Mercari Fees: What You Actually Keep
Mercari takes about $5.00 on a $50.00 sale. After the product, shipping and packaging, $21.50 is left — a 43% margin.
Selling something for $50.00 on Mercari costs $5.00 in platform and payment fees. Add $15.00 for the product itself, $6.00 to ship it and $1.00 to pack it, and the order leaves $21.50 — a margin of 43%. To break even, the same order would have to sell for at least $25.29.
Mercari takes a flat 10% of the item price plus shipping, and no separate processing fee — the buyer pays a service fee instead. Direct-deposit payouts cost $2 each, so batching payouts matters on small orders. The number that decides whether a product works here is not the fee percentage but what is left after fulfilment: that remainder is your entire budget for advertising, returns and profit combined. On this order it is $21.50, so any promotion costing more than that per sale loses money. The calculator below opens with the Mercari fee structure loaded — change the price, the cost and the shipping to your own.
Ecommerce Profit Calculator
Margin, Break-Even Price & ROAS
Results
Net Profit
+$0.00
Strong margin · Net Margin: 28.9%
Order Revenue vs Costs
Profit Summary
Platform Fee Amount
$3.58
Payment Fee Amount
$1.95
Return Reserve
$1.10
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Mercari fees and profit by sale price
Product cost held at 30% of the sale price, $6.00 shipping and $1.00 packaging on every row, 3% return reserve. Fixed fees hurt small orders most.
| Sale price | Mercari fees | Profit | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| $15.00 | $1.50 | $1.55 | 10% |
| $25.00 | $2.50 | $7.25 | 29% |
| $50.00 | $5.00 | $21.50 | 43% |
| $100.00 | $10.00 | $50.00 | 50% |
| $150.00 | $15.00 | $78.50 | 52% |
Frequently Asked Questions
- On a $50.00 order, $5.00 — that is 10% of what the buyer pays. Fees are charged on the total including shipping on most platforms, which is why offering "free shipping" and building the cost into the price raises the fee as well as the price.
- About $21.50 on these assumptions: $15.00 product cost, $6.00 shipping, $1.00 packaging and a 3% return reserve, with no advertising. That is a 43% margin. Spending anything on ads comes straight out of it — the break-even ad spend on this order is $21.50.
- At least $25.29 for this order, and that is before a single dollar of advertising or any of your own time. Below that price the fees and fulfilment cost more than the item brings in. It is worth calculating this before listing rather than after: the fee structure, not the product, is what decides the floor.
- On headline rate, Depop (payment processing only) and TikTok Shop (about 6%) are cheapest, Mercari sits at 10%, Etsy lands near 9.5% plus fixed fees, eBay and the big marketplaces around 13–15%, and Poshmark is highest at 20%. But the lowest fee is not automatically the most profit — a marketplace fee buys traffic, and on your own store you pay for that traffic separately.
- Your time, monthly subscriptions, storage fees, chargebacks and sales tax. Tax is normally collected and remitted by the marketplace, so it passes through rather than being yours — but note that several platforms charge their commission on the tax-inclusive total. Ad spend and overhead have their own fields in the calculator; fill them in for a real per-order picture.
Fees by selling platform
Platforms