eBay.ca fee and profit calculator

How eBay.ca works out what you pay

An eBay.ca sale costs you two fees on every order: the final value fee (FVF), a percentage of the order, and a flat per-order fee. Everything else -- store subscriptions, Promoted Listings, the international fee and the Below Standard surcharge -- is added on top only if it applies to you. The calculator above stacks these in the same order eBay does, using the rates read from eBay.ca's own fee pages on 2026-10-17.

The final value fee is charged on more than the item price

eBay charges the FVF on the total amount of the sale: the item price, any shipping and handling you charge the buyer, and the sales tax eBay collects at checkout. For a Canadian buyer that tax depends on the buyer's province, not yours: 13% HST for Ontario, 14% HST for Nova Scotia, GST of 5% plus PST of 7% for British Columbia, and GST plus QST of 9.97% for Quebec. eBay remits that tax, so it is never your money, but you still pay the FVF on it. That is why the calculator asks for the buyer's province.

Without a store, most categories pay 13.6% on the total up to $7,500 per item and 2.35% on any portion above $7,500. The rate is applied to each band separately, like a tax bracket, so a large sale is not charged the higher rate on the whole amount.

Worked example: a $29.99 item with $12 shipping to Ontario

1. Item plus shipping: $29.99 + $12.00 = $41.99.
2. Ontario HST at 13% on $41.99 adds $5.46, so the order total eBay charges fees on is $47.45.
3. FVF at 13.6% of $47.45 = $6.45.
4. Per-order fee: the total is over $10.00, so it is $0.40.
5. eBay fees for the order: $6.85. If your postage costs $11.00 and the item cost you $9.00, you keep $41.99 - $6.85 - $11.00 - $9.00 = $15.14.

Had you priced on the item alone, you would have expected an FVF of about $4.08. Shipping and tax add almost $2.40 to the fee on this one order, which is the most common reason sellers find their eBay payouts lower than their spreadsheet.

The per-order fee and cheap items

Orders with a total of $10.00 or less pay a per-order fee of $0.30; anything above pays $0.40. It is charged once per order, not per item, so a buyer who combines three items into one checkout costs you one per-order fee instead of three. On low-priced stock the flat fee hurts: a $7.99 item with free shipping to an Ontario buyer has a $9.03 total, an FVF of $1.23 and a per-order fee of $0.30, so eBay takes $1.53 -- close to a fifth of the item price before you have paid for postage. Bundling small liquidation items into lots is usually the better listing.

Category exceptions the calculator covers

The category list in the calculator covers the main rate groups on eBay.ca's fee page, not every subcategory. If your category is not listed, use "Most categories" and check the official page for an exception.

The athletic shoes exception

Athletic shoes are not banded like other categories. When the total amount of the sale is $150 or more, the whole sale is charged 8% without a store (7% with one) and the per-order fee is not charged at all. Because the total includes shipping and tax, a $125 pair with $15 shipping to Ontario has a $158.20 total and qualifies: the fee is $12.66 instead of the $21.92 it would be at the under-$150 rate plus the per-order fee. If a pair is sitting just under the line, a few dollars more on the price or the shipping can lower the fee by more than you added.

Does an eBay.ca store pay for itself?

A store does two things to your costs: it lowers the FVF rate in most categories, and it raises the number of free listings. In exchange you pay a subscription every month whether you sell or not. The calculator offers the three tiers whose Canadian prices appear on eBay.ca's store fee page; the Starter and Enterprise tiers were not priced on the official pages read, so they are left out rather than guessed.

Break-even on the FVF alone

In most categories the store rate is 12.7% against 13.6% without a store, a gap of 0.9 percentage points on every dollar of order total (including shipping and tax). Divide the subscription by that gap to get the monthly order total where the store breaks even: a Basic store on yearly renewal at $19.95 needs about $2,217 a month in order totals; on monthly renewal at $24.95 it needs about $2,772. Below that, the store costs more than it saves on fees. In the worked example above, each $47.45 order saves $0.43, so about 47 such orders a month cover a yearly Basic store.

Check your category before doing this math. Books, movies and music pay 15.3% with or without a store, and guitars pay 6.7% either way, so in those categories a store saves nothing on ordinary sales. Coins are the opposite: 9% with a store against 13.25% without, so the break-even comes much sooner.

