Where you sell a used garment is a choice about the buyer, not a slogan about which app is winning. Depop, Poshmark, Mercari, Vinted, and eBay can all clear a shirt. They do not clear the same shirt for the same person. A photo of a look, a search for a brand, a parts-style title with a date, and a neighbor who will pick up a coat are four different sales. This note is how to match the garment to one of them.
It is not the price, and it is not the fee. How to price for eBay, Poshmark, and Mercari is the number, built from sold listings. What those fees are made of is the vocabulary: commission, processing, a label, a return, a promotion you clicked. Neither article prints a percent, because the percent changes. The schedules live on the companies’ own pages. Read them the day you list:
If a forum post and the fee page disagree, the fee page wins. A country site is not another country’s site. Vinted in particular publishes the pricelist for the Vinted you are on. Do not copy a European screenshot onto a US listing, or the reverse, and call it research.
Who is the buyer for this garment?
Name the person before you name the app. Someone scrolling a feed wants a look they can see in one photo: a cut, a color, a decade they are wearing this year. Someone searching a brand wants the words on the label and a size they can trust. Someone searching a model wants a date you can defend and measurements in inches. Someone two miles away wants a coat they can try on, and they will not pay you to mail a brick.
The same black jacket can be all four, and it still has to be listed as one object. How to date the label decides whether you are allowed to say a decade. A 501 is not “vintage jeans” once you can read the patch, and that pair has its own guide. A quilted cotton bag and a leather bag with a duck mark are not the same closet as a tee, and they are not the same as each other. The Vera Bradley and Dooney & Bourke guides are the marks. This page is only the door.
Write down, in one line, what a buyer would type. If the line is a brand and a size, you are in search. If the line is a look you cannot name, you are in a feed, and the photo has to do the work the title will not. If you cannot write the line, you do not know what you are selling yet. Photograph the label before you pick a marketplace out of habit.
Condition is part of the buyer, too. A stain, a pill, a smell, and a hem that was cut are facts. Feed buyers and search buyers both return garments. The return is a cost the fee page and the fee article already name. Your job here is not to hide the fault in the pretty photo. The first three pictures should include the fault a reasonable person would want to see before they pay.
When is Depop the right closet?
Depop is a photo feed aimed at clothes, with a buyer who is often shopping a look rather than a catalog number. That suits graphic tees, recent decades people are wearing, mall brands that have a name, and pieces that read in a square crop. It is a weak place to hide a garment that only makes sense if the buyer reads a long title. The picture is the listing for a lot of those buyers. A dark photo on a bed is how a good piece looks like everything else.
You still owe measurements. Pit to pit, length, waist, and inseam, flat, in inches, with a note about how you measured. A size tag from 1998 is not a body. The label note is why the tag is a historical claim and the tape is the garment. Put both in the description. Hashtags are not a brand. If the neck says nothing, the title does not get a brand you wish it had.
Depop’s seller-fee page is the bill for the country you sell from, including whatever they currently call a selling fee, a payment fee, or a boost you opted into. A boost is optional until you turn it on, and then it is a fee. Do not let a zero in one line convince you the other lines are zero. Open the help article. Shipping is part of the buyer’s total even when the label is easy. Weigh the packed shirt. A guessed label is the mistake the fee article already warns about. Do not relearn it here as a vibe.
Depop is the wrong only-home for a piece that needs a sold-search with a model number, and for a heavy coat the feed will like and the carrier will punish. Check sold comps on the site you will actually use. A Depop sale is evidence about Depop. It is not an eBay price with a filter you have not applied.
When is Poshmark the right closet?
Poshmark is a closet. Buyers search brands, follow sellers, and bundle. That suits a named label a person already knows how to spell: a contemporary brand, a Coach you can show the creed for, a fleece with the logo in frame, a pair of jeans in a size people wear. It is clothing-first in a way a general auction site is not. Menswear sells there too. Do not talk yourself out of a clean, measured men’s shirt because you have heard the app is only dresses.
