How to Calculate Reselling Profit

Gross vs net profit: a monthly reseller P&L

Per-flip profit tells you whether one item was worth it. A monthly profit and loss statement (P&L) tells you whether the whole operation is, because some costs never appear on a single sale. The two margin words themselves are kept apart in gross margin vs net margin.

Gross profit is sales minus the cost of the goods you sold. Net profit is what is left after everything else. This guide treats marketplace fees as an operating cost below gross profit, so gross profit measures your buying and net profit measures the whole business. Conventions differ, so choose one split and keep it.

The same example month shows the trap in a P&L. Say you also bought 600 zł of stock that hasn't sold yet. It isn't in cost of goods sold, because cost of goods only counts items that sold. The cash still left your account: 3,200 zł came in and 1,150 + 600 + 490 = 2,240 zł went out, leaving 960 zł of cash from a 1,560 zł profit. Decision rule: if unsold stock grows month after month while net profit looks fine, you are turning cash into inventory. Slow your buying before you raise prices. The wider catalogue of what can go wrong — no sale, slow sale, condition surprises, platform trouble — and how to put a number on each is in how to estimate risk in reselling.

Cost of goods: what to include

Cost of goods (COGS) is what it took to get an item into sellable condition. Where the line falls is a choice, so make it once and apply it to every item.

• Purchase price you paid
• Delivery you paid when buying, including a buyer fee you paid as the buyer (for example a Vinted Buyer Protection fee on stock you bought there)
• Cleaning, repair and replacement parts that made the item sellable
• A trip made only to collect this item (petrol, ticket), counted once
• Lots: split the lot price across items, by expected sale price or evenly, and write the split down

What does not belong in COGS: marketplace fees, outbound postage, packaging, promotions and monthly subscriptions. They are real costs, but they belong to selling, not buying, so they sit below gross profit. The reasoning behind that split, and how to handle lots and inbound shipping, is on COGS for resellers.

The per-flip net profit is the same wherever you put a cost. The split changes two things: gross profit, and ROI, which divides by what you count as invested.

Who pays the fee: seller commission vs buyer-paid protection fees

The marketplaces in this guide use two models, and a profit calculation goes wrong as soon as you mix them up.

• Seller-paid commission comes out of your payout or goes on your account bill. Allegro Lokalnie's 7.9%, eBay.pl's 11% and eBay UK's business final value fees work this way. It is a cost in your formula.
• Buyer-paid protection fees are added to what the buyer pays, and your payout is the price you set. Vinted's Buyer Protection fee, OLX's Pakiet Ochronny and eBay UK's Buyer Protection fee on purchases from UK-based private sellers work this way. They are not a cost to you.

A buyer-paid fee still affects you: it raises the buyer's total, so your listing can look dearer than an identical item where the seller absorbs commission. eBay UK says its Buyer Protection fee is included in the item price displayed to buyers, so the price on your listing's buyer view is not the price you set. How the buyer-paid model compares across platforms is on who pays the buyer protection fee.

The second question is what the percentage is charged on:

Example: an eBay.pl private seller sells a 180 zł item with 15 zł of buyer-paid postage. If the total sale includes postage, as eBay UK defines it, the 11% applies to 195 zł: 21.45 zł, not the 19.80 zł you would get on the item alone. More on why the base matters is on does the final value fee include shipping.

Decision rules:

• If a fee appears only at the buyer's checkout, leave it out of your profit.
• If a fee is deducted from your payout or invoiced to you, subtract it.
• If the fee page says "total sale" without defining it, calculate on price plus postage. You will overstate the fee slightly rather than understate it.

Fees by marketplace: Vinted, OLX, Allegro Lokalnie, Allegro, eBay, Depop, Vestiaire

The table summarises seller-side and buyer-side fees as official pages stated them on 13 September 2026. It is a starting point; each platform's own page on this blog has the detail, exceptions and conflicts.

Vinted. The Polish, UK, French and German price lists have no seller commission line. The buyer pays Buyer Protection, and the exact amount appears at checkout. The formula for eleven countries and the dates of each price list are on Vinted fees by country.

OLX. OLX documents how its fees work but not the amounts. Annex 6 describes Zapłać, jeśli sprzedasz as a percentage of the gross item price, possibly plus a fixed element, deducted from your payout; no rate is given. The listing limits matter more for volume: Annex 3 (effective 7 January 2026) gives private users 2 free listings for smartphones, laptops, consoles and TVs, and in many categories business users get 0. OLX listing limits by category has the full table and a list of amounts the OLX documents don't give.

