eBay Promoted Listings Calculator
One strategy charges a percentage when the item sells. The other charges for every click whether it sells or not. Work out which is cheaper for your item, and the ad rate above which you are buying sales at a loss.
Your numbers
Nothing is sent anywhere. The maths runs in your browser.
The sale
eBay charges the general ad fee on the total sale amount, which it defines as including item price, shipping, taxes and any other applicable fees. Tax is a separate field here because it inflates the ad fee without ever reaching you, and leaving it at zero simply understates the cost.
What the sale costs you
We publish no fee table here, because eBay's rates change and a stale one would hand you wrong numbers. Take the rate from your own invoice or work it out on the fee and profit calculator.
The two strategies
Take the conversion rate from your own campaign reporting rather than guessing it, because it is the number the whole comparison turns on. Priority pricing runs on a second price auction, so treat your cost per click as an observed average, not a fixed price.
The rate at which a promoted sale makes exactly nothing. Anything above it and you are paying to lose money.
The conversion rate at which the two strategies cost the same. Above it, paying per click is cheaper.
Before any of this
eBay states that Above Standard or Top Rated sellers with enough account activity can promote fixed price listings in most categories. A Below Standard account cannot advertise its way out of the problem, so check the level first on the seller level calculator.
Billing descriptions on this page are quoted from eBay's Promoted Listings help pages, last checked 24 August 2026. Read the overview.
Exactly how this is worked out
So you can check it against your own campaign reporting.
The two strategies are billed differently
eBay charges the general strategy a percentage of the total sale amount when the item sells within 30 days of a click. It charges the priority strategy for valid clicks, and says so plainly: you are charged regardless of whether a sale is attributed. One risk sits with eBay, the other sits with you.
Break-even ad rate
Your profit before ads divided by the amount eBay applies the ad rate to. That is the rate at which a promoted sale makes exactly nothing. eBay suggests rates from what other sellers are bidding, which is a fact about the market rather than a fact about your margin.
Cost per click becomes cost per sale
Divide the cost per click by your conversion rate and you get what a sale really costs on the priority strategy. At 2% conversion you buy 50 clicks per sale, so a 20p click is a 10 pound sale cost. That division is the step sellers skip, and it is where the money goes.
The crossover point
There is one conversion rate at which both strategies cost the same. Above it, paying per click is cheaper because each sale arrives off fewer paid clicks. Below it the percentage wins, because you stop paying for traffic that was never going to buy.
Tax is in the ad fee base
eBay defines the total sale amount as including item price, shipping, taxes and any other applicable fees. Tax you never receive still enlarges the fee, which is why it has its own field here rather than being folded quietly into the price.
A click is more than a click
eBay counts adding to a watchlist, adding to a cart and quick view as interactions with your ad. That widens what triggers the 30 day general attribution window, and it is worth knowing before you assume a sale came from somewhere else.
What this does not cover
Priority pricing runs on a second price auction, where eBay says the fee depends on listing quality, keyword relevance, your bid, competition and a reserve price. None of that is predictable from outside, so your cost per click here is an observed average rather than a price you set. Sales are attributed on a last click basis and a listing can sit in several priority campaigns at once, so real reporting will not split as cleanly as two columns suggest. Daily budgets, offsite ads and store ads are not modelled. Tax treatment and fee rates vary by marketplace, and every one of them here is a field you fill in rather than a figure we assert.
Advertising buys placement, not a better listing
A promoted listing nobody clicks is an expensive way to learn the listing was the problem. These are accounts where the organic side was fixed first.
An eBay Canada store took C$1,991.69 over 31 days, up 166% on the prior month. Promoted Listings produced 98.1% of it, which is the growth and the risk in the same number.
An eBay AU store went from being barely surfaced to 829,607 impressions and 109 units sold in 90 days. Promoted Listings carried two thirds of the visibility and 97% of the units.
Negative feedback and late shipment flags were appealed on eBay's own evidence and removed, ratings included. The eBay AU account now reports a 0.00% transaction defect rate and a 0.00% late shipment rate.
Questions about eBay ad rates and strategies
Conversion rate and cost per click come from your own campaign reporting. The arithmetic here is exact; the comparison is only as good as those two figures.
Send us what the calculator said.
We will tell you what to change.
Your breakdown is already in the message box. Where the ad rate works on paper but the campaign still loses money, the problem is usually the listing rather than the bid.