eBay fees for UK sellers in 2026: final value fee, regulatory operating fee, promoted listings, and a worked example

eBay's UK fee structure changed more in the last two years than in the ten before. Private sellers stopped paying final value fees in October 2024 and buyers now pay a Buyer Protection fee instead; business sellers kept the percentage model but gained a per-order fee that depends on the order value, a regulatory operating fee and category rates that run from 6.9% to 14.9%. This guide is for business sellers, with the rates as published in October 2026.

The fees a business seller pays

Final value fee. A percentage of the total the buyer pays: item price plus postage plus any tax. The rate depends on the category. A selection:

Per-order fee. £0.30 on orders up to £10 and £0.40 on orders over £10, charged once per order however many items it contains. (Collectables and Home, Furniture & DIY orders of £10 or less pay £0.10.)

Regulatory operating fee. 0.35% of the total sale amount, added on top of the final value fee on every UK and EU sale. eBay introduced it in 2024 to cover the cost of marketplace regulation.

International fee. When the buyer's registered address is outside the UK: 1.05% for the Eurozone and Northern Europe, 1.8% for the US and Canada, 2% elsewhere, on the full sale. Orders shipped through eBay International Shipping are exempt.

Insertion fees. Without a Shop subscription every listing costs £0.30 in most categories, and a Good 'Til Cancelled listing renews, and is charged, every month. A Basic Shop (£27 a month excluding VAT) includes 250 fixed-price listings; Featured (£77) includes 1,500; Anchor (£437) includes unlimited fixed-price listings. Above the allowance the Basic rate is £0.10 per fixed-price listing.

Promoted Listings. General campaigns charge an ad rate you choose, from 2% upwards, on the total sale amount, when a buyer clicks a promoted listing and buys within 30 days. Priority campaigns are pay per click. Most sellers in competitive categories run general campaigns at 3% to 10%.

Dispute fee. £14 excluding VAT when a payment dispute is resolved in the buyer's favour and you are found responsible.

VAT on fees. eBay adds 20% VAT to every business-seller fee: final value, per-order, regulatory, international, Promoted Listings, Shops and listing upgrades. A VAT-registered business on the standard scheme reclaims it; a business on the Flat Rate Scheme or below the threshold cannot, so for them every fee is 20% dearer than the headline rate.

The worked example

A bamboo bathroom shelf sold for £45.00 with £3.95 postage, in Home, Furniture & DIY (11.9%), to a UK buyer, by a VAT-registered business running a 5% Promoted Listings campaign that was clicked before the sale. The seller pays £3.20 to post it and the unit cost £14.00 landed.

That is 30.1% of the £48.95 the buyer paid, or 36.1% of the net sale. eBay's fees together come to £8.85 (18.1% of the gross sale), which is a long way from the 11.9% most people have in mind. Without the promoted click the seller keeps £17.19.

Two details are easy to miss. The fees are charged on the postage too, so the £3.95 the buyer paid for delivery costs £0.48 in final value and regulatory fees before the carrier is paid. And the £0.40 per-order fee is trivial on a £45 order but is 4% of a £10 order, which matters for low-priced consumables.

For a seller who is not VAT registered the same sale has no output VAT, but the fees carry VAT that cannot be reclaimed: £10.62 instead of £8.85. They keep £48.95 − £10.62 − £3.20 − £14.00 = £21.13, though their £14.00 landed cost already includes VAT they could not reclaim either.

What about private sellers?

Private sellers pay no final value fee on most UK sales. Instead the buyer pays a Buyer Protection fee at checkout: £0.10 per item plus 7% of the first £20 of the item price, 4% of the part from £20.01 to £300 and 2% of anything above, up to £4,000. A private seller listing the same shelf at £45 would see the buyer pay £48.95 plus £2.50 in Buyer Protection, and would receive the full £48.95. If you trade as a business you must register as one; eBay's business seller policy and HMRC's rules both apply, and since January 2024 marketplaces report seller sales data to HMRC.

Reading your eBay statements

eBay deducts its fees from each sale before paying out, so the payout for an order is the buyer's total minus the final value, regulatory, per-order and ad fees for that order. Account-level charges such as Shop subscriptions and insertion fees appear on the monthly invoice and are taken from the next payouts. The transaction report (Payments > Reports) lists every sale, refund and fee with its order number, which is what you reconcile to, exactly as for an Amazon settlement.

Refunds reverse the final value fee in proportion to the amount refunded; the per-order fee and the regulatory operating fee are refunded on a full refund. Promoted Listings fees are refunded when the sale is cancelled or fully refunded within the rules.

Merchvio reads the eBay transaction report line by line and attaches each fee to its order, so the £14.74 above is the figure that appears against that order in the books, and a refund later changes it rather than disappearing into a monthly total.

The rates in this guide are eBay's published UK business seller fees as of October 2026, cross-checked across three independent guides dated April to August 2026 because the official table itself was not retrievable when this page was written. Category rates, tiers and allowances change; confirm yours on eBay's "Fees for business sellers" page before pricing.