Your eBay sales figure is not your profit, and neither is your payout. Profit is what is left of the money a buyer paid you once eBay, the taxman, your supplier and the post office have each had their share. Here is the sum, line by line.
The formula
Profit = item price + postage charged − eBay's fees − what you paid for the item − postage you paid − other costs of the sale.
Two things are deliberately missing. Sales tax that eBay collects is not in it: eBay charges the buyer, keeps it and pays it to the state, so it was never your money — even though eBay's fee is worked out on a total that includes it. And VAT on a UK sale is only yours if you are not VAT-registered; if you are, a sixth of the VAT-inclusive price belongs to HMRC.
A worked example
An item sells on eBay.com for $34.99, the buyer pays $5.00 postage and 8% sales tax, the listing is promoted at 5%, the label costs you $4.80 and your supplier charged $11.50:
| Line | Amount | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer pays | $43.19 | item $34.99 + postage $5.00 + sales tax $3.20 |
| Final value fee | −$5.87 | on the whole $43.19 |
| Per-order fee | −$0.40 | |
| Promoted Listings ad fee | −$2.16 | 5% on the whole $43.19 |
| Sales tax (eBay pays it to the state) | −$3.20 | never yours |
| eBay pays you | $31.56 | |
| Buying price | −$11.50 | what your supplier charged |
| Postage label | −$4.80 | what you paid to ship it |
| Profit | $15.26 | 38.2% of the $39.99 you earned |
eBay's fees come to $8.43 — 21.1% of the $39.99 you earned — and the profit is $15.26. Switch the ad off and the same sale makes $17.42.
The same sale in the UK
A business seller on eBay.co.uk sells a £24.99 item with free postage, pays £3.10 for the label and £8.00 to the supplier. eBay's fees are £3.22 final value fee, £0.40 per-order fee and £0.09 regulatory fee, plus £0.74 VAT on those fees. Not VAT-registered, the profit is £9.44 (37.8%). VAT-registered, the fee VAT comes back but £4.17 of the price is VAT owed on the sale, so the profit is £6.01 (28.9%) — and the buying price should be entered without its VAT, since that is reclaimed too.
Five mistakes that inflate profit
- Taking the fee on the item price only. The final value fee is charged on postage and sales tax as well, so a fee worked out on the item price is too low on every order.
- Forgetting the per-order fee. $0.30–$0.40 an order is small on a $200 sale and a real share of a $9 one.
- Leaving out ad fees. Promoted Listings fees are booked separately from the sale and are easy to miss — and they are often the difference between a good and a bad month.
- Counting the payout as profit. A payout is cash after fees, before you have paid your supplier or your postage. It also mixes sales from different days with refunds and holds.
- Ignoring refunds and returns. A refund takes back the sale, eBay credits some fees but not all, and the item may not be resaleable. Profit on an order is only final once it can no longer be refunded — see refunds and fee credits.
Per order, not per month
Working profit out once a month from totals tells you whether the month was good, not which products made it so. The useful number is profit per order: it shows the item that loses money on every sale, the supplier whose price crept up, and the product that is only profitable without ads. That takes every fee on every order, which is tedious by hand and exactly what eBay's ledger already holds.
Open the eBay profit calculator Free, no sign-up — US and UK fees.
Baiord does this sum for every order automatically: it reads the sale and every fee from eBay, and you add the one thing eBay cannot know — what you paid your supplier. Baiord's profit formula in full.
eBay's own pages
The rates and rules in this guide were checked against these on 30 October 2026. eBay changes its fees from time to time; its pages are the final word.