Mercari Fees Explained: The Flat 10% and What You Keep in 2026

Mercari is the cheapest of the big three US resale apps per sale, and the one whose fee structure sellers most often describe wrong. Both are explained by the same event: on January 6, 2025, Mercari scrapped its separate payment processing charge and moved to one flat fee. A lot of fee guides never caught up. Here is what Mercari actually takes in 2026, what is baked into that number, and the real payout on three typical sales. For your own item, the Mercari fee calculator does it in a second.

Rates are Mercari's published US fees as of October 2026, taken from its own help centre. Check there before relying on them for a big sale.

The one fee: 10% of the item plus buyer-paid shipping

Mercari charges a 10% selling fee on every sale. It applies to the item price and to any shipping the buyer pays. That second part catches people. Sell a $50 item with $10 buyer-paid shipping and the fee is $6.00, not $5.00. Offer free shipping and the fee is on the item price alone, but then the label comes out of your side.

There is no listing fee, no monthly fee, and for anything listed or updated since January 2025, no separate payment processing fee. The old "$0.50 plus 2.9%" line is gone. If you remember Mercari costing about 13% all in, that was the pre-2025 structure, and it is the number most third-party guides still print.

What the buyer pays that you never see

Mercari also charges the buyer a Buyer Protection fee of 3.6% of the item price plus shipping. It is added at checkout, the buyer sees it as a separate line, and none of it touches your payout.

Why it matters to you: your $50 listing shows up as $51.80 plus shipping to the buyer. When you are pricing against the same item on eBay, where every fee sits on the seller's side, a Mercari buyer is paying a little more than your sticker price. On low-value items it is invisible. On a $300 item it is $10.80, enough to lose a price-sensitive buyer to a listing elsewhere.

Three worked examples

A $10 Funko Pop, buyer pays $5 shipping

The $5 shipping goes to the prepaid label, so what lands in your balance is the item price minus the fee on both. If the Pop cost you $3, net profit is $5.50. The buyer paid $15.54 with the 3.6% protection fee.

A $50 pair of sneakers, buyer pays $10 shipping

At $15 cost, you clear $29. On eBay the same sale (13.6% of $60 plus $0.40) costs $8.56 in fees, so Mercari leaves you $2.56 more before you have bought a label. That gap is why high-volume general-merchandise sellers keep Mercari in the rotation.

A $200 jacket, free shipping, $12 Mercari label

At $90 cost, net $78. Free shipping avoids the 10% on the shipping line (you would have paid $1.20 on a $12 buyer-paid charge), but you now carry the whole label. On a heavy item that trade usually favours charging the buyer; on a light one, free shipping and a slightly higher price converts better.

Getting the money out

Fees do not stop at the sale. How you withdraw matters:

• Direct deposit: $0. The old $2 cash-out fee ended in January 2025. A failed deposit (wrong account details, closed account) costs $2, so check the numbers once.
• Instant Pay: $3 per transfer, to an eligible debit card, once a day, up to $600 a month. On a $20 balance that $3 is a 15% haircut. Batch your withdrawals and use direct deposit unless you genuinely need the cash today.

Things that change the payout

• Cancelling your own sales. Sellers who cancel often are charged 5% of the item price, capped at $25. Mercari warns before it starts charging, but if you crosslist and forget to pull a sold item, this is the fee that eventually finds you.
• Smart Pricing. Mercari can lower your price automatically to chase a sale. Set a floor, because the 10% is calculated on whatever it sells for, and the floor is what protects your margin.
• Offers to likers. Private offers must be a discount off the listed price, which you fund. The fee is 10% of the accepted offer, not the list price.
• Mercari Authenticate. $5 for the check and $10 for a certificate, both paid by the seller, on luxury items that qualify.
• Packaging fines. Ship a Media Mail box with a non-book inside, or exceed the label's weight, and the overage or fine is charged to you after the fact.
• Trading cards. Through January 4, 2027, qualifying cards up to 1 oz ship free in a First-Class envelope, and 2 to 3 oz envelopes are 49 cents. The 10% still applies to the card.
• Mercari Local. Hand the item over in person and there is no shipping at all; the 10% still applies.

The rule of thumb

You keep 90% of the item price, minus 10% of whatever shipping the buyer pays. To hit a target profit on an item where the buyer covers shipping: add your cost to the profit you want and divide by 0.9. A $15 item you want $25 on needs to list at $44.45. Round to $45 and the extra covers the fee on the shipping line.

Compared with the other platforms

Mercari's 10% beats eBay's 13.6% plus $0.40 and Poshmark's 20% on the headline number, but each is paying for something different. Poshmark's fee includes the shipping label. eBay charges on shipping too, then you buy your own label, but gives you the biggest audience. Mercari sits in the middle with the lowest cut and a smaller buyer pool. The fee comparator puts all three side by side at any price, and the fee posts for eBay and Poshmark break those two down the same way.

Keeping the real number

Flippd records each Mercari sale against the item you bought, applies Mercari's fee to the sale price, and shows profit after what you paid for it and what the label cost. Sell the same inventory on eBay as well and those sales arrive automatically, so by January your fees across every platform are already a line on the report rather than a pile of monthly statements.