The short version
- Sellhelm publishes a free eBay fee calculator at /ebay-fee-calculator, usable by anyone regardless of whether they ever buy Sellhelm itself.
- The arithmetic it performs is not proprietary or secret - eBay's own fee structure is published, and the calculation is the same regardless of who builds the tool that performs it.
- A free tool published without a paywall is a real, checkable thing - the calculation can be verified directly against eBay's own published fee rates, not simply trusted on faith.
- Using it costs nothing and requires no account - the only genuine reason not to use a free, correct calculator is not knowing it exists.
- This isn't an argument that every free tool a company publishes is equally trustworthy - it's an argument for checking the specific calculation against a primary source, which this piece shows how to do.
What Sellhelm's own free calculator actually does
Checked 26 September 2026: our piece on inside a pricing engine covers the calculation itself in full - working backwards from a chosen return, through the final value fee, the per-order fee, the regulatory operating fee and VAT, to the exact eBay sell price that delivers it. Sellhelm's own fee calculator performs precisely this calculation, published openly at a specific URL, with no account, no email address and no payment ever required to use it at all.
Why publishing this openly, rather than behind a paywall, makes sense
The underlying calculation isn't a trade secret - eBay's own fee structure is published on its own help pages, and the arithmetic that turns those published rates into a specific sell price is a genuine, real piece of maths, but not remotely a proprietary one. Keeping it locked behind a paywall would gain very little competitively in practice, since any seller with a calculator and eBay's published rates could work it out by hand given enough patience. Publishing it openly instead does something more useful: it lets any seller, using any stock tool or none at all, get the correct number for their own specific product without needing to trust a company's marketing claims about accuracy - the calculation itself is right there, checkable directly.
How to actually verify a calculator like this is correct
The genuinely useful habit, for any free calculator from any company, is checking its output against eBay's own published fee rates directly, rather than trusting a company's own claim of accuracy. eBay's own fees page states the current final value fee rates by category, the per-order fee thresholds, and the regulatory operating fee rate - a seller can take a single, simple example, work it through by hand using those published figures, and confirm any calculator's output matches. This takes a few minutes once, and turns "I trust this company's calculator" into "I checked this specific calculation myself and it's correct" - a genuinely stronger position to be in before relying on any tool for real pricing decisions.
The actual rates worth checking a calculator against, for furniture specifically
Checked 27 September 2026, directly against eBay's own fees for business sellers page, last updated by eBay on 4 August 2026: Furniture specifically carries a tiered final value fee, not one flat percentage - 10.9% on the portion of a sale up to £500, dropping to 7.9% on the portion between £500 and £1,000, and 3% on anything above £1,000. On top of that sits the per-order fee, £0.30 for orders of £10 or less and £0.40 above that, though Home, Furniture & DIY specifically benefits from a reduced 10p per-order fee on orders up to £10, and a separate regulatory operating fee of 0.35% applies to the total sale value regardless of category. These are the actual, current figures worth plugging into any calculator's own test case - a generic, made-up percentage proves a calculator can do arithmetic; the real, tiered furniture rate proves it handles the specific structure a furniture seller's own sales actually fall under. The reduced 10p per-order fee that applies specifically to Home, Furniture & DIY orders up to £10, in place of the ordinary 30p rate other categories carry, is a further, easily-missed detail worth checking any calculator applies correctly for this category rather than simply assumed to be automatically handled.
Why a company benefits from publishing a genuinely useful free tool
It's worth being honest about why Sellhelm publishes this calculator despite it costing nothing and requiring no purchase - a genuinely useful, accurate free tool is itself a real, checkable demonstration of the same fee-calculation logic Sellhelm's own paid pricing engine performs automatically for every product in a shop, covered in our piece on the pricing engine linked above. A seller who tries the free calculator and finds it accurate and genuinely useful has real, direct evidence of how Sellhelm actually thinks about this specific problem, before ever paying for anything - a far stronger basis for trust than a marketing claim alone.