Allegro Lokalnie. The rates in the table are charged on item value, and only once the buyer pays within 72 hours or fills in the delivery form, and it is refunded if you refund the buyer through Allegro. Allegro Lokalnie fees explained adds the paid motoring and real estate listing packages.

Allegro.pl. Commission is a net range per category, charged on item price plus delivery. The fee page's tiered Moda example (11.5% up to 110 zł, 7.5% above) conflicts with a "from 115 zł" line on the same page. Allegro fees by category sets out the ranges and that conflict.

Poland side by side. Vinted, OLX and Allegro Lokalnie compared in zł, with worked examples only where amounts are published, are on marketplace fees in Poland.

eBay UK. UK-based private sellers pay no final value fee or regulatory operating fee in any category except motors. Business sellers pay category rates on the total sale, shown excluding VAT. Existing listings that sell after you switch from private to business pay business fees. eBay UK fees for private and business sellers shows why the switch changes the maths.

eBay.de. Private sellers resident in the EEA, a list that includes Poland, sell free within Germany, with 320 free listings a month and €0.50 per listing after that. Business fees changed on 1 July 2026. eBay Germany fees covers the private rule and the new flat business rates.

eBay.pl. Unlike eBay UK and eBay.de, there is no free selling for private sellers. The per-order fee is 0.25 zł on orders under 50 zł and 1.35 zł otherwise, and 150 listings a month are free. The two official pages disagree on the regulatory operating fee, so use the higher 0.43% when you work out a price floor. eBay Poland fees quotes both pages.

Depop. "No selling fee" in the UK still leaves payment processing, and Depop charges it on item price plus shipping plus taxes, so put the buyer's postage into Sale price when you calculate it. Outside the UK, US and Australia, the 10% applies when you sell in a currency other than GBP, USD or AUD. Depop fees in the UK and Europe separates the two regimes.

Vestiaire Collective. The fixed fees at both ends make the effective rate uneven. Example: a £50 item pays the £10 fixed fee, 20% of its price, while a £500 item pays 12%, or £60, both before processing. On cheap items the fixed fee, not the percentage, decides whether the sale is worth listing. Vestiaire's page says these GBP fees apply to items listed in GBP from 9 March 2026. The EUR fixed amounts weren't captured in our research, so none are quoted here. Vestiaire Collective seller fees also explains the reduced professional rate.

To run one price through every preset at once, use the marketplace fee calculator.

One item in zł, € and £

The same kind of item, a used jacket, listed in three markets. The prices are separate examples chosen for each market, not currency conversions, and nothing here suggests the jacket is worth more in one country than another. The point is how the fee model changes the calculation.

On eBay.pl the 15 zł of postage passes through the sale: on the assumption that it counts towards the total sale, it raises the fee, then goes out again on the label. On the two buyer-paid models, your price is your payout. The German Vinted row applies the usual formula from Vinted's German price list; checkout can differ.

Shipping, packaging and returns

Postage is only a cost when it comes out of your money. Vinted's UK help page says the buyer pays for and chooses shipping, and the seller receives a prepaid label. On other platforms, offering free delivery turns postage into your cost, as in the coat example above.

Returns cost more than the postage:

In Poland, biznes.gov.pl states that consumer rights, including the 14-day withdrawal right for distance sales, apply to unregistered activity (działalność nierejestrowana). If your reselling counts as that, budget for change-of-mind returns from consumers, not only for claims. If you run a registered business, ask an adviser which consumer obligations apply to you.

Decision rule: if returns show up in a month, put them on the refunds line of your P&L rather than editing the original sale. Otherwise your per-marketplace profit looks better than it was. Costs that never appear on the sale screen, from return postage to promotion fees lost when a listing is deleted, are on hidden costs of reselling.

Promotions: bumps, highlights and promoted listings

Most promotions are bought before you know whether the item will sell, and several platforms don't publish the price in advance. The exceptions are Depop's boost fee and eBay's percentage-after-sale option, which are charged only when an item sells.

Example: on Allegro.pl, if the commission on a sale is 10 zł, a Wyróżnienie adds 7.50 zł of extra commission on top of the 19.90 zł placement fee.

Two ways to count promotions:

• Per item, when the promotion was bought for one listing and it sold: subtract it in the extras field.
• Per month, when it didn't lead to a sale: put it on the promotions line. It still cost money.

Decision rule: a promotion is worth repeating only if the extra profit from faster or higher sales exceeds its cost across all items you promoted, not just the ones that sold.

Currency conversion and international fees

Cross-border sales add percentage charges that rarely show up in a first calculation.

Example: on a €60 Vinted item, a 1.2% conversion fee is €0.72 and a 3% fee is €1.80. On a £40 eBay UK private sale delivered abroad, the 3% international fee on a £44 total sale (item plus £4 postage, assuming postage counts towards the total as on eBay UK's business page) is £1.32, a cost that a domestic sale doesn't have.

