would justify refusing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $40 | $41.07 | $22.07 | $1.73 | 95% |
| $38 | $39.34 | $20.34 | $3.46 | 90% |
| $36 | $37.62 | $18.62 | $5.18 | 86% |
| $35 | $36.75 | $17.75 | $6.05 | 83% |
| $34 | $35.89 | $16.89 | $6.91 | 81% |
| $32 | $34.16 | $15.16 | $8.64 | 76% |
| $30 | $32.43 | $13.43 | $10.37 | 71% |
| $28 | $30.70 | $11.70 | $12.10 | 66% |
| $25 | $28.11 | $9.11 | $14.69 | 59% |
| $22 | $25.52 | $6.52 | $17.28 | 52% |
| $20 | $23.79 | $4.79 | $19.01 | 47% |
Read the last column as a question about your own item, not a prediction: refusing the $35 is a bet that more than 83 in 100 listings like this one go on to sell at the asking price. The threshold crosses half at $21.28 — above that offer you should refuse only if you are more than half sure of the full-price sale, and below it a less-than-even chance is already enough to justify holding on. Put your own ask, offer and costs in →
| Marketplace | Headline rate | Fee charged on | Cost of $1 off | Cost of $7 off |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Poshmark | $2.95 under $15, else 20% | item price only | $0.800 | $5.60 |
| eBay | 13.6% + $0.40 per order | item + shipping | $0.864 | $6.05 |
| Whatnot | 8% commission | item + shipping | $0.891 | $6.24 |
| Mercari | flat 10% | item + shipping | $0.900 | $6.30 |
| 10%, minimum $0.80 | item + shipping | $0.900 | $6.30 | |
| Etsy | 6.5% transaction | item + shipping | $0.905 | $6.33 |
| Depop | no selling fee (US/UK) | item + shipping | $0.967 | $6.77 |
The order is the surprise: the cheaper the marketplace, the more a discount costs you, because there is less fee for the price cut to save. The same $7 off costs $5.60 on Poshmark and $6.77 on Depop. Depop is still the better place to sell this item — it just gives you less help when you negotiate.
| Marketplace | Break-even offer | Room below the ask | As a discount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Depop | $12.12 | $29.88 | 71% |
| Mercari | $13.12 | $28.88 | 69% |
| $13.12 | $28.88 | 69% | |
| Etsy | $13.50 | $28.50 | 68% |
| Whatnot | $13.67 | $28.33 | 67% |
| Poshmark | $13.95 | $28.05 | 67% |
| eBay | $14.46 | $27.54 | 66% |
With $12 in the item, $6.40 of postage and $0.60 of packaging, this is the offer at which you break even. Accepting below it means paying a stranger to take your stock. Note that the floor is lowest exactly where a discount costs most: a low-fee marketplace lets you go further down before you lose money, while charging you more for each step down.
A relisted item with the same title is the same item in front of the same searches. The free title auditor on this site reads a title, flags the characters spent on words buyers do not type, and shows what the eighty are going on — and what the eighty characters are for sets out the rules it applies.
If the $12 item cost is a guess because the item came out of a box lot, there is a small paid lot break-even calculator, $1, that splits a lot price across what was in it. This page and the fee comparison are complete without it.
Hold out only if you think the chance of selling at the asking price is better than 83%. On a $42 item with $8 shipping, a $35 offer puts $29.75 in your pocket now against $35.80 if the full-price sale happens, so the offer is worth taking unless a full-price buyer is close to certain.
Less than the discount, because the fee is charged on what the buyer pays and a smaller payment carries a smaller fee. A $7 reduction on a $42 eBay item costs you $6.05, not $7 — eBay stops charging $0.95 of it. Every dollar you come down costs you $0.864.
The one that still covers what you paid for the item, the label and the packaging. On the worked order here — $12.00 of item cost, $6.40 of postage and $0.60 of packaging — that floor is $14.46 on eBay, which is $27.54 below the asking price. Below it you are paying a stranger to take your stock.
No, and this is the mistake that keeps items on the shelf. The money you spent is spent whichever button you press, so it does not belong in the comparison. Counting it makes holding out look better than it is: on this order it moves the threshold from 83% down to 75%, which is the difference between taking the offer and refusing it.
On 6 of the 7 marketplaces modelled here, nothing — relisting is free and the only cost of holding is the money sitting in the item. Etsy is the exception at $0.20 per listing. What relisting costs everywhere is the chance to change something: if the title is the reason nobody bid, relisting it unchanged buys another stretch of silence.
The opposite of what people expect. The higher the fee rate, the more of your discount the marketplace absorbs, so the same $7 off costs you $5.60 on Poshmark and $6.77 on Depop. The low-fee marketplace is still the better place to sell — it just gives you less help when you negotiate.
It does not tell you whether your item will sell. The last column of the ladder is a threshold, not a forecast: it says what you would have to believe to justify refusing, and the believing is yours. It does not price your time, model seasonality, or know what the item sold for last month. It says nothing about what any search engine or any marketplace's own recommendation system will do with a relisted item, because that is not knowable from here. It does not cover counter-offers, auction reserves, the offers eBay sends on your behalf to people watching, or whether a low offer deserves a reply. One thing only: the arithmetic of accepting a number, and the odds that would justify turning it down.