The listing still fails without the dull facts. Brand only from the label. Size from the tag and from the tape. Flaws in words and in photos: underarm, hem, zipper, a pull in the knit. “EU” or a boutique size gets a measurement beside it. Poshmark generates a label as part of how the site ships. The price of that label, and the fee on the sale, are on the fee policy. This page will not freeze yesterday’s shipping number into a sentence. If the garment is heavy, compare that label with a local pickup before you decide the closet was the right door. Facebook Marketplace is the local door, including the part about meeting a stranger, which this note will not repeat.
Bundles are a Poshmark habit. A bundle is not a reason to invent a discount you did not mean. If you accept one, the fee policy is how that order is billed. Read it for the order you are actually accepting, not for a single listing you priced last month.
Beginners should list one piece they can photograph in daylight, on a hanger or flat, front and back, plus the label and the fault. Sharing and following are how the site moves a listing around. They are not a substitute for a comp. The first month is the workflow: source, comp, list a few, ship, write down what happened. Use that. Do not build a sharing schedule from a blog post that will be stale when the button moves.
When is Mercari the right listing?
Mercari is a general marketplace that happens to sell a lot of clothes. The buyer is often searching or browsing a category, then making an offer. That suits a single garment with a clear brand or a clear description, including things that are not a fashion look: a work jacket, a team jacket with a readable Starter tag, an ordinary sweater in a useful size. It also suits sellers who want a listing rather than a closet feed. Offers are normal. An offer is not an insult. It is a number you accept from comps or you decline.
The condition menu is a checkbox you pick. It is not an inspection, which is the same warning the sold-comps note makes about eBay’s menu. “Like new” with a photo of a stain is a return waiting on a carrier. Say the stain. Mercari’s fee page is the seller bill and the buyer bill, and the page has changed more than once. Open article 169, or whatever the help center currently titles the fee explanation, on the day you price. Do not trust a thumbnail that says the fee is simple. Simple is not a schedule.
Shipping on Mercari is a choice, and the choice changes the number the buyer pays. The pricing article is how to keep the buyer’s total and your label in the same sentence. Here, the only rule is that you look up the current label options on Mercari before you promise a price that assumed a different site’s label. A prepaid label you did not check is how a light shirt and a pair of boots get the same fantasy postage.
Beginners do not need a catalog. They need one honest listing: photos of the front, the back, the label, the measurement, and the worst spot. Then they need to watch whether anyone offers, and to compare that silence with sold listings of the same garment. Silence is data. It is not a reason to rewrite the title with brands that are not on the tag.
When is Vinted the right listing?
Vinted is another clothes feed, closer to a wardrobe clear-out than to an auction. People use it for everyday brands, recent pieces, and the sort of garment a buyer tries on through photos. It is a reasonable door for the same photo-first clothing you might have put on Depop, and a poor door for a claim that depends on a union label the crop cut off. Put the label in the photos anyway. Dating the tag does not stop being your job because the app feels casual.
The split that matters is the pricelist, and it is not one global number. Vinted’s own price list says who pays the platform fee on the site you are using, and it is updated when they change it. On some of their country sites the fee is presented to the buyer at checkout rather than taken as a seller commission. That sentence is a reason to open the price list, not a rate you should memorize. A seller who “keeps the price” can still be handing the buyer a total that loses the sale, and can still be paying a bump or a label arrangement the pricelist names. Read the page for your login. If you also sell on a European Vinted and a US Vinted, they are two pricelists.
Compare like with like. A Vinted sale is a Vinted comp. Do not average it with a Poshmark sale and call the result the market. If your garment has no sold relatives on Vinted and several on eBay, you have learned where the buyer is. The empty site is not a secret better price. The sold-comps note says that about Mercari and Poshmark. It is the same fact here.
Measurements, flaws, and a brand you can prove are still the listing. A feed does not repeal returns. If the piece smