When you’re selling on eBay, it’s really important to be able to be able to calculate your fees and profit on a particular transaction.
Sadly, there’s no such calculator on eBay itself, and the information can be hard to get hold of. eBay has also recently divorced itself from Paypal so that has added extra confusion. If you don’t have a good grasp of what they are, it’s hard to work out how much money you’re making.
That’s why we’ve created an eBay fee and profit calculator, specifically for people in the UK. Whether you’re an occasional seller, or regularly flip items on eBay, this should be a useful tool for you.
Download the free eBay profit and fee calculator
As the name suggests, it will perform standard calculations to show you how much of your sales proceeds are going to be taken as fees on both eBay and PayPal.
The tool is available for free, as a spreadsheet:
eBay Profit and Fee Calculator UK (Google Sheets) – updated May 2021
To use it in Google Sheets, you will need to simply open it up, and create your own copy (please do not request access) as follows:
You can also export it to Excel as follows:
We could have made this an online web-hosted version, but frankly a spreadsheet gives you more flexibility to compare different transactions and even customize it to your own tastes. And you have the ability to use it on your phone when you’re out and about – even if you’re offline (if you set up Google Sheets for offline access).
How to use the calculator
The calculator looks like this:
When you’ve made a copy, you can edit it. You only need to input items into the white boxes. The rest of the spreadsheet will make the automatic calculations for you.
The calculator will allow you to compare 3 transactions, which can be especially helpful if you want to see the different profit you’ll make selling the same item at different prices. I often use this where I’m listing an item, but am prepared to accept offers. I set one calculation for my target price, and then work out the minimum offer that I’m willing to accept.
The fields that you can input are:
- Purchase price: how much you paid for the item (including any postage costs). If you didn’t pay anything for the item, just leave it blank.
- Sale price: how much you expect (or hope?) to sell the item for.
- Does sale price include free postage?: eBay lets you either include free postage (it’s not free, you just end up paying it out of the price the customer pays), or add it on. Both methods have merits, but make sure you select the appropriate option so the calculator works correctly.
- Buy it now listing? these type of listings (as opposed to a standard auction) cost an additional 50p.
- Postage cost: The cost of your mail carrier (e.g. Royal Mail) delivering your parcel. Unless you’re offering free postage, the calculator assumes that your costs are what you are charging the buyer (which is good practice, people don’t like it when sellers try to make a mark-up on the postage).
- Packing materials: any costs of boxes, envelopes, sellotape etc.
Is the calculator up to date?
We use the calculator ourselves to do our selling on eBay, so we will try to keep the calculator up to date. You can always come back to this page to check you’ve got the latest version.
Although we try our best to keep this updated for any changes, we do not guarantee that this always reflects the very latest fees (see disclaimer below).
What are the fees for selling on eBay (UK)?
For most auctions, the eBay selling fee is 12.8% of the final value (which includes the postage cost if you are charging it to the buyer) plus an additional 30p per transaction.
For ‘buy it now’ listings, an extra 50p fee will be charged in addition to the 10% final value fee.
Other fees apply for certain categories (such as Motors), and for upgraded listings. The calculator only covers standard listings and is not designed to incorporate these additional features.
eBay sellers who operate premium accounts or who sell very high volumes may have different fee structures to the standard ones reflected in the calculator.
More information about eBay selling fees can be found here.
eBay is one of the biggest online marketplaces and it has many different fees (statistic source: Oberlo)
What are the Paypal Fees for selling on eBay (UK)?
Paypal used to charge 3.4% of the proceeds you receive from the buyer, plus 20 pence. However eBay now does the payment processing itself and does not use Paypal for sellers. Paypal fees are therefore no longer relevant – eBay increased its own charges as a result of doing this activity in-house.
Questions, comments, improvements, suggestions
As we’ve already said, this is a tool we created for our own benefit – we often sell things through eBay. But we wanted to open this tool up so it could be used by others too.
If you have any questions, comments, improvements or suggestions we’d love to hear them. Whether they’re about the tool, or more generally about selling on eBay. Put them in the comments below and we’ll reply to them!
Other useful eBay articles on this site:
- 4 Essential Tips for taking the Best eBay Photos
- eBay upselling – is it possible to make money doing it?
Disclaimer
You can appreciate that we don’t want our sharing of this tool to backfire on us. So, whilst we have provided this tool, we’re doing so on the basis that we won’t be responsible for any loss you might suffer as a result of any mistakes, or out-of-date information in it.
You are advised not to rely on the spreadsheet as being a completely accurate tool. Your individual fees may vary. You should do your own research according to your own personal situation and the item you are selling.