Since 1 September 2026, if you are a private seller and your address is registered in the European Economic Area, you no longer pay any commission or regulatory fee to sell on eBay.fr, whatever the category. In exchange, it is now your buyer who pays Buyer Protection fees (Protection acheteurs on eBay.fr) when buying from you if you are based in France or Italy. This guide details what becomes free, what remains paid, what changes nothing for professional accounts, and what it concretely changes if you already sell on Vinted or Leboncoin.
What exactly changes on 1 September 2026?
If your address is registered in the EEA, eBay has removed your commission on the final price and your regulatory operating fees on ebay.fr.
eBay itself announces it plainly in its press release: "From now on, private sellers can list their items for sale at no cost on eBay.fr and keep 100% of the sale price" (translated from French). The official help page specifies the exact scope: "Private sellers with an address registered in the European Economic Area (EEA) can now sell for free on ebay.fr. You will not pay transaction fees (commission on the final price and regulatory operating fees) when you sell items, whatever the category" (translated from French). The scope therefore covers any private individual in the EEA who sells on ebay.fr: whether you are based in France or elsewhere in the EEA, you are concerned.
In practice, before 1 September 2026, you paid about 10% commission up to €2,000 then 2% above, plus €0.35 per order and 0.42% regulatory fees. On eBay.fr, this regime disappears for the EEA. It continues, however, to apply if your registered address is outside the EEA: the help page confirms this in its dedicated section, with exactly the same rates as before the reform.
Is eBay.fr really free, or are there hidden fees left?
You still have fees, but they are targeted: they concern optional extras, exceeding a listing quota, and shipments outside the euro area, not the sale itself.
Three items remain paid if you are a private individual in the EEA on eBay.fr. First, the volume of listings: you have 150 free listings per month, in fixed price as in auction (more with an eBay Shop). Beyond that, each listing costs you €0.35, whether the item sells or not. Next, the listing options: a subtitle costs you €0.50, a second category €0.35, a reserve price in an auction 3% of that price (minimum €3, maximum €150), charged even if the item does not sell. Finally, international fees, calculated on the total amount of the sale (shipping and taxes included) if your account address is in France: free to the euro area and Sweden, then 1.92% to the rest of Europe, 1.44% to the United States and Canada, and 3.96% to the United Kingdom or the rest of the world. On top of this come currency conversion fees when your sale is made on an eBay site in another currency: eBay.fr announces a rate of 3.25% from 2 December 2026 for sellers registered in France (eBay, page consulted on 10 October 2026).
Vehicles (cars, vans, caravans, motorboats, sailing boats, motorbikes, scooters) remain outside this free regime: they keep a fixed-fee scale, for example €9 listing fee and €35 commission on the final price for a car.
Who now pays Buyer Protection, and is it new?
It is your buyer who now pays Buyer Protection fees (Protection acheteurs on eBay.fr), only when buying from you if you are based in France or Italy: a novelty that comes into force at the same time as your seller-side free regime.
The formula is published on two identical official help pages: "A fixed fee of €0.10 per item, plus 7% of the item price, up to €20, plus 4% of any part of the item price between €20.01 and €300, plus 2% of any part of the item price between €300.01 and €4,000" (translated from French). Beyond €4,000, no additional fee is added. This amount is calculated on the price of the item alone, shipping excluded, and eBay charges it directly to your buyer, on top of the price you display. It never passes through you and is not deducted from your payout. This paid Buyer Protection does not apply to purchases made from a professional seller, nor to the Petites annonces (Classifieds) and Vehicles categories.
The principle is not specific to eBay: on Vinted, it is already the buyer who pays Buyer Protection on top of the price displayed by the private seller, who receives the full price. On this precise point, eBay is therefore moving closer to a model you already know if you come from Vinted: it is no longer you who finances the securing of the transaction, it is your buyer.
What changes nothing for professional accounts?
Nothing: the free regime of 1 September 2026 only applies to private accounts. If you have a professional account, you keep paying a commission by category.
The help page dedicated to professional sellers sets commissions from 5% to 12% depending on the category: 12% for fashion, and for watches and handbags, 12% up to €990, then 2% above. On top of this come €0.35 per order and regulatory operating fees of 0.35% of the total amount of the sale, a rate different from the one that applied to private individuals outside the EEA (0.42%). If you have a pro account, you can also obtain a 10% reduction on the variable part of your commission with the Top Rated Seller status (Top Fiabilité on eBay.fr), or conversely a penalty of several points in case of insufficient performance.
The criterion that moves your account from private to professional remains the same as before the reform: if you occasionally sell your own belongings, you stay a private account; if you buy to resell or regularly offer goods for money, your account becomes professional, with the obligations that come with it (legal notices, VAT where applicable).
Is France an isolated case, or an underlying trend?
France follows a path that eBay has already followed elsewhere: Germany in March 2023, then the United Kingdom in 2024, before arriving in France in September 2026.
eBay Inc. confirmed it itself in its press release on the 2024 UK announcement: "After eBay Germany removed selling fees last year, C2C volume in Germany returned to positive growth." The United Kingdom first removed fees for the Fashion category in April 2024, before extending them to all categories (except vehicles) from the end of September 2024. France thus comes last of eBay's major European markets, with a difference specific to this 2026 wave: the parallel introduction of Buyer Protection fees paid by the buyer in France and Italy, a mechanism that the press releases on Germany and the United Kingdom did not detail at the same level.
Should you add eBay to your Vinted and Leboncoin stock now?
Being free mainly changes your profitability calculation, not the audience: eBay remains the channel for international, tech and collectibles, Vinted that for fashion and everyday items, Leboncoin that for local and bulky items.
If you already sell on Vinted and Leboncoin, what concretely changes for you is that the cost gap with eBay almost entirely disappears: where eBay's commission could nibble 10% or more of a sale, it falls to zero for a private seller whose address is in the EEA, on eBay.fr. A product that struggled to find a buyer on Vinted (a technical piece, a reference sought abroad, a collectible) can now be tested on eBay without the commission reducing your margin. It remains to compare, piece by piece, whether eBay's audience really brings you more than an already active Vinted or Leboncoin flow: being free does not create an audience, it only removes a brake on the price.
To go deeper into the comparison between the three marketplaces, our Vinted vs eBay vs Leboncoin guide details where to sell what depending on the type of stock, and our guide on moving from Vinted to eBay explains the differences in how the two marketplaces work (fixed price or auction, private or pro account, method for getting started). That is also what StoFlow lets you do without starting from scratch: you prepare a product page once, publish it on eBay, Vinted and your other marketplaces, with the connection to eBay going through OAuth, the marketplace's official authorisation, with no password sharing.
Sources
- Frais pour les vendeurs particuliers, eBay.fr (in French) - accessed 10 October 2026
- Frais de Protection acheteurs, eBay.fr (in French) - accessed 22 September 2026
- Frais de Protection acheteurs, information vendeurs, eBay.fr (in French) - accessed 22 September 2026
- Frais pour les vendeurs professionnels, eBay.fr (in French) - accessed 10 October 2026
- eBay supprime les frais de vente pour les particuliers en France, eBay Inc. (in French) - accessed 10 October 2026
- eBay UK Announces It Is Now Free to Sell Across Its Categories, eBay Inc. - accessed 22 September 2026
- eBay.de macht das private Verkaufen kostenlos, eBay Inc. (in German) - accessed 23 September 2026
