The Price of Being Seen:

You finally get the sale. Then you open the payout and the number is smaller than you planned for, sometimes a lot smaller. The listing fee was fine. The commission was fine. What you missed was the line labeled boost, ad fee, or promoted.

Most fee comparisons stop at the commission. That leaves out the cost that has grown fastest in 2026: what platforms charge you to be seen. On an identical $50 sale with $8 shipping, a promoted sale costs a seller $9.32 on Depop, $11.19 on eBay, and $14.66 on Etsy. On Rooted, the same sale costs $4.48 whether we promote your shop or not, because Rooted does not charge sellers for promotion. At all.

This piece breaks down what each major marketplace charges once visibility is part of the deal, what changed this year, and why we decided promotion should come with the commission instead of on top of it.

12% Depop’s new boost fee for US sellers, up from 8% in March 2026 [Depop]

15% Etsy’s Offsite Ads fee for shops under $10K a year [Etsy]

$0 What Rooted charges to feature, spotlight or promote your products [Rooted]

How We Compared

We ran the same transaction through every platform’s current published policy: a $50 item with $8 shipping charged to the buyer, a $58 order total, a US buyer paying by standard card, and sales tax left out to keep the math clean.

For each platform we show two numbers. Base fees are what you pay on an ordinary sale. Promoted-sale fees are what you pay when that sale is credited to the platform’s promotion program. Some platforms bill promotion per click or per impression rather than per sale, so there is no fixed per-order figure to show, and we say so plainly rather than invent one. Buyer-side fees are left out entirely, since they never touch your payout.

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The Full Comparison

Platform	Base fees	Promotion program	How it bills	Promoted sale
Rooted	$4.48 5% + Stripe 2.9% + 30¢	Featured placement, social, newsletter	Free	$4.48 (7.7%) [Rooted]
Depop	$2.36 3.3% + $0.45 processing	Boosted Listings	12% per boosted sale	$9.32 (16.1%) [Depop]
eBay	$8.29 13.6% + $0.40	Promoted Listings General	Ad rate of 2% to 100% on total sale	$11.19 at 5% (19.3%) [eBay]
Etsy	$5.96 $0.20 + 6.5% + 3% + 25¢	Offsite Ads	15%, or 12% over $10K a year	$14.66 (25.3%) [Etsy]
Whatnot	$5.98 8% + 2.9% + 30¢	Promote Tools	Hourly budget for show visibility	$5.98 plus ad budget [Whatnot]
Poshmark	$10.00 20% of the item	Promoted Closet	Pay per click, weekly budget	$10.00 plus clicks [Poshmark]
Amazon Handmade	$8.70 15% referral	Sponsored Products	Pay per click	$8.70 plus clicks [Amazon]

A few notes on the table. Depop’s promoted figure assumes you arrange your own shipping, which puts the $8 inside the boost fee; with a Depop label the fee applies to the item only and the total drops to $8.36. The eBay ad rate is up to you, and 5% is an illustrative middle setting. Poshmark’s figure is calculated on the $50 item alone, since its shipping is buyer-paid.

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Depop: The Cheapest Sale Until You Boost It

Depop charges US sellers 0% in selling fees, but every sale still carries payment processing of 3.3% + $0.45 on the item, shipping and tax, which comes to $2.36 on our order. Organically, that is one of the lowest totals anywhere.

Promotion is where it changes. On March 23, 2026, Depop raised its Boosted Listings fee to 12% for US and UK sellers, applied to the item price plus any shipping you arrange yourself. The catch most sellers miss: you are charged if a buyer viewed, clicked or liked your boosted listing and bought it within 28 days, even if you switched Boost off in between. Boosted, our $58 sale costs $9.32, nearly four times the organic fee.

eBay: More Sales Now Count as Ad Sales

eBay takes a 13.6% final value fee on the total sale, including shipping and any sales tax collected, plus a $0.40 per-order fee. That is $8.29 before promotion. Promoted Listings General lets you choose an ad rate from 2% to 100% of the total sale, charged when a promoted item sells within 30 days of a click. At 5%, our sale costs $11.19.

