Poshmark vs Depop vs Mercari vs eBay: which should you sell clothes on?

Short answer: sell branded basics, outdoor gear and anything with a model number on eBay; trend-driven Y2K, streetwear and true vintage on Depop; bulky or heavy items on Poshmark, where the buyer always pays shipping; and mid-priced general clothing you want moved quickly on Mercari. Fees matter less than matching the item to the audience that wants it.

There is no best marketplace. There are four marketplaces with genuinely different audiences, and the item in your hand belongs on one of them.

The comparison at a glance

Fee figures were read from each marketplace's own documentation on 8 September 2026; the sources are listed in Reseller fees explained. The audience and timing columns are practitioner consensus, not measured data — see the method note at the end.

eBay

The default, and usually the right one. eBay is a search engine that happens to sell things. If a buyer knows what they want and types it into a box, eBay is where they type it. That makes it unbeatable for anything identifiable: a named model, a size chart, a colourway, a year.

It is also the only one of the four with deep non-clothing demand, which matters more than it sounds — thrift stores do not sort by category, and the profitable item on your run is as likely to be a cast-iron pan or a pair of Blundstones as a blouse.

Strengths: the largest buyer pool by a wide margin, real sold-price history to comp against, and best-in-class rates on athletic shoes over $150 (8%, no per-order fee).

Weaknesses: the fee is charged on the total order including the shipping and the sales tax, which sellers reliably forget. The interface assumes you know what you are doing.

Sell here: Patagonia, Carhartt, The North Face, Levi's, Nike, Doc Martens, band tees, anything with a model number.

Poshmark

A social network with a checkout. Poshmark's 20% commission is the highest of the four and the reason most people dismiss it. That dismissal is usually wrong, for one specific reason: the buyer always pays shipping, at a flat rate Poshmark sets.

For a wool coat, a pair of boots or a chunky knit — anything where the label would have cost you $9 or more — that shipping subsidy is worth more than the difference in commission. Run the numbers before you assume Poshmark is expensive.

Strengths: buyer pays shipping; a genuinely engaged audience for contemporary women's clothing; offers and bundles that move stale inventory.

Weaknesses: visibility depends on constant manual "sharing" of your own closet, which is real unpaid labour. Under $15 the flat $2.95 commission is brutal — that is 29.5% on a $10 sale.

Sell here: Lululemon, Free People, Anthropologie, Madewell, contemporary women's brands, and anything heavy.

Mercari

The low-friction option. Since January 2025 Mercari charges sellers a flat 10% and nothing else per sale — no payment processing fee at all, because buyers now pay a 3.6% Buyer Protection fee instead. That makes it the simplest arithmetic in resale: list at $40, receive $36 minus your label.

Strengths: lowest effective fee of the three that charge one; listing takes under a minute; free ACH payouts, or $3 for money in about half an hour.

Weaknesses: a smaller buyer pool than eBay, and less of a brand-hunting culture than Poshmark or Depop. Items priced above roughly $100 tend to move slowly.

Sell here: mid-priced general clothing, kids' clothes, sets and bundles, anything you want gone rather than maximised.

Depop

Zero selling fee, but a narrow door. As of September 2026 Depop charges US sellers no selling fee whatsoever — just a 3.3% + $0.45 payment processing charge. That is by a distance the best headline rate in US resale.

The catch is the audience. Depop is Gen Z and it is trend-led. Items that sell instantly on eBay can sit for months here, and items that would be unremarkable on eBay — a specific 2003 handbag silhouette, a particular wash of jeans — can go in an hour at a price eBay would never pay.

Strengths: no selling fee; buyers pay premiums for correctly-styled, well-photographed vintage; discovery through the feed rather than search alone.

Weaknesses: photography and styling genuinely matter, so listing takes longer. Demand is narrow and fashion-cycle dependent. Lowballing is common.

Sell here: Y2K, 90s streetwear, true vintage, band tees, Carhartt workwear, anything currently trending on TikTok.

How to choose, in practice

Work down this list and stop at the first match:

1. Athletic shoes you can list over $150? eBay. The 8% rate with no per-order fee is not close.
2. Heavy or bulky, and cheap to buy? Poshmark. Let the buyer pay the label.
3. Genuinely vintage, or currently trending? Depop. No fee, and the audience is looking for exactly this.
4. A recognisable brand with a model name? eBay. Search demand does the selling.
5. None of the above, and you want it gone? Mercari. Ten percent and out.

Should you cross-list?

Eventually, yes — the same item in front of four audiences sells faster than in front of one. But not at the start.

Cross-listing has a hard operational requirement: the moment something sells, you must delist it everywhere else. Miss that and you sell an item you no longer have, which costs you a cancellation and a rating on a platform where ratings drive visibility.

Learn one platform properly first. Get listing, packing and shipping down to a routine. Add the second only when the first is boring.

Method

Fee figures come from each marketplace's own published fee documentation, read on 8 September 2026, with sources listed in Reseller fees explained. The audience descriptions, best-for categories and time-to-sell bands are qualitative practitioner consensus, not measured statistics — no marketplace publishes category-level sell-through data, and anyone presenting precise figures for it is estimating. Treat those columns as informed orientation and confirm against your own sales.