Decision rule: before listing internationally, run the profit calculation with the international and conversion percentages added to the fee field. If the item only works at the domestic fee level, keep it domestic.

ROI vs margin vs markup

One flip produces three different percentages, and each answers a different question.

Markup and ROI both divide by cost, but markup ignores fees and postage, so it always flatters the deal. The coat is a 164.7% markup and a 46.6% margin: when someone quotes you a percentage, ask which one it is before you compare it with your own. ROI vs margin vs markup shows how the same deal can be 100% ROI and 50% margin, and which metric suits buying, pricing and comparing channels.

Two calculators work the same numbers from other directions:

• Lowest acceptable price. Break-even price = (purchase cost + fixed fee + shipping + other costs) ÷ (1 − fee %). For the coat, that is (60 + 0 + 10.95 + 11) ÷ 0.921 = 88.98 zł. A 50 zł profit target needs (81.95 + 50) ÷ 0.921 = 143.27 zł. The break-even price calculator solves this for any fee.
• Holding time. A high ROI earned over months can be worth less than a modest one earned in a week. The reselling ROI calculator adds days from purchase to payout.

Profit per hour and cash turnover

Net profit ignores two things you can't get back: your time and the time your cash is tied up.

Count hours from sourcing to drop-off: the share of a sourcing trip, cleaning, photos, listing, messages and packing. Count days to payout, not to the moment the item sells. Vinted's UK help page says the buyer has 2 days after delivery to complete the order or claim, and payment follows within 2 days of completion. OLX's Terms say the payout is ordered when the buyer confirms receiving a conforming item, or 48 hours after pickup or delivery if no Pakiet Ochronny claim is filed; the time for the money to reach your bank isn't stated.

Setting your own profit target

There is no margin that suits every reseller, and this guide won't quote one. Your target comes from your own costs:

Example, not a recommendation: 150 zł of monthly fixed costs and 90 zł of expected write-offs spread over 30 sales is 8 zł per item. At 45 minutes per item and an hourly target you set at 40 zł, time adds 30 zł. The floor is 38 zł. On a usual sale price of 120 zł, the margin target is 31.7%.

Use the floor at the buying stage: if the calculator shows less than your floor at a realistic sale price, the price you would pay is too high.

Tax basics and DAC7 reporting

This section is general information, not tax advice. Tax depends on your country, your status and how you sell, so confirm your situation with a tax adviser (in Poland, a doradca podatkowy).

DAC7 reporting. Platforms report sellers to tax authorities once they pass a threshold:

Poland: when resale income is taxed. Per gov.pl, podatki.gov.pl and biznes.gov.pl:

• An occasional sale of a private item held more than six months (counted from the end of the month of purchase) is not subject to income tax.
• A private item sold sooner is taxable: income is revenue minus acquisition cost (plus outlays), declared on PIT-36, even at a loss.
• Sales carried out as a business are taxable however long you held the item. Business activity is defined as organised, continuous, profit-oriented activity in your own name.
• Unregistered activity (działalność nierejestrowana) is capped at revenue of 225% of the minimum wage in any quarter, which is 10,813.50 zł per quarter from 1 January 2026. Costs are deductible, a simplified sales record is required, and exceeding the cap means registering in CEIDG within 7 days.

Your net profit and your taxable income can therefore differ. Buying items specifically to resell is a different case from clearing out your own wardrobe, so the private-item rules may not apply to you.

This page doesn't cover UK tax: check HMRC guidance or ask an adviser. How Vinted, OLX and Allegro each run DAC7 (form deadlines, combined counting and payout blocks) is on DAC7 for resellers.

Tracking profit per item, marketplace and month

A formula only helps if the inputs are recorded when they happen. Fees are shown on payouts and invoices, postage on labels, and costs on receipts, and they are hard to rebuild at the end of the month.

Use the records to answer three questions each month:

• Which marketplace left the most net profit per item after fees, postage and promotions?
• Which items took longest from purchase to payout, and what did that do to ROI per 30 days?
• Did unsold stock at cost grow or shrink compared with last month?
• How many sales and how much paid out so far this year on each platform, against the DAC7 threshold of 30 sales or €2,000?
• In Poland, is this quarter's revenue approaching the 10,813.50 zł unregistered-activity cap?

The reseller inventory and profit tracker spreadsheet gives you the per-item rows with the profit, ROI and days-to-sell formulas already in. Build the monthly, per-marketplace and DAC7 views yourself with a pivot table or a date filter on those rows.