Where the store band matters: higher-priced items

The store band drops to 2.35% above $2,500, while a seller without a store pays 13.6% up to $7,500. On a $5,000 order total in most categories, no store means an FVF of $680.00; with a store it is $317.50 on the first $2,500 plus $58.75 on the rest, $376.25 in total. One sale of that size pays for a year of a Basic store.

Free listings

Without a store you get 250 zero insertion fee listings a month, then $0.30 per listing in most categories. A reseller putting up 400 new listings a month pays 150 x $0.30 = $45.00 in insertion fees without a store, more than a Basic subscription, before any FVF saving. Premium and Anchor charge the same FVF as Basic; their extra cost buys listing volume, so they only make sense if you list well past 1,000 fixed-price items a month.

Promoted Listings

General campaigns (cost per sale) let you choose an ad rate from 2% to 100% of the item's total sale amount -- the same tax-inclusive total the FVF uses. You are charged only if the promoted item sells within 30 days of a buyer clicking your ad, and that buyer does not have to come back through the ad to buy. At the minimum rate on the $47.45 example, the ad fee is $0.95. Enter your rate in the calculator to see it as a line item; it is charged on top of the FVF, not instead of it.

Priority campaigns work differently: you pay per click whether or not the item sells, with a daily budget you set. The calculator does not model priority campaigns because the cost depends on clicks, not on the sale. If you run them, divide a month of ad spend by the number of sales they produced and add that to your cost per item.

Selling to buyers outside Canada

An international fee is added when the buyer is outside Canada: 0.4% of the total for a buyer in the US and 1% for every other country. Canadian sales tax does not apply to these orders, so the calculator drops it when you pick a foreign buyer. eBay may still collect a US state sales tax from an American buyer, and that tax is part of the total the fees are charged on, so the real fee on a US order can be a little higher than shown. For the same $29.99 item with $12 shipping going to a US buyer, the total is $41.99, the FVF is $5.71, the international fee is $0.17 and the per-order fee is $0.40: $6.28 in eBay fees. The bigger cost on US orders is usually postage, so check the shipping you charge covers it.

The Below Standard surcharge

If your seller level drops to Below Standard at the monthly evaluation, eBay charges an additional 6% on the final value fees for sales in the following calendar month. The page's wording can be read two ways: as a share of the FVF dollar amount, or as extra points on the FVF rate. The calculator uses the second, more expensive reading (the surcharge rate times the order total), so it will not understate the cost; if your invoice shows the smaller amount, your real cost is lower. The usual way cross-listers get there is overselling: an item sells on another channel, the eBay quantity is not updated in time, and the eBay order has to be cancelled. Keep one inventory source and push the quantity to eBay from it -- set the eBay quantity to match rather than subtracting sales -- and use the identical SKU in eBay's Custom Label field on every channel, since a trailing space or a case difference is enough to break the match.

Frequently asked questions

Does eBay.ca charge its fee on the sales tax?

Yes. The FVF is charged on the total amount of the sale, which includes the GST, HST, PST or QST eBay collects for the buyer's province. An Ontario buyer adds 13% to the base the fee is charged on.

Is the per-order fee charged per item?

No, once per order. Orders with a total of $10.00 or less pay $0.30 and larger orders pay $0.40. Athletic shoe sales of $150 or more pay no per-order fee.

How many sales do I need before a Basic store is worth it?

In most categories, roughly $2,217 a month in order totals (shipping and tax included) on yearly renewal, or about $2,772 on monthly renewal, counting the FVF saving alone. If you list more than 250 items a month, the free listings bring that figure down.

Am I charged for Promoted Listings if the buyer did not click the ad?

For general campaigns you are charged when the item sells within 30 days of a click on your ad. If nobody clicked your ad in that window, there is no ad fee.

Why does the calculator not offer a Starter or Enterprise store?

Their Canadian prices were not on the official eBay.ca pages read for this site, and every figure here has to come from an official page. If you have another tier, check its FVF rates on your eBay invoice; if they match the store rates in the table, pick Basic with sales per month left at 0 and add your own subscription divided by your monthly sales to the result.

Sources: eBay.ca selling fees, eBay.ca store selling fees, Promoted Listings general campaigns. Estimates only.