Whatnot fee calculator

Rates verified 2026-10-26 against the official pages: Whatnot Help: Whatnot seller fees (US commission by sales tier and category from 21 September 2026; processing 2.9% + $0.30 on the item, buyer-paid shipping and tax) · Whatnot Help: 0% commission on the part of a sale above $1,500 in eight categories. If a rate changes upstream, we update the constant and this date together. Estimates, not tax or accounting advice.

Whatnot changed its commission for existing sellers on 21 September 2026. Before that, write-ups quoted one flat rate, and most fee calculators still do: the three that ranked highest in Google for a Whatnot fee calculator in late October 2026 mentioned neither tiers nor the date. The rate now has two inputs. The first is your tier, set by your total sales across all categories in a four-week period. The second is the category: a live sale is charged by the category of the show, a sale outside a show by the category of the product.

Tiers reset every four weeks, and a tier you reach during one period lowers your rate for the next period, not the current one. Sales do not carry over, so every period starts from zero, and Seller Hub shows your progress and your projected rate. Whatnot's highest-volume sellers can agree custom rates from 3%, which this calculator does not model.

• Standard tier, below $15,000 of sales in four weeks: 8% in Sports, TCG, Fashion, Other Collectibles and Other, and 4% on Coins.
• Six tiers above it, from $15,000 up to $500,000 and over, each lowering the rate category by category.
• At the top tier: 6.5% for Sports and TCG, 4.5% for Fashion, 5% for Other Collectibles, 4% for Other and 3.5% for Coins.
• The calculator carries every column of Whatnot's US table. Pick your tier in the box for your sales over the last four weeks, or leave it at Standard if you are new.

Whatnot charges its commission on the sale price of the item alone. The shipping and the sales tax the buyer pays are left out, Whatnot's help says, and it contrasts this with marketplaces that charge their rate on the whole transaction, shipping and tax included. Payment processing works the other way: 2.9% + $0.30 on the total the buyer pays, which is the item price, the buyer's shipping and the tax together, with the fixed part charged once per transaction.

That is why the calculator asks for the shipping and the tax although neither is your money. Each adds a few cents of processing and nothing to the commission, so on a cheap item they matter more than you would expect, and on an expensive one they hardly move the result. Leave the tax at zero if you only want the commission and an estimate of the processing.

• Commission base: the item price. Not the shipping, not the tax.
• Processing base: the item price, the shipping the buyer pays and the sales tax, plus the fixed fee.
• Shipping: paid by the buyer at checkout at the rate of the shipping profile you chose, and spent on the prepaid label Whatnot provides. It is not income for you, so the calculator leaves it out of what you keep.
• Not modelled: the state taxes some US states charge on Whatnot's fees, which Whatnot deducts from your earnings, and the signature fee on orders of $500 or more, which Whatnot's shipping help states two different ways.

In 8 categories Whatnot charges no base commission on the part of a sale above $1,500: Comics & Anime, Toys & Hobbies, Coins & Money, TCG, Entertainment Cards, Sports Singles, Bags & Accessories, and Jewelry & Watches. Breaks and Surprise Sets are excluded, and Whatnot describes the rule as a promotion it can end.

On a $2,500 trading card sold by a seller in the Standard tier, the commission is $120.00 with the rule and would be $200.00 without it. Processing still applies to the whole amount. Tick the high-value box in the calculator when your item is in one of those categories, and the commission stops at the threshold.

Whatnot's 8% looks far lower than eBay's 13.6%, and on most sales Whatnot does cost less, but the two numbers measure different things. eBay's final value fee is charged on the item price plus the shipping you charge, payment processing is already inside it, and each order adds $0.40 above $10. Whatnot's commission is charged on the item price alone, and processing of 2.9% + $0.30 comes on top, on the price, the shipping and the tax.

On the reference sale, a $40 item with $6 of shipping, eBay's percentage on the $46 is already more than Whatnot's commission and processing together, which come to $4.83. Whatnot's side only gets cheaper as your sales grow, while eBay's rate stays where it is unless a store subscription lowers it in your category. Run the same sale through both calculators before you decide where an item goes.

• eBay: one fee, 13.6% in most categories on the price plus shipping, processing included, plus a fee per order.
• Whatnot: a commission on the price only, by category and tier, plus processing of 2.9% + $0.30 on everything the buyer pays.
• Where the item sells is a separate question. A Whatnot Buy It Now listing is found through Whatnot search and in live shows, an eBay listing through eBay search, and the fee is one line of that choice, not all of it.

The waterfall above runs the reference sale used across all 19 calculators: a $40 item, $6 of shipping and $12 of materials, sold by a new seller in the Standard tier in a category charged 8%, with no sales tax. The commission is $3.20, on the $40 alone. The processing is $1.63, on the $46 the buyer pays. Whatnot's two lines come to $4.83, and the seller keeps $23.17 after materials.

The $6 of shipping is not in what you keep, because it was never yours: it pays for the label. When you compare payouts across marketplaces, compare them after postage. On Whatnot the label is already paid out of the buyer's shipping, and on a marketplace where you set your own shipping you buy the label out of what the buyer paid you. Change the category to Coins, or the tier to a higher one, and the commission line moves while the processing stays where it was.

The fee is the part you can calculate. Whether a buyer finds a Buy It Now listing between shows is decided in Whatnot search, and Whatnot's help says what helps there: a clear, descriptive title and relevant keywords, with the category set accurately. A listing has no tags field, so the words a buyer types have to be in the title and the description.

Whatnot publishes no length for either field. Sellura writes a title of about 60 characters and a description of under 1,000, both numbers ours, with the condition, the flaws, the size and what is included, because Whatnot's rule is that the description refers only to the item for sale. Then price against what the same item sells for elsewhere, with this page's fees already taken out.

The fee is the marketplace's decision and it does not move. What the listing says is yours, and that is the part this site was built to write.