The bigger change came in January 2026. eBay now charges the ad fee if any buyer clicked your ad and any buyer bought the item within 30 days, and sellers report the share of sales tagged as ad-driven jumping from about half to 80 or 90 percent. If you promote on eBay, plan as though nearly every sale will carry the fee.

Etsy: The Ad You May Not Have Chosen

Etsy’s base stack is a $0.20 listing fee, a 6.5% transaction fee on item and shipping, and 3% + $0.25 processing, which comes to $5.96 on our order under its current fee policy. Offsite Ads, which run your listings on Google, Instagram, Pinterest and elsewhere, add 15% of the order total whenever a sale follows an ad click within 30 days, capped at $100 per order.

Two details make this one sting. New shops are enrolled by default, so plenty of sellers pay it without ever opting in. And once a shop crosses $10,000 in sales over any 365-day period, the rate drops to 12% but participation becomes mandatory for the life of the shop. Stacked together, our $58 order costs $14.66, or a quarter of the sale.

Whatnot, Poshmark and Amazon: Pay for Attention

These three bill promotion by budget rather than by sale. Whatnot still charges most US sellers 8% on the item plus 2.9% + $0.30 processing; its new tiered rates, live since September 21, only kick in above $15,000 in sales per four-week period. Its Promote Tools let you set an hourly budget to push a live show into buyer feeds, a cost many live sellers treat as mandatory.

Poshmark takes 20% on sales of $15 and up, and Promoted Closet adds a weekly budget spent on clicks, at a cost per click that shifts with search and competition. Amazon Handmade takes a 15% referral fee and sells visibility through pay-per-click Sponsored Products. In all three cases, every dollar of promotion sits on top of the commission, and it is spent whether or not anything sells.

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What Promotion Costs Over a Month

Now run 20 identical orders, $1,160 collected, and assume every sale is credited to promotion. After eBay’s attribution change and Etsy’s default enrollment, that is closer to reality than it sounds.

Platform	Net, organic	Net, all promoted	Promotion cost
Rooted	$1,070.36	$1,070.36	$0
Depop	$1,112.72	$973.52	$139.20
eBay (5% rate)	$994.24	$936.24	$58.00
Etsy (15%)	$1,040.80	$866.80	$174.00

Depop wins on an organic month. The moment you promote, Rooted comes out ahead of every marketplace here, and the gap never shrinks, because our promotion cost stays at zero no matter how much visibility you get.

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Why Rooted Doesn’t Charge for Promotion

Pay-to-be-seen models carry a built-in conflict. A platform that earns from boosts earns more when your organic reach gets smaller, which gives it every reason to let unpromoted listings sink. Each point of ad fee comes straight out of the margin of the sellers who can least afford it, and those are exactly the small, independent and underrepresented owners Rooted was built for.

So we kept it simple. One flat 5% commission on completed sales. Card processing through Stripe at its standard rate, passed through at cost. And when we feature your shop, spotlight your products on social, or put you in the newsletter, you pay nothing extra. No boost fee, no ad rate, no click budget, no 28-day attribution window.

What Transparency Looks Like Here

What we do	Why it matters
Publish our number next to everyone else’s	You can compare us directly, including the Stripe assumption behind our $4.48.
Flag what isn’t public yet	Our 5% rate is set by the Rooted team but not yet listed on the public site, and we would rather say so than bury it.
Link every competitor figure to its source	You can check our math against each platform’s own pages instead of taking our word for it.
Refresh this every quarter	Fees move constantly. If you spot a change before we do, we want to hear about it.
Never enroll you in a fee by default	No automatic ad programs, no charge because someone liked a listing weeks ago.

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The Bottom Line

Base fees tell you what a sale costs when nobody helps it along. Promotion fees tell you what it costs to compete, and in 2026 that second number is climbing everywhere: Depop’s boost went from 8% to 12%, eBay widened what counts as an ad sale, and Etsy locks growing shops into Offsite Ads for good.

Every marketplace here needs your listings seen to make money. The difference is who pays for it. On Rooted, getting seen is part of what the 5% already covers.

Visibility shouldn’t be a second bill. The people doing the work deserve a platform that grows when they do, and charges them the same whether a buyer found them on their own or with a little help from us.

🌱

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