Why this isn't a blanket endorsement of every free tool
None of this is a claim that every free calculator published by every company is automatically trustworthy - a free tool with no way to verify its underlying assumptions, or one that quietly uses outdated fee rates without updating them as eBay's own rates change, is a genuinely different, weaker proposition. The useful test, covered above, is checking a specific tool's output against eBay's own current published rates directly - a test that applies equally to Sellhelm's own calculator and to any competitor's equivalent tool, and one worth actually doing rather than assumed unnecessary because a tool looks polished.
What the calculator honestly doesn't cover
Sellhelm's own calculator FAQ states this plainly and directly rather than leaving it to be quietly discovered later: it covers eBay's fees and the item's cost, and nothing else - returns, refunds and a seller's own time are deliberately not included, since a genuine, realistic allowance for those varies meaningfully by category and by seller rather than being a fixed, universal figure any calculator could honestly claim to actually know in advance. Our piece on the hidden costs that quietly eat a "healthy" margin covers the fuller list of costs worth adding on top of the calculator's own output before treating a number as a genuinely complete picture of what a specific product actually keeps.
Why it uses "return on spend," not markup
The calculator's own output is framed as return on spend - profit as a percentage of the total cost, including delivery paid - rather than markup, which is calculated against the sell price instead and, worth knowing plainly, produces a systematically more flattering-looking number for the identical underlying situation. A 25% return on spend and a 25% markup are not the same profit at all - the calculator's choice of return on spend specifically avoids the more optimistic-looking markup figure, on the basis that the honest question is what a seller actually keeps relative to what they spent, not a percentage calculated against a number that includes the profit itself as part of its own base.
The one small figure a hand calculation most commonly misses
When checking a calculator by hand, the regulatory operating fee is the detail most easily forgotten, precisely because it is small and flat rather than tiered or category-specific like the final value fee itself. At 0.35% of the total sale value, it adds a genuinely small amount to any single order, but it applies to every sale regardless of category, and a hand calculation that carefully works through a category's own tiered final value fee percentages while quietly forgetting this separate, flat addition will land close to a calculator's real output without ever quite matching it exactly. Checking specifically for this fee's inclusion, rather than simply assuming any small remaining discrepancy is nothing more than ordinary rounding error, is worth doing deliberately the very first time a calculator's own output is genuinely verified by hand.
Why the date on a fee page matters as much as the number itself
Checked 28 September 2026: eBay has changed its own published fee rates more than once across the period this blog has been written, which means the specific figures quoted throughout this piece are only as reliable as the date they were last actually checked against eBay's own live page - stated explicitly above as 4 August 2026 for the specific rates cited here. A seller checking any calculator's accuracy should apply the same discipline in reverse: confirming the date eBay's own fees page itself was last updated, visible directly on that page, rather than assuming a rate quoted anywhere, including in this piece, remains current indefinitely without ever needing a fresh check.
A worked example
A seller, sceptical of a calculator published by a company trying to sell them software, tests it directly on a genuine furniture sale: a £180 sideboard, £15 postage, sitting entirely within the 10.9% Furniture tier since the total stays under £500. Working it through by hand: the final value fee is 10.9% of £195, plus the £0.40 per-order fee for an order over £10, plus the separate 0.35% regulatory operating fee on the same £195 total - three genuinely separate charges, each easy enough to under-count by hand if even one of them is quietly skipped or miscalculated. Both the hand calculation and the published calculator arrive at the identical sell price for a chosen 25% return once all three are correctly included - the calculator's output checks out, not because the seller trusted the company that built it, but because they verified the specific number themselves against eBay's own real, current, furniture-specific rates. That verification, done once, is worth more than any marketing claim the tool's own page could have made about its own accuracy.
Questions people ask
Is Sellhelm’s eBay fee calculator really free to use?
Yes - it’s published at /ebay-fee-calculator with no account, email or payment required, and works whether or not you ever buy Sellhelm itself.
How can I check that a fee calculator is actually giving correct numbers?
Work through one example by hand using eBay's own published fee rates from its fees page, and compare the result against the calculator's output directly.
Why would a company publish a free tool that doesn’t require a purchase?
It's a genuine, checkable demonstration of the same calculation logic behind the paid product, and a stronger basis for trust than a marketing claim alone.
Should every free calculator from a software company be trusted automatically?
No - the useful habit is checking a specific tool’s output against a primary source like eBay’s own fees page, not assuming accuracy simply because a tool exists and looks polished.