Fee Calculation Methodology & Sources

Transaction scope

V1 models one item sold in one checkout/order in the US. Multi-item orders, returns, refunds, advertising fees, other buyer charges, and seller fee taxes are outside the estimate. It is not a platform settlement statement.

Seller revenue is item sale price plus buyer-paid shipping and, for eBay Live, buyer-paid handling. Estimated profit is seller revenue less platform fees, cost of goods, seller-paid shipping, packaging, and other seller costs. Profit margin divides raw profit by item sale price; it is unavailable at a zero sale price.

Estimated buyer sales tax enters the relevant fee bases but is never seller revenue. V1 does not calculate sales tax by state.

Arithmetic and rounding

The Fee Engine parses USD inputs into integer cents and applies exact rational rates to raw amounts. Percentage fee components and the fixed fee are added before payout and profit are calculated. Each displayed money value is then rounded independently, half-up, to two decimals. Displayed components can differ by one cent from the displayed total.

eBay Live commission is capped at $100 for this single item before processing fees. The low-value promotion changes only the fixed fee and requires an explicit opt-in for an item priced $10 or less through Dec 31, 2026. eBay's pricing and help pages use different item/order wording, so eligibility with shipping or tax above $10 is uncertain.

Minimum price

Reverse pricing calls the same forward Fee Engine at each candidate whole-cent item price. It checks rule breakpoints, the selected target, and the cent below the result. Break-even and target prices are solved independently. A result is unavailable when a lower unsupported interval could contain the answer; values above the V1 range are not claimed to have no mathematical solution.

Whatnot limits

Whatnot's commission uses item price and the current earned rate for the show category. Processing uses item price, buyer-paid shipping, and buyer sales tax. The tier must come from Seller Hub. A seller-confirmed final uniform commission rate can be supplied without stacking tier, Premier, or other percentage adjustments.

For potentially eligible items above $1,500, official documentation does not resolve how the high-value promotion interacts with earned tiers. The engine returns “Exact estimate unavailable for this combination.” Nonzero buyer-paid handling and uncertain transitional seller rates can also make the Whatnot estimate unavailable. Taxes on Whatnot commissions or processing fees in some jurisdictions are excluded, so estimated profit may be overstated.