Reselling in Germany

The German platform map: what sells where

Each platform has a shape. Kleinanzeigen is a classifieds board: its fee table covers consumer goods, services, jobs and cars, and its payment protection works only inside Germany, so local pickup is the natural trade. Vinted is a fashion marketplace: its catalogue rules talk about condition labels, bundles and brand fields, and its German price list charges sellers nothing. eBay.de behaves like a national shopwindow: domestic private selling has been free since March 2023, and it keeps category fee schedules, auctions and an authenticity check for sneakers, bags, watches and jewellery.

Decision rule: route the item by how it travels and who needs to see it. Posts as a small parcel, so Vinted. Needs a van or a handshake, so Kleinanzeigen. Needs collectors nationwide or a documented check, so eBay.de.

The three overlap on plenty of items, so the real question is usually price and speed, not feasibility. The head-to-head numbers are in Kleinanzeigen vs Vinted.

Kleinanzeigen for private sellers: costs and listing rules

Kleinanzeigen's fee page describes private selling as free unless thresholds are exceeded. The thresholds that matter, from that page:

Commercial sellers pay category-dependent listing fees under a separate price list we did not read, so check it before treating Kleinanzeigen as a free shopfront.

Sicher bezahlen is the in-app payment with buyer protection. The buyer pays the service fee: €0.50 plus 4.5% of the purchase price. For sellers the service is free — the Sicher bezahlen page says so in one line — so your payout is your asking price. Two scope limits matter: the protected flow covers only shipments inside Germany, and a PayPal transfer sits outside it. The help article names Adyen as the payment processor; an older fee article names a different provider, so treat the processor as a detail that can change.

Who pays the shipping label is not stated on the pages we read, so agree it in the chat before the buyer pays.

Two rules protect your account. First, you may hold at most two accounts — one private, one commercial (terms §2 Nr. 5). Second, the terms ban crawlers, spiders, scrapers and other automated mechanisms without express written consent (§5 Nr. 1; the terms we read are dated 17 February 2024). In practice: no posting bots, no auto-refreshers, no scraping against Kleinanzeigen.

Vinted Germany: the buyer fee model and the October 2026 terms update

Selling on Vinted Germany costs you nothing on the price list. The German price list, last updated 8 September 2025, has no seller commission line: the only seller-side products on it are Bump and Showcase, two optional promotions whose prices appear at checkout. Showcase needs at least 5 listed items and runs 7 days.

The buyer pays instead. The Buyer Protection fee is, in Vinted's wording, "in der Regel 5 % plus 0,70 €" — usually 5% of the item price plus €0.70, VAT included. The exact amount varies with item characteristics, order value and order type (a single item versus a bundle) and appears at checkout. A €40 top costs the buyer €42.70 before shipping; you receive €40. Optional buyer services add fixed prices: Item Verification €10 per item, Electronics Verification €5.

Shipping works the same way across the German help centre (per Vinted's shipping help): the buyer pays for and chooses the shipping method, you get a prepaid label, and the order must ship within 5 business days or it cancels automatically. You can ask the buyer for 3 or 5 extra days; they can refuse.

The tighter limit for resellers is not a fee. Vinted's catalogue rules (we read the UK version) require real photos, ban external links, and don't allow an item to be listed separately while it sits in a bundle. Items of a seemingly commercial nature can earn a suspension — the rules give 7 days as an example — or a permanent block. And Germany is not on Vinted's official Pro list (Italy, Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, Belgium, UK), while the terms make standard accounts personal-use only. What that means for a German commercial seller is exactly the grey area the next-but-one section circles.

Country-by-country fee formulas: Vinted fees by country.

eBay.de: which categories still justify it

eBay.de made private domestic selling free on 1 March 2023 for sellers resident in the EEA — before that it charged 11% plus up to €0.35, so the change is real money. The current private schedule: 320 free listings a month, then €0.50 per listing; on top of that, 2,500 auctions a month with a €1.00 start price are free (excluding 1- and 3-day durations), subject to selling limits. Automatic relists and renewals don't use the allowance; manual relists do. One fee surprises people: an item listed on ebay.de and delivered outside Germany carries a 5% international fee on the total.

Where eBay.de still earns its keep is trust at a distance. Its German authenticity check, the Echtheitsprüfung, applies automatically to eligible items at no cost to the seller: sneakers, clothing, shoes, accessories and handbags from €200, jewellery from €500, watches from €1,500 — buyers can order a check for watches between €500 and €1,499.99 for €100. If an item fails, the buyer is refunded and the item comes back to you. For branded goods, that inspection is the difference between a national audience and a neighbourhood one.

Käuferschutz, the buyer protection policy, gives buyers 30 days to report an item that never arrived or doesn't match the listing. Note the exclusion that matters for pickup sellers: items collected in person are outside it.

Business sellers are priced separately — clothing at 12% up to €990 (3% above), insertion fees of €0.35 to €0.50 without a shop, per-order fees of €0.35 to €0.45 — so crossing the commercial line on eBay has a published price tag. The full breakdown is in eBay Germany fees.

On automation, eBay's user agreement (we read the US version, effective 28 June 2026 for existing users) bans automated access except with eBay's prior express permission — and eBay grants permission through its official developer API, which is why listing tools exist for eBay that cannot exist for Kleinanzeigen.

The private vs commercial line: general information, official sources

Germany draws a line between private sales and commercial trade, and where an activity sits decides obligations such as registrations and taxes. The honest summary: the line runs on intent and pattern, not on one published number. Selling your own household items points private; buying goods in order to resell them at a profit points commercial. How a specific pattern is weighed — frequency, volumes, sourcing, whether you buy to resell — depends on circumstances no blog post can judge, so treat this section as orientation.

The platforms price the line themselves. Kleinanzeigen runs commercial accounts under category-dependent listing fees and allows you one private and one commercial account, not two of the same. eBay.de publishes a business fee schedule. Vinted is the awkward one in Germany: standard accounts are for personal use, commercial listings are banned on them, and Pro — the route the platform offers commercial sellers in eight other countries — is not offered in Germany per its official help pages.

One number is safe to quote because platforms publish it themselves: under the EU DAC7 regime, Vinted collects seller data from users with 30 or more sales or over €2,000 per calendar year — either condition is enough. You complete a short form with your tax details; without it, selling and wallet access stop. Vinted's own wording says reporting does not mean there is an obligation to pay taxes — the reporting and the tax question are separate. German law texts are published at Gesetze im Internet; for your own case, use official guidance or a Steuerberater. The private vs business seller basics travel across borders even though the details differ by country.

Pricing and language habits that get answers

The platform changes; the pricing method doesn't. Collect comparable listings, separate the asks from the items that actually left the market, and set your ask with room to accept offers. Say you are selling a branded windbreaker: live asks run €25–45, and jackets like yours seem to leave the market near €30 — listing at €36 and accepting €30 is a defensible plan. That is an illustrative example, not market data. Mismatched platforms distort comps: a dress that exits at €30 on Vinted says little about its Kleinanzeigen pickup price, where the buyer saves the parcel and the fee.

Language is the Germany-specific half. Buyers type German: a title like "Windjacke M neuwertig" matches searches that "nice jacket" doesn't. State sizes with centimetres, describe condition in the standard words — neuwertig (as new), mit leichten Gebrauchsspuren (light signs of use) — and answer messages in German, even simply. Photograph flaws: Vinted's rules and simple self-protection both punish undisclosed defects.

Shipping: what German buyers expect

The platform sets your deadline, not the buyer's patience. Vinted Germany: prepaid label, ship within 5 business days or automatic cancellation, and the buyer pays for and picks the shipping method. eBay.de: you set postage in the listing, and remember the 5% fee when an ebay.de item ships outside Germany. Kleinanzeigen: the pages we read name no general shipping payer — decide per listing and write it into the description.

Pickup is the third channel and the natural one for furniture, appliances and anything that fights a parcel shelf. On eBay.de, in-person collection sits outside Käuferschutz; on Kleinanzeigen, cash on collection sits outside Sicher bezahlen. Both trade protection for simplicity, so count money before handing anything over and photograph the item at handover.

• Write who pays the label into the listing before the first message arrives
• Vinted: enable only carriers you can hand over to within 5 business days
• Kleinanzeigen, bulky item: agree pickup window, staircase help and payment in the chat
• eBay.de: weigh the parcel before listing; a 5% international fee applies on delivery outside Germany
• Photograph the item and the handover — protection flows differ per platform, evidence doesn't

If you sell in Poland too, the same three-way structure repeats with different numbers: Vinted's Polish buyer fee is usually 5% + 2.90 zł against 5% + €0.70 in Germany. The zł-side maths is in marketplace fees in Poland, and reselling in Poland is the country counterpart to this page. For the platform map beyond Germany, see the best resale platforms in Europe; for the full method from sourcing to sale, start at the reselling guide.

Related guides

• Kleinanzeigen vs Vinted
• why your OLX listing is not selling
• reselling with a full-time job