New eBay fees raise prices yet again

eBay has recently announced new seller fee prices to take effect at the end of March. While they announced “lower insertion fees”, if you are selling something that sells for between $50 and $1500, your total fees will end up much higher.

The new fee structure will have no listing fees for the typical auction seller. The old way was usually $0.15. Both assume you start your auction at $0.99. The old final value fees had a tiered structure where you pay 8.75% for the first $25 and then 3.5% for $25-$1000 and so on. The new fees have a flat 9% final value fee but with a maximum of $50.

The following table shows how the total fees will change. It assumes you start your auction at $0.99.

Sale Price Old Fee New Fee
$10 $1.03 $0.90
$25 $2.43 $2.25
$50 $3.21 $4.50
$100 $4.97 $9.00
$250 $10.22 $22.50
$500 $18.97 $45.00
$1000 $36.47 $50.00
$1500 $43.96 $50.00
$2000 $51.46 $50.00


So unfortunately, most items you sell will have much greater fees, especially around the sweet spot range of $100-$500 where fees are about double to triple what they were. eBay has done this before where they announced the lowering of insertion fees but in reality it is an increase in total fees.