How to calculate your real eBay profit (UK, 2026)
If you work out your eBay profit from what eBay shows you, it is almost certainly wrong. eBay knows what the buyer paid and what it charged you. It has no record of what you paid your supplier — and that missing figure is usually the largest number in the calculation.
This guide sets out the whole sum, in the order you should do it, with the traps that catch most UK sellers.
What is the correct formula for eBay profit?
Real profit on one order is:
What the buyer paid − eBay's fees − your postage − what the item cost you − any refund
Five parts. eBay can supply three of them. The fourth — cost of goods — it has never seen, because you bought that stock somewhere else. The fifth usually arrives weeks later.
Why is my eBay profit wrong?
Four reasons, in the order they cost sellers money.
1. You are reading revenue, not profit
Seller Hub shows sales. A £25 sale is £25 of revenue. After fees, postage and the item's cost it might be £8, or it might be nothing. The two numbers look similar on a dashboard and are nothing alike in a bank account.
2. Fees are charged on postage too
This one surprises people. As a UK business seller, the final value fee applies to the total the buyer paid — item plus the postage you charged them. Charge £3.95 postage and eBay takes its percentage of that as well.
3. There are four fees, not one
Most sellers think of the final value fee and stop. For a UK business seller there are four: the category final value fee, a per-order fee, a regulatory operating fee, and VAT on top of all of them.
4. A missing cost counts as zero
This is the quiet one. If an order has no supplier cost recorded against it, most spreadsheets treat the cost as nought — which makes the order look like pure profit and flatters your total. Six orders like that in a month and your reported profit is meaningfully overstated.
What does eBay actually take from a UK sale?
It depends entirely on whether you sell as a private or a business seller, and the difference is total.
Private sellers have paid no final value fee, no per-order fee and no regulatory fee on ordinary domestic sales since 1 October 2024. eBay charges the buyer a Buyer Protection Fee instead.
Business sellers pay all four:
| Charge | What it is |
|---|---|
| Final value fee | Category-based, on item plus postage. Roughly 6.9% to 14.9%, and many categories are tiered — a higher rate up to a threshold, then a lower rate above it. |
| Per-order fee | £0.30 on orders up to £10, £0.40 above. |
| Regulatory operating fee | 0.35% of the total sale. |
| VAT | 20% on all of the above. Reclaimable if you are VAT-registered on the standard scheme. |
Selling internationally adds more, and promoted listings add whatever ad rate you set.
Check your own categories. eBay changes its fees, and did so during 2026. Use our eBay fee calculator for the current rates by category, or eBay's own fee pages.
Working through one real order
A kitchen item, sold for £22.00 with £3.50 postage, business seller, 12.9% category.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Buyer paid (item + postage) | £25.50 |
| Final value fee, 12.9% of £25.50 | −£3.29 |
| Per-order fee | −£0.40 |
| Regulatory operating fee, 0.35% | −£0.09 |
| VAT at 20% on those fees | −£0.76 |
| Your postage label | −£3.10 |
| What you paid your supplier | −£9.51 |
| Real profit | £8.36 |
Two things stand out. The largest single deduction is the supplier cost, which eBay has no record of. And the sale price alone told you almost nothing useful.
What about refunds and returns?
A refund reverses the sale but it does not automatically reverse everything else. Depending on the circumstances you may get some fees back, you will not get the postage label cost back, and the stock may come back damaged or not at all.
The bigger accounting problem is timing: the refund lands weeks after the sale it relates to, often in a different month. If your profit figures are monthly, a refund in March for a January sale distorts both months unless you match it back.
Which cost applies when you buy the same thing twice?
If you restock the same product at a different price, you need a rule.
FIFO — first in, first out — treats the oldest stock as sold first. Buy ten at £4 and later ten at £6, and your first ten sales carry the £4 cost.
A rolling average blends them into one figure. It is simpler, and it hides things: a bad buy at a high price disappears into the average rather than showing up as the poor-margin batch it was.
For a reseller buying the same lines repeatedly, FIFO tells you which batch cost what. That is the difference between knowing a product makes money and assuming it does.
How do I check one order in two minutes?
- Open the order in Seller Hub and note what the buyer paid, including postage
- Find the fees eBay charged on that order
- Find what you paid for the postage label
- Find the supplier order for that item — this is the part that takes the time
- Subtract everything from what the buyer paid
Step four is why nobody does this for every order. It means finding a confirmation email from weeks ago, on a different platform, under a different order number. Fine once. Impossible four hundred times a month.
If you want the arithmetic done for you, the fee calculator handles a single order, including the reverse question: tell it the profit you want and it gives you the price to list at.
The honest version of a profit figure
There is a difference between a number that is complete and a number that is confident.
If six of your forty-seven orders have no cost recorded, any total including those six is wrong — and wrong in the flattering direction. The useful thing to do is say so: six of forty-seven orders have no cost, not counted here. A figure with a stated gap can be trusted. A clean-looking figure hiding six unknowns cannot.
That is the rule SellerControl is built on. It captures your supplier cost automatically, matches it to the eBay order, and flags anything missing rather than counting it as zero.
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate profit on eBay?
Take what the buyer paid including postage, then subtract eBay's fees, your postage label, what you paid your supplier, and any refund. What remains is real profit.
Does eBay show profit?
No. eBay shows sales, fees and payouts. It has no record of what you paid your supplier, so it cannot calculate profit.
Do eBay fees include postage?
Yes. For business sellers the final value fee is charged on the total the buyer paid, which includes the postage they were charged.
What is a good profit margin on eBay?
It varies by category and sourcing. The more useful question is whether you know your margin per order at all — most sellers who check for the first time find some lines losing money.
Is eBay profit taxable in the UK?
If you are trading — buying to resell rather than clearing your loft — then yes. How you register and report depends on your circumstances, which is a question for an accountant.