Final Value Fee: Does It Include Shipping?

What a final value fee is

"Final value fee" is eBay's name for the commission taken when an item sells. Allegro calls it prowizja (commission) and Lokalnie a sale fee. The arithmetic is the same everywhere:

A listing fee is due whether or not the item sells. That is the insertion fee, with its free allowances and the duplicate-listing trap. A buyer-paid fee, such as eBay UK's Buyer Protection fee, is added to the buyer's price and never leaves your payout; who pays the buyer protection fee covers those.

Does final value fee include shipping? The base by marketplace

eBay UK's business fee page charges the rate on "the total amount of the sale (which includes the item price, postage, and any applicable taxes)". eBay.de's business page applies it to the total including shipping and VAT, and eBay.com's page also counts handling and sales tax. Allegro's fee calculator says commission is worked out on item price plus delivery cost.

There are exceptions. On eBay UK, trainers sold through Authenticity Guarantee pay no final value fee on postage. eBay.pl's private-seller page charges 11% of the "total sale" without defining it, so assume postage counts until your invoice shows otherwise.

Worked examples: eBay, Allegro, Allegro Lokalnie

Example: one jacket at 200 zł (£40 on eBay UK) with 15 zł (£4) of postage paid by the buyer.

The Allegro row is an assumption on top of Allegro's own example, which uses the item price alone and a 110 zł threshold that the same page also gives as 115 zł. Allegro fees by category covers that conflict. eBay.pl's regulatory fee also appears as 0.35% plus VAT on its seller portal.

Decision rule: on eBay, moving postage into the item price doesn't change the fee, because both sit in the total sale. On Lokalnie it works the other way: building delivery into the price puts it into the base charged at 7.9%.

Tiered and threshold fees

Some rates change above a price, and the threshold doesn't always use the same base as the fee:

• eBay UK bags: 12.9% on the part of the total sale up to £800, 7% only on the part above.
• eBay UK trainers: 7% once the item price, excluding postage, reaches £100, and then 7% applies to the whole total including postage. Example: £99 trainers with £4 postage pay 11.9% of £103 = £12.26; at £100 they pay 7% of £104 = £7.28, both before the per-order fee.
• eBay.pl: 2% on the part of the total sale above 9,990 zł.
• Allegro Moda: 11.5% up to the threshold, 7.5% above it.

Decision rule: if your price sits just under a threshold, work out the fee on both sides before listing. Every category rate is in eBay UK fees.

Per-order fixed fees

A fixed fee costs relatively more on a cheap order. Example: a 20 zł eBay.pl order pays 2.20 zł + 0.25 zł = 2.45 zł, or 12.25%; a 300 zł order pays 34.35 zł, or 11.45%. eBay.pl's page doesn't say whether postage counts toward 50 zł; eBay Poland fees shows the pricing trap at that line.