Is selling on eBay still worth it in 2027?

Is eBay actually growing again?

Yes. eBay is growing again today, and the rebound is now too broad and too persistent to dismiss as one good quarter.

In Q2 2026, eBay processed $22.4 billion of gross merchandise volume, up 15% year over year. Revenue also rose 15% to $3.1 billion. U.S. GMV jumped 24%, while international GMV increased 6%, according to eBay's latest financial results.

The trajectory is more interesting than the latest percentage alone. Quarterly GMV went from $19.5 billion in Q2 2025 to $20.1 billion, $21.2 billion, $22.2 billion and then $22.4 billion over the following four reported quarters. We now have a sequence rather than an isolated spike.

That reverses several years of decline and stagnation. eBay had 163 million active buyers in early 2021 and quarterly GMV above $24 billion during the pandemic boom. By early 2022, active buyers had fallen to 142 million and quarterly GMV to $19.4 billion. Full-year GMV later settled around $75 billion in 2024.

eBay has still not recovered its pandemic buyer count, but transaction volume is moving clearly upward again.

Period	Active buyers	GMV	What was happening
Q1 2021	163M	$24.1B quarterly	Pandemic boom
Q1 2022	142M	$19.4B quarterly	Sharp contraction
2024	134M year-end	About $75B annual	Marketplace stabilized
Q2 2025	134M	$19.5B quarterly	Growth returned
Q2 2026	136M	$22.4B quarterly	GMV +15% YoY

Are people actually coming back to eBay?

A few buyers are coming back to eBay, but the bigger change is that eBay's existing buyers are spending much more.

Active buyers reached 136 million in Q2 2026, compared with 134 million a year earlier. That is only 2% growth and still leaves eBay well below the 163 million active buyers it reported during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, GMV rose 15%.

The gap between those two growth rates tells us much more than the buyer count on its own. If we divide quarterly GMV by active buyers, eBay generated roughly $146 of GMV per active buyer in Q2 2025 and about $165 one year later. The measures cover slightly different periods, so we should not treat this as a formal customer-spending metric, but the direction is hard to miss: commerce per active buyer increased by roughly 13%.

This also explains why eBay looks healthier without suddenly feeling culturally dominant again. Millions of new shoppers have not flooded onto the site. A fairly stable audience is simply producing more transactions.

Is eBay's recent growth actually real?

Yes. eBay's current growth holds up even after we strip out the easiest explanations such as currency movements and its newest acquisition.

Q2 2026 GMV grew 15% as reported and 14% on a currency-neutral basis, so foreign exchange contributed only a small part of the increase.

Depop cannot explain the quarter either. eBay completed that acquisition after Q2 had already ended. Tise, another recent acquisition, is much smaller: eBay reported 136 million active buyers both including and excluding Tise once the figures were rounded.

The U.S. numbers give us another useful test. Domestic GMV rose 24% in Q2. Normal inflation cannot explain anything close to that increase.

So yes, eBay's comeback is commercially real. What we should not assume is that every category is enjoying the same recovery. eBay has spent years concentrating investment in areas such as collectibles, fashion, automotive and refurbished products, and those categories increasingly shape the marketplace's growth.

What actually sells best on eBay now?

eBay works best today for products that are used, scarce, collectible, refurbished, discontinued or difficult to compare perfectly with another seller's inventory.

More than 40% of eBay's sales now come from pre-owned and refurbished products. Fashion alone generates more than $10 billion of annual GMV. The company has also built authentication programs around categories such as sneakers, watches, handbags, jewelry, trading cards and coins.

Those categories fit eBay unusually well because buyers often search for something very specific.

Think about a replacement dashboard switch for a 2008 BMW, a PSA 10 Pokémon card, a discontinued Patagonia jacket or a twenty-year-old Canon lens. Condition matters. Exact model numbers matter. Year matters. Authenticity matters. Sometimes only a handful of suitable items are available anywhere.

eBay currently has about 2.6 billion live listings. For ordinary commodity shopping, that enormous catalog can feel messy. For someone hunting an obscure object, the breadth is exactly what makes the marketplace useful.

Is selling generic new products on eBay still worth it?

Usually no. Selling generic new products on eBay is a weak business in 2027 unless we have much better sourcing than the sellers around us.

Imagine twenty merchants offering the same mass-produced accessory. The product has the same specifications, the same stock photos and roughly the same delivery promise. Buyers quickly reduce the decision to price, shipping speed, feedback and placement in search results.

That is a miserable place to compete when eBay already takes 13.6% in final-value fees across many standard U.S. categories before optional advertising.

The competition also extends far beyond eBay. The same product may appear on Amazon, Walmart, Temu, AliExpress and dozens of independent stores. There is very little reason for the buyer to pay us a premium.

Generic products can still work when the seller has wholesale prices competitors cannot match, unusual liquidation inventory, exclusive distribution, smart bundles or a genuinely better fulfillment operation.

Without an advantage like that, we'd skip this model.

Have eBay seller fees become too high?

eBay fees are high enough to ruin mediocre products, although they can still be perfectly acceptable when the inventory has strong margins.

For U.S. sellers without a qualifying Store subscription, eBay currently charges 13.6% of the total sale in many categories, plus $0.40 per order above $10. The percentage applies to the total amount paid, including shipping and sales tax. Sellers also get 250 zero-insertion-fee listings each month before the usual $0.35 insertion fee starts.

Rates vary considerably by category. Trading cards are currently 13.25% up to the relevant threshold. Sneakers above $150 are 8% with no per-order fee. Books, movies and much of music reach 15.3%. Eligible Store subscribers receive lower rates in many categories.

We can see the problem immediately on an ordinary $100 transaction. At 13.6% plus $0.40, eBay takes $14 before we have paid for inventory, postage supplies, returns, employees or our own time.

Whether $14 is expensive depends entirely on what eBay helped us sell.

Simplified U.S. order	eBay final-value fee at 13.6%	With illustrative 5% promotion	Platform + ad cost
$30	$4.48	$5.98	19.9%
$100	$14.00	$19.00	19.0%
$300	$41.20	$56.20	18.7%
$1,000	$136.40	$186.40	18.6%

Are eBay Promoted Listings becoming unavoidable?

In crowded eBay categories, Promoted Listings are getting close to an unofficial second marketplace fee.

eBay generated $570 million from first-party advertising in Q2 2026, up 25% from the previous year. Total advertising revenue reached $596 million, equivalent to 2.7% of marketplace GMV.

Compare the growth rates. eBay GMV increased 15%, while first-party advertising increased 25%. Sellers are spending on visibility faster than merchandise volume itself is growing.

Under eBay's General campaign model, sellers choose an ad percentage and usually pay it when a buyer clicks the promoted listing and makes a qualifying purchase within the attribution period. eBay also offers Priority campaigns that charge by the click.

That does not mean every seller needs advertising. A rare item with three comparable listings has very different visibility problems from a phone case competing with thousands of almost identical alternatives.

But sellers in crowded categories should now model advertising as a likely cost rather than mentally classifying it as some optional bonus feature.

Can cheap items still make money on eBay?

Cheap eBay items can still make money, but only when we can process them very quickly or combine them into larger orders.

Consider a $10 U.S. sale in a standard 13.6% category. eBay takes roughly $1.66 once we include the $0.30 fixed charge that applies to orders of $10 or less. Before advertising, postage, packaging and inventory, 16.6% of the sale is already gone.

The bigger problem is labor.

Photographing a $7 item can take almost as long as photographing a $70 item. We still have to identify it, write or check the listing, store it somewhere, retrieve it after the sale, package it and deal with any buyer questions.

A product bought for $2 and sold for $10 looks fantastic if we talk about markup. Once ten minutes of work and several dollars of transaction costs are attached to it, the hourly economics can look terrible.

Cheap inventory works much better when the workflow is repeatable. Trading-card scanners, multi-quantity listings, standardized envelopes, barcode systems and bundles can turn low-ticket sales into an efficient operation.

Can a small eBay reseller still make good money?

Yes. A small eBay reseller can still make very good money when the seller consistently buys inventory far below what eBay buyers are willing to pay.

It sounds obvious, but it explains far more about seller success than most listing advice.

Take three sellers who each generate a $100 sale. One paid $70 for a generic product. Another paid $25 for an overlooked vintage item. A specialist bought an obscure replacement component for $15.

Assume roughly $19 disappears through a standard 13.6% eBay fee, the fixed order fee and an illustrative 5% ad rate.

The first seller has about $11 left before fulfillment, returns, overhead and labor. The second has $56. The third has $66.

They use the same marketplace and face roughly the same platform costs. Their businesses barely resemble one another.

Example $100 sale	Generic reseller	Niche reseller	Specialist source
Selling price	$100	$100	$100
Inventory cost	$70	$25	$15
Approx. eBay + 5% ad cost	$19	$19	$19
Left before fulfillment, returns and labor	$11	$56	$66

Has AI made selling on eBay much easier?

Yes. eBay's AI tools have made listing noticeably easier, which is great for sellers but also makes basic listing skill less valuable as a competitive advantage.

eBay says more than 10 million sellers have used its AI features and more than 200 million listings have been created with those tools. Its Magical Listing system can use photographs and basic inputs to suggest titles, categories, descriptions and item details.

Specialist categories are becoming easier too. eBay's trading-card scanner can identify supported cards from photographs and surface historical pricing and population information. The scanner had already passed 30 million cumulative scans by Q1 2026 and continued expanding across major card-game categories.

A beginner no longer needs to understand every eBay field before creating an acceptable listing.

But everyone else gets the same AI.

That pushes the competitive advantage further toward product knowledge and sourcing. Knowing how to write a decent title matters less when software can do most of it. Recognizing an obscure vintage part at a flea market, spotting a fake collectible or understanding which discontinued electronics still have demand remains much harder to replicate.

Are collectibles still one of the best things to sell on eBay?

Yes. Collectibles remain one of eBay's strongest seller opportunities because the marketplace has unusually deep demand, searchable inventory and increasingly specialized infrastructure.

eBay has spent years building authentication, pricing and grading tools around collectibles. Eligible trading cards can use Authenticity Guarantee, while the company's PSA integrations and AI card scanner reduce some of the friction around identification, valuation and grading.

The high end is also becoming more important. Goldin, which eBay acquired in 2024, posted a record quarter in early 2026 that included a $16.5 million PSA 10 Pikachu Illustrator sale. We obviously should not use a multimillion-dollar card to represent ordinary sellers, but it shows how broad eBay's collectibles ecosystem has become. Someone can use the same corporate ecosystem for a $10 raw card and an eight-figure trophy asset.

The more interesting competitor is Whatnot.

For U.S. sellers, Whatnot currently charges an 8% commission in trading cards and several adjacent categories on the first $1,500 of the item price, plus 2.9% payment processing and $0.30. That can be cheaper than eBay's 13.25% trading-card fee before advertising.

Whatnot also excels at quickly moving inventory through live shows. eBay remains stronger for persistent search: a specific card can sit in the catalog until the exact collector searches for that set, grade or parallel.

Auctions still make sense here too, especially when a rare item's market value is genuinely uncertain. For ordinary collectibles with plenty of comparable sales, Buy It Now gives us more control. For very scarce cards, memorabilia or other assets with a concentrated group of serious buyers, an auction can reveal a price that would have been difficult to set confidently in advance.

Is used fashion still worth selling on eBay?

Yes, especially for searchable vintage and branded pieces, although cheap trend-driven fashion often has better homes elsewhere.

Fashion already generates more than $10 billion of annual GMV on eBay. U.S. fashion GMV grew 10% in 2025, and eBay has now bought Depop, one of the biggest specialist resale platforms for younger shoppers.

That acquisition tells us something about where fashion resale is going.

At the end of 2025, Depop had around 7 million active buyers and more than 3 million active sellers. Nearly 90% of its active buyers were under 34. eBay gets access to a younger, discovery-driven fashion audience, while Depop sits inside a much larger resale group.

The two marketplaces still suit different inventory.

An exact 1990s Patagonia fleece, collectible sneaker, luxury watch or discontinued handbag works naturally on eBay because people search for precise items. Cheap outfits driven by aesthetics and social discovery can perform better on fashion-native platforms.

Are auto parts and refurbished electronics especially good on eBay?

Yes. Auto parts and refurbished electronics are two of the clearest examples of businesses that still fit eBay exceptionally well.

A buyer looking for a particular control module, interior trim panel or sensor for a fifteen-year-old vehicle often cannot walk into a normal shop and buy one. Compatibility is complex, manufacturers discontinue inventory and millions of older vehicles remain in use.

That creates exactly the kind of fragmented market eBay handles well. The company has spent heavily on fitment data and its Guaranteed Fit program to help buyers match parts with specific vehicles.

Refurbished electronics benefit from similar economics. eBay says more than 40% of its overall sales already come from pre-owned and refurbished merchandise. Its dedicated Refurbished program now covers more than 400 brands, and over the latest reported year another 100,000 products were added across refurbished and certified open-box programs.

The seller has to do real work here. Electronics may need testing and grading. Automotive sellers need compatibility knowledge. Unique inventory needs proper storage and SKU tracking.

Those complications discourage casual competitors.

Can eBay returns and buyer disputes wipe out your profit?

Yes. Returns and disputes can destroy an eBay seller's margin when products are expensive to ship, poorly inspected or described too casually.

If an item arrives damaged, faulty or materially different from the listing, eBay generally requires the seller to deal with the return even when the seller does not normally accept discretionary returns.

There is now another cost for chronically poor performance.

eBay increased the additional final-value fee applied to sellers who remain Below Standard for four consecutive months. Poor metrics can also reduce search placement, restrict access to advertising tools, lower selling limits and trigger payout holds.

That can turn into a nasty feedback loop for careless sellers. Weak inspection creates more returns. Returns cost money. Poor metrics can then make future transactions more expensive and harder to generate.

The exposure varies enormously by product.

A return on a lightweight $200 collectible may be annoying but manageable. Paying two-way shipping on a bulky $40 appliance can erase the profit from several successful transactions.

Is international selling still one of eBay's big advantages?

Yes. eBay's international reach is still extremely useful when an item is scarce outside the seller's home market.

eBay operates across more than 190 markets, and 44% of company revenue came from international operations in Q2 2026. Few resale platforms can offer that kind of immediate global demand.

The economics are strongest when geography separates supply from buyers.

A Japanese seller with region-specific collectibles, a European vintage dealer or an Asian seller with discontinued electronics may find customers thousands of kilometers away who simply cannot source the same item locally.

Cross-border selling does come with extra costs. For sellers registered in Thailand and many other Asia-Pacific markets, eBay currently applies a 1.30% international fee when the transaction meets its international-sale criteria. Currency conversion, shipping and international returns can add more.

That makes international selling much less appealing for ordinary products available everywhere.

Is eBay still good for someone clearing out their house?

Yes. Selling unwanted personal possessions remains one of the easiest cases where eBay is worth using.

The economics for a casual seller are completely different from the economics for a reseller.

Suppose an old camera has sat unused in a cupboard for five years. We are deciding whether to convert it into cash, not whether we can replenish that camera at a profitable wholesale price next week. Even after eBay fees, recovering $150 from something collecting dust can be an excellent outcome.

eBay's recommerce research reflects how common this is. In its survey of sellers, 86% said they source at least some of their pre-owned inventory from their own belongings.

Fees also vary dramatically by country and seller type.

Private sellers residing in the European Economic Area can currently sell domestically on eBay Germany without the ordinary final-value commission under the applicable conditions. Other markets use different structures, and business sellers generally face their own category-based fees.

U.S. sellers also have a less confusing federal tax-reporting situation than many expected a few years ago. The IRS currently requires third-party marketplaces to issue Form 1099-K when payments exceed $20,000 and the seller has more than 200 transactions, although forms can still be issued below those thresholds and some states have different rules. Receiving or not receiving the form does not by itself determine whether income is taxable.

Is the secondhand market big enough to keep eBay relevant?

Absolutely. The growth of secondhand shopping is now one of the strongest reasons eBay still matters.

According to eBay's latest large recommerce study, conducted by Forsta across roughly 16,000 consumers in nine countries, 89% of respondents expected to spend the same amount or more on pre-owned goods. Thirty-five percent said they buy pre-owned items at least monthly.

Price is the biggest reason. Eighty-one percent said saving money motivates them to buy secondhand. But the demand is broader than bargain hunting: 45% mentioned environmental benefits, 37% were searching for items they could no longer find new, and 36% wanted unique or collectible products.

Those motivations line up remarkably well with eBay's strongest categories.

The best confirmation comes from actual transactions rather than survey answers. More than 40% of eBay sales have come from pre-owned and refurbished products since 2024.

Are Vinted, Whatnot, Depop and Mercari making eBay obsolete?

No. Specialist resale apps are taking pieces of eBay's market, but none currently replaces everything eBay does well.

Whatnot is extremely good at live collectibles. Depop has a strong young fashion audience. Vinted makes casual clothing resale simple in many European markets. Mercari offers a straightforward general resale experience in the U.S.

Some also compete aggressively on fees. Mercari currently takes a flat 10% selling fee from U.S. sellers while charging buyers a separate 3.6% Buyer Protection fee. Whatnot's commission starts below eBay's standard rate across many categories, although payment-processing fees apply too.

The marketplaces also create very different buyer behavior.

Someone watching a Whatnot stream may buy because the show is entertaining and the auction creates urgency. A Depop shopper may discover a jacket while browsing an aesthetic. An eBay buyer may arrive with “Sony WM-D6C replacement battery cover” already typed into the search box.

eBay also increasingly owns pieces of the specialist ecosystem. It acquired collectibles marketplace Goldin, recommerce platform Tise and, most recently, Depop.

Can you still build a full-time business on eBay?

Yes. A full-time eBay business can still work today, but reaching high revenue is much easier than building a genuinely good business.

The challenge changes once we move beyond occasional flipping.

At scale, we need replenishable inventory, storage, SKU systems, cash for purchasing, fast photography, consistent grading, customer support and reliable fulfillment. A $100,000 inventory pile that takes three years to sell can be much worse than a $30,000 inventory base that turns several times per year.

Seller metrics start carrying more weight too. In the U.S., Top Rated status currently requires at least 100 transactions and $1,000 in sales to U.S. buyers over the preceding 12 months, alongside strict defect, unresolved-case, late-shipment and tracking standards. Eligible Top Rated Plus listings can receive a 10% discount on final-value fees when they also meet eBay's handling and return requirements.

Store subscriptions can become worthwhile at this stage as well. A Basic or higher Store includes more listings and reduced final-value fees in many categories. The saving is trivial at low volume and meaningful once monthly GMV reaches five figures.

We would therefore judge an eBay business by contribution margin, sell-through and capital turnover rather than revenue screenshots.

Who has the best chance of succeeding on eBay in 2027?

Sellers with unusual product knowledge or unusual access to inventory have the best chance of making eBay genuinely worthwhile in 2027.

A mechanic who knows which used modules are valuable can have a stronger eBay advantage than an experienced digital marketer. The same applies to a collector who can identify underpriced cards, a camera technician who can test lenses, an estate-sale buyer who understands antique brands or a liquidator with access to business electronics.

All of those sellers know something useful before they open eBay.

eBay's own recommerce research gives us a small clue here. Passion is especially common among sellers in specialist categories: 45% of surveyed trading-card sellers mentioned sharing their passion as a reason for selling, compared with 37% in collectibles and 35% in antiques.

Passion by itself obviously does not pay the bills. The useful part is what often comes with it: faster identification, better condition grading, more confident pricing and better sourcing.

So, is selling on eBay still worth it in 2027?

Yes, selling on eBay is still worth it in 2027, especially for used goods, collectibles, parts, refurbished products, discontinued items and other inventory where knowledge or sourcing creates a real margin.

The marketplace itself is currently in much better shape than it was a few years ago. GMV reached $22.4 billion in the latest reported quarter, up 15%. U.S. GMV grew 24%. Active buyers edged up to 136 million. More than 40% of eBay sales already come from pre-owned and refurbished goods.

Seller economics are less generous than those marketplace numbers might suggest. A standard U.S. seller can start around a 13.6% final-value fee in many categories, and eBay's first-party advertising revenue is now growing faster than GMV. Once sourcing, shipping, returns and labor enter the calculation, generic inventory can run out of margin very quickly.

That gives us a much clearer dividing line.

A $20 vintage object that reliably sells for $100 can absorb eBay's fees. So can a rare trading card, a refurbished laptop, a discontinued camera lens or a car part that buyers struggle to find locally. eBay provides something valuable in those transactions: access to a huge pool of people searching for unusual inventory.

A generic $22 product selling for $30 is a completely different proposition. Marketplace fees, advertising and fulfillment leave too little room, while identical competitors can appear almost instantly.

eBay therefore remains a strong marketplace, but being “an eBay seller” is no longer much of a business idea on its own.

The business is finding inventory people want at a price that leaves us enough profit. When we can do that consistently, eBay is still one of the best distribution channels in the world for strange, scarce and secondhand products.