eBay & Amazon fee calculator
What you actually keep on a sale, after the marketplace fee, the postage you really paid, packaging and VAT - with every deduction shown separately, so you can see which one is eating the margin.
One sale is easy. Two hundred is the problem.
This works out a single item. What it cannot tell you is which of your products are quietly losing money every week, or that you are down to two of your best seller.
StockRoom keeps cost and sale price against every product, so the margin is worked out once and stays right - and it tells you what has dropped below its minimum before a customer finds out for you.
Try StockRoom freeNo card, no sign-up to start. Your first 50 products are free for good.
Why the number is usually worse than people expect
Three things account for almost all of the surprise:
- The fee is charged on postage as well as the item. Offer “free delivery” at £24.99 and the fee is on £24.99. Charge £21.50 plus £3.49 postage and the fee is on £24.99 again. The marketplace takes its cut of the whole amount the buyer paid.
- Postage paid is not postage quoted. The label costs what it costs on the day, and a parcel one centimetre over a size band can cost half the profit.
- VAT comes off the top. If you are registered, a fifth of the sale was never yours. Sellers who cross the threshold mid-year often keep pricing as though it still is.
Questions people actually ask
Are these fee percentages right for my account?
They are the common defaults, and they are deliberately editable, because marketplace fees change and vary by category, by country and by whether you have a shop subscription. Take the real percentage from your last invoice and type it in - that number is right for you, and no calculator's built-in table can be.
Should I tick VAT registered?
Only if you are. Below the threshold you do not charge output VAT, so ticking it would show a fifth less profit than you really make. If you are registered, you may also be able to reclaim VAT on the item cost and the postage - this calculator does not assume that, because it depends on your supplier and whether you have a valid invoice.
What about returns?
A return usually costs you the outbound postage, the packaging and often the fee, and you may not be able to sell the item again at full price. If one sale in twenty comes back, the honest way to see it is to reduce the profit here by roughly the cost of a return divided by twenty - not by 5% of the price, which is the mistake most people make.
Why is break-even higher than my cost plus postage?
Because the fee is a percentage of whatever you charge, so raising the price to cover costs also raises the fee. Break-even is the price where everything is exactly covered once that circularity is accounted for.