eBay title checker

eBay's numbers, from eBay's own documents

Each of these is a figure Sellura's code enforces, read off eBay's developer reference and help pages rather than off a listing-tools review. The second one is the reason this page exists separately from every other title checker on the site.

Title characters

80

The maximum length of Item.Title in eBay's Trading API reference. Subtitle, a paid extra, adds 55 more and is not searched the same way.

Tag fields on a listing

0

There is no tags field anywhere in eBay's listing documentation. Every keyword you care about lives in the title or in item specifics.

Item-specific value

65

eBay's standard maximum characters per value, with documented exceptions — the authoritative figure is returned per marketplace by GeteBayDetails.

What eBay's search actually rewards in a title

eBay search matches a buyer's query against your title first — and unlike Etsy, there is no tags field to catch the phrasings the title missed. The 80-character cap is hard: eBay's own error reference carries a serious error, code 70, for a title that is too long, and documents nothing about trimming one. That combination makes the title budget the single most valuable real estate on the listing.

eBay's own optimization guidance is unglamorous and correct: describe the item in plain searched words — brand, model, size, colour, condition-relevant facts — use only keywords that relate to the item, and skip the decoration. The same page says writing whole words in capitals, or putting asterisks between them, can lower where the listing ranks. “L@@K!!”, “WOW” and “RARE” match no searches and read like 2009.

Worth knowing rather than quoting as law: that page's own example subtitle is all-caps promotional text, so eBay's advice is not perfectly consistent with eBay's examples. Treat it as the ranking recommendation it is written as — which is still a good reason not to spend eight of eighty characters on punctuation.

• 80 characters, hard cap — aim to use 70+, every unused character is a missed match.
• Front-load: brand → model/item → key specs (size, colour, capacity, era).
• No keyword you care about should live only in the description — the title and item specifics do the search work.
• Don't repeat words: “Nike Air Max 90 Nike Sneakers Nike” matches no more searches than one “Nike”.
• The first 40 characters are what a phone shows before the line wraps — put the decisive words there.

eBay listing SEO, in depth → · No views on eBay? Diagnose it in order →

No tags field — the rule no other marketplace here shares

eBay never announces this. There is no help page saying “eBay has no tags”, because platforms document what exists, not what doesn't. You establish it by inventory: the Trading API's AddItem reference runs to hundreds of thousands of characters of field documentation with no listing-tag field in it; the guide to listing an item lists title, description, condition, item specifics, SKU, category, price, quantity, photos, format, duration, shipping and returns, and stops; the help centre's page on creating a listing enumerates the same set.

Every other platform here has one. Etsy has thirteen tags of twenty characters and treats them as a first-class search input. Shopify has tags, though its own help page says search engines don't read them. Amazon has search terms. Walmart has category attributes. Depop has five hashtags inside the description. eBay has item specifics — structured name/value pairs that its optimization guidance calls descriptive keywords, and that also drive the left-rail filters.

The practical consequence is where your second-best phrasing goes. On Etsy a synonym you couldn't fit in the title goes in a tag and keeps working. On eBay it either fits in the 80 characters, or it goes into an item specific, or it is not searched at all. That is why the checker above ends every run by reminding you that eBay has no tags: it is the most expensive thing to forget.

The eBay item specifics guide → · The multi-marketplace title checker →

Eighty characters is a hard cap, and that is unusual

Sellura writes for Etsy, Amazon Handmade, eBay, Shopify, Depop and Walmart, and eBay is the one where the number is a wall rather than a suggestion. Etsy allows 140 characters but its 2026 guidance asks for short natural titles under fifteen words, so the cap and the advice point in opposite directions. Amazon cut its cap to 75 in July 2026 and enforces it by quietly rewriting titles, so you find out afterwards. Walmart permits 150 while asking for 50 to 75, and truncates long names in search results. Shopify leaves the product title uncapped and caps the SEO page title at 70, recommending 60. Depop has no field at all.

eBay just refuses. A title over 80 fails the call with a serious error, which is the friendliest failure mode in the set: you learn immediately, at the moment you list, rather than three weeks later while wondering why the listing looks odd on a phone.

It also means the discipline is different. On Etsy the risk is overfilling; on eBay it is underfilling. A 34-character eBay title has thrown away 46 characters of matching surface, and the checker says so — that is the underUsed flag, and it fires more often than every other check on this page combined.

Titles work with item specifics, not instead of them

eBay's search and its left-rail filters both read item specifics — the structured brand/size/colour/material fields. The winning pattern is coverage without waste: the title carries the phrases people type; item specifics carry the same facts in structured form so you survive filtering. If a spec matters to the buyer — shoe size, storage capacity, plug type — it belongs in both.

There is a character limit there too, and it is less fixed than it looks. eBay documents 65 characters as the standard maximum for an item-specific value, notes that some aspects allow more, and then tells developers the authoritative per-marketplace limits come back from a GeteBayDetails call rather than from the documentation. Sellura writes to 65 and to eight specifics per listing, which is a safe set rather than the ceiling — the per-listing count is category-dependent and can run far higher.

One number that is easy to miss because it sits outside the listing form: eBay gives most sellers 250 free listings a month, and charges $0.35 an insertion after that. If you are testing variations of a title by relisting, that is the meter that runs.

What eBay takes per sale, line by line →

What the checker flags, and in what order

It runs entirely in your browser — nothing you paste is sent anywhere, which is also why there's no account and no cap on how often you run it. The order below is the order the results appear in:

• Length against 80, with the count and the cap shown live as you type, and the first 40 characters echoed back as the phone lead.
• Under-use: below roughly 45 characters the checker says so, because on eBay the unused budget is the loss.
• Repeated words, listed by name — the second “Nike” costs five characters and matches nothing new.
• The eBay-specific pair the other five presets don't get: there is no tags field, and promotional filler is not a keyword.
• Word count, reported neutrally — eBay is keyword-first, so a longer title is not the failing it would be on Etsy.

How Sellura's 0–100 score is calculated →

What the free check doesn't do

This page measures one title. It doesn't write it, and it can't see what happened to the listing afterwards — Sellura has no access to your sales, your views or your position in eBay search, so it never reports them.

• Free here: the 80-character budget, repeats, filler and the phone lead, on any title, as often as you like.
• In the generator: a keyword-first title written into the budget, item specifics as name/value pairs, a set of search-keyword phrases to fold in, and a description.
• Plus a 0–100 score on the result, four listing languages, and the same set for every other marketplace Sellura supports, if you sell in more than one place.
• The score is deterministic — the same title always scores the same number, so an edit you make is an edit you can see.

Write the whole eBay listing → · Moving a listing to eBay from somewhere else →

Weak title vs. strong title, both run through the checker above

Two real titles pasted into the tool at the top of this page. The bar under each is the 80-character budget; the tick mark sits at 40 characters, roughly where a phone stops showing the line.

A third case the checker catches and neither of these shows: “Nike Air Max 90 Nike Sneakers Nike Mens UK 9 White” is 50 characters, and the word nike appears three times. It is flagged by name, because those ten characters would have carried the colourway or the year instead.

Questions, answered