eBay dropshipping pricing: set prices that cover your fees

Fee facts last checked 20 September 2026 against eBay UK’s business seller fees page. Rates change and vary by category, so the examples below are examples, not your rates.

Every cost that comes off a sale

Start with the total the buyer pays, item and postage together, because eBay’s fees are worked out on all of it. From that total come:

1. The final value fee, a percentage that varies by category (for most, between about 9.9% and 12.9% for business sellers).
2. The per-order fee: £0.30 for orders of £10 or less, £0.40 above.
3. The regulatory operating fee, 0.35% of the sale.
4. VAT at 20% on those three, unless you are VAT registered and can reclaim it.
5. Your supplier’s price and any delivery you pay.
6. An allowance for returns and refunds, because some of them will cost you.

Add them up honestly and you know the smallest price that breaks even. Everything above that is your profit.

Markup, margin and return on spend

Three ways of describing the same profit give three different numbers, which is where sellers go wrong:

• Markup is profit as a percentage of what the item cost you. It ignores fees unless you add them in.
• Margin is profit as a percentage of the selling price.
• Return on spend is profit as a percentage of the money you actually spend on the item (its cost, including delivery you pay). It answers the question that matters: “for every £100 I put in, how much do I get back after everything?”

We price by return on spend, because it takes the fees out of the guesswork. Pick a target, such as 25% (spend £100, keep £25), and solve for the price that delivers it. It is not a straight multiplication, because the fees themselves grow with the price. The price has to be worked out so that after the fees on that price, you still land on your target.

Worked examples

These use a single final value fee of 12.9% (the top of eBay’s usual range), a 25% target return, and the buyer’s total including postage. “Cost” means what the item costs you in total, supplier price plus any delivery you pay.

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

Look at the first row. On a low-priced item the fixed per-order fee is a large share of the sale, so a small item needs a higher percentage on top of its cost than a big one. Try your own figures in the eBay fee calculator.

Why your category matters

The same £20.00 item that needs a £30.99 price at 12.9% needs £29.99 at 9.9%, for the same 25% return. A wrong category rate is a wrong price on every listing. Check your own category on eBay’s fees page, and remember some categories use tiers, with a lower percentage above certain amounts.

Floors, ceilings and price endings

• A floor stops a price ever going below the level where you lose money, even when a supplier’s price moves.
• A ceiling stops a misread supplier price from listing something absurdly high.
• Endings such as .99 are a habit, not a rule. Round up, never down, so rounding never eats your return.
• Pin the odd price. If you want a specific price for one item, set it, but keep watching what it now returns.

VAT

Not VAT registered: the VAT on eBay’s fees is simply a cost, as in the examples above. VAT registered: prices are worked ex-VAT, you charge VAT on sales and reclaim it on fees and costs, and the maths changes. Sellhelm handles both, and shows what registering would change for you. Whether and when to register is a question for an accountant or GOV.UK, not a pricing tool.

Doing it automatically

Doing this by hand once is fine. Doing it every time a supplier’s price moves, across a whole shop, is where mistakes and lost margin creep in. Sellhelm’s pricing solves for your target return on every product using eBay’s own fee rates for each item’s category, and holds any big change for you to check first. It is one way to do it; the method above works with a spreadsheet too.

Questions people ask