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Free tool · Promoted Listings General

eBay Promoted Listings Ad Rate Calculator

eBay suggests an ad rate. This works out the highest rate you can actually afford — and what it drops to once you account for the sales that would have happened without ads.

Your numbers

$
$

0 if you offer free shipping

$
$
$

Store fee, supplies, mileage

$
%

eBay collects this from the buyer and charges both the final value fee and the ad fee on it. Leave at 0 to ignore it.

%

The rate shown when you promote the listing

eBay charges the ad fee on every attributed sale, including the ones that would have sold without ads. Only you can estimate this. If your items already sell organically, set it high.

Your ceiling

Break-even ad rate

50.7%

Above this the sale loses money.

After cannibalisation

30.4%

The number that actually matters.

eBay's 14.0% clears your ceiling. Profit per promoted sale: $22.04.

Seller revenue
$60.00
eBay final value fee
− $8.16
Fixed order fee
− $0.40
Your costs
− $21.00
Profit before ads
$30.44
Ad fee at 14.0% of $60.00
− $8.40
Profit per promoted sale
$22.04

Best Offer floor

With the ad fee running, these are the numbers to put in auto-decline and auto-accept.

Auto-decline below

$29.56

Break-even.

Accept at or above

$43.38

Clears $10.00 profit.

Fees follow eBay's published US rates for a standard (non-Store) seller, the same schedule as the fee calculator. Priority campaigns bill per click, not per sale, and are not modelled here.

Free tool · Updated September 2026 · current US fee tiers

eBay suggests a rate. It does not know your margin.

When you promote a listing, eBay shows a suggested ad rate drawn from what other sellers in that category are bidding. It is a measure of competition, not of what you can afford. Two sellers listing the identical item at the identical price have completely different ceilings, because one paid $12 for it and the other paid $35.

Your ceiling is your profit before ads divided by the total amount of the sale. Above that number, every promoted sale loses money — and because eBay only charges on sales, a losing campaign looks busy right up until you reconcile the payouts.

The number nobody shows you

Break-even is the easy half. The half that decides whether ads are worth running at all is cannibalisation.

eBay attributes a sale to your campaign whenever the buyer interacted with the promoted listing inside the attribution window — including every buyer who was going to search for the item, find it, and buy it regardless. You pay the ad fee on all of them. So if half of your attributed sales would have happened organically, you are paying the full rate to win half as many extra sales, and your real break-even rate is half the headline number.

Incremental ceiling = break-even rate × (1 − share that would have sold anyway)

The figures loaded in the calculator above are a $60 sale on a $12 item with $8 postage and $1 of supplies: $30.44 profit before ads, so a 50.7% break-even ad rate. Leave the slider at 40% and the honest ceiling drops to 30.4%. Move it to 70% and the ceiling is 15.2% — barely above eBay’s suggested 14%. Nobody can measure your share for you, which is exactly why it is a slider: it changes the decision more than any other input.

Where ads actually pay

  • Weak organic placement. New listings, crowded categories, and long-tail inventory. Low cannibalisation means most attributed sales are genuinely extra.
  • Healthy margin. A 70% margin can absorb a double-digit ad rate. A 20% margin cannot, whatever eBay suggests.
  • Aged stock. An item sitting for six months has an opportunity cost that a profit calculation does not capture. Paying above the incremental ceiling to clear it can still be the right call — just make it knowingly.

The mirror image is the trap: your best sellers, already ranking well, are where cannibalisation is highest and the ad spend buys the least.

Better placement is cheaper than buying it

Ads are how you pay for placement you did not earn. Complete item specifics, an 80-character title that uses all 80, and a price set from real sold comps are how you earn it. FlowLister writes all three from your photos.

See what a complete listing looks like →

Frequently Asked Questions

Short answers to common seller questions about this workflow.

There is no universal number — it depends entirely on your margin. Work out your profit before ads, divide it by the total sale amount, and that percentage is the rate at which the sale breaks even. Anything above it loses money on every promoted sale. Most sellers should then take a further discount for cannibalisation, because eBay charges the ad fee on sales that would have happened anyway.
For the General campaign strategy (formerly Promoted Listings Standard) you choose an ad rate between 2% and 100%, and on an attributed sale eBay charges that percentage of the total amount of the sale — item price, shipping and handling, sales tax, and other applicable fees. You are only charged when the listing sells through the ad, so there is no cost for impressions or clicks. Priority campaigns bill per click instead and are not modelled here.
It is often above what a thin-margin item can support, because the suggestion reflects what other sellers in the category are bidding rather than your costs. A $60 item you bought for $12 with $8 shipping breaks even at about 52%; the same item bought for $35 breaks even at 14%. Compare eBay's suggestion to your own break-even before accepting it — that comparison is what this calculator exists to make.
eBay attributes a sale to your campaign when the buyer clicked or saw the promoted listing within the attribution window, including buyers who were going to find and buy the item anyway. You pay the ad fee on all of those. If half your attributed sales would have happened organically, you are paying the full rate for half the benefit, so your true break-even rate is half what the simple calculation suggests.
Yes. The ad fee is charged in addition to the final value fee and the fixed per-order fee, and all three are calculated on the total amount of the sale including buyer-paid shipping and tax. On a standard 13.6% category, a 14% ad rate means roughly 28% of the sale is gone before you count what you paid for the item.
That is exactly the case where cannibalisation bites hardest. An item with strong organic placement gets most of its ad-attributed sales from buyers who would have found it anyway, so the ad spend buys very little incremental volume. Ads pay best on items with weak organic placement — new listings, crowded categories, and long-tail inventory.
Set it just below the price at which the sale still clears your target profit with the ad fee included, not below your cost. This calculator gives you both numbers: break-even, which is where you should auto-decline, and the price that clears the profit you actually want, which is where you should auto-accept. Offers in between are worth a counter.

Fee schedules mirror the fee calculator — eBay’s published US rates for a standard, non-Store seller. Store subscriptions, seller-performance adjustments, international fees, and Priority (cost-per-click) campaigns are not modelled. Confirm your own account and category in Seller Hub.

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