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Free tool · Sold vs. active listings

eBay Sell-Through Rate Calculator

Enter how many sold and how many are listed. Get the sell-through rate both ways resellers quote it, how many days of supply is sitting on eBay right now, and which of your finds moves fastest.

Your searches

Search the item on eBay, tick Sold Items for the sold count, then untick it for the active count. Same search words both times.

The sold count covers the last

eBay’s Sold Items filter shows roughly the last 90 days. Pick a shorter window only if you counted a shorter span.

Example: running shoes

Hot

Sell-through rate

117.8%

Sold ÷ active — the reseller convention. Can pass 100%.

Share of listings sold

54.1%

Sold ÷ (sold + active) — the retail convention.

Days of supply on eBay

76 days

180 active listings at 2.36 sales a day. A listing priced mid-pack joins that queue; one priced at the low end of the sold range skips most of it.

More sold in the window than is listed now. Demand is outrunning supply; price from the sold comps, not below them.

Fastest to slowest

Tap a row to see its detail.

ItemSTRSupplyVerdict
fastest117.8%76 daysHot
40.0%225 daysModerate
15.6%577 daysSlow

Bands are the reseller rule of thumb on sold ÷ active — under 20% slow, 20–50% moderate, 50% and up strong, 100% and up hot. eBay does not publish a standard. Rate tells you demand; the fee calculator tells you whether the sale is worth having.

Free tool · Updated September 2026

Two numbers, two formulas, one decision

eBay sell-through rate compares how many of an item sold recently with how many are listed right now. It is the fastest honest answer to “will this actually sell?” — which is why it gets quoted in every sourcing video. It is also quoted two different ways, and most people never say which.

This calculator shows both, adds the days of supply sitting on eBay, and ranks the finds you are choosing between. For the longer version — what the number does and does not tell you — read the eBay sell-through rate guide.

Getting the two counts

  1. Search the item the way a buyer would. Brand, model, and the one detail that changes the price (size, capacity, edition). Leave out condition words and adjectives.
  2. Tick Sold Items. On desktop it is in the left filter column; in the app it is under Filter. Note the result count — that is roughly the last 90 days. The sold listings guide covers the filter in detail.
  3. Untick it and keep every other setting. Same words, same category, same condition filter. Note the active count.
  4. Skim both pages before you trust the counts. If lots, parts, or a different model are mixed in, tighten the search and count again. A wrong search gives a precise-looking wrong answer.

Why the same item has two sell-through rates

Take 40 sold and 60 active. The reseller convention — sold ÷ active — gives 67%. The retail convention — sold ÷ (sold + active) — gives 40%. Neither is wrong. They are the same information on different scales, and the conversion is exact: share sold = STR ÷ (1 + STR).

A “50% sell-through” means very different things

On sold ÷ active, 50% is one sale for every two listings — solid demand. On sold ÷ (sold + active), 50% is one sale for every one listing — the equivalent of 100% on the reseller scale. When a video says “only buy above 50%”, the advice changes by a factor of two depending on which one they meant.

eBay’s own Product Research shows a sell-through rate for searches covering items sold in the last 90 days or less, but eBay does not publish how it calculates it. Use it to compare items inside Product Research; do not mix it with hand counts.

What counts as a good rate

  • Under 20% — slow. Plenty listed, few selling. Only worth buying cheap enough to undercut the pack, or valuable enough to wait.
  • 20–50% — moderate. It sells; buyers have choices. Photos, item specifics, and price decide whose listing goes first.
  • 50–100% — strong. A listing priced inside the sold range should not sit long.
  • 100% and up — hot. More sold in the window than is listed now. Price from the sold comps, not below them.

These are the reseller rule-of-thumb bands on sold ÷ active. Margin changes the answer: a 15% item that nets $120 can be a better buy than a 90% item that nets $4. Run the sale through the eBay fee calculator before you let the rate decide.

Where the number lies

  • The windows do not match. Sold covers about 90 days; active is a snapshot of today. A seasonal item checked in its off-season looks dead, and a spike in listings last week looks like a collapse in demand.
  • Multi-quantity listings count once. One active listing with 40 in stock is one result, so the active count understates real supply for anything sold in bulk.
  • Stale listings pad the active count. Overpriced listings that will never sell still count as competition. A low rate driven by them is less worrying than one driven by well-priced listings.
  • Rate is not price. A strong rate says buyers want the item at the prices that sold. It says nothing about the $40 above that range you were hoping to ask.

Skip the two searches per item

FlowLister reads the item from your photos, pulls the sold comps, filters out the lots and wrong models, and prices the listing from what actually sold — then writes the title, description, and item specifics.

Price a listing from sold comps →

Frequently Asked Questions

Short answers to common seller questions about this workflow.

Search the item, tick the Sold Items filter and note the number of results, then untick it and note the number of active results for the same search. Most resellers divide sold by active and multiply by 100 — 40 sold against 60 active is 67%. Retail analysts divide sold by sold plus active instead, which gives 40%. Both use the same two counts; say which one you mean.
On the sold ÷ active convention, resellers generally treat under 20% as slow, 20–50% as moderate, 50% and up as strong, and 100% or more as selling faster than it is listed. eBay does not publish a standard, and a good rate for a $6 item and a $600 item are not the same — a slow, high-margin item can still be worth buying.
Yes, on the sold ÷ active convention. If 150 sold in the last 90 days and 50 are listed now, the rate is 300% — buyers are clearing listings faster than sellers post them. On the sold ÷ (sold + active) convention the same numbers give 75%, and that version can never pass 100%.
Product Research in Seller Hub (the tool formerly called Terapeak) shows a sell-through rate, but only for searches covering items sold in the last 90 days or less. eBay does not publish the formula it uses, so its figure will not always match a hand count. The Sold Items filter on a normal search gives you the raw sold count for roughly the last 90 days.
Usually because the tools use different formulas, different time windows, or different searches. Sold ÷ active and sold ÷ (sold + active) disagree on every item except the ones where nothing is active. A broader search pulls in lots, parts, and accessories; a narrower one misses real comps. Compare rates only when they were calculated the same way on the same search.
It divides the listings active right now by the average number that sold per day in your window. 100 active against 45 sold in 90 days is 200 days of supply. It is a pace, not a promise: a listing priced at the low end of the sold range jumps most of that queue, and one priced above the sold range may never reach the front.
No. It measures demand against competition at the prices sellers are asking now. Price comes from the sold listings themselves — the spread of what buyers actually paid — and whether the sale is worth having comes from the fees and your cost.

Everything runs in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere. The rule-of-thumb bands are a reseller convention, not an eBay standard. Product Research’s 90-day limit for sell-through comes from eBay’s Seller Hub help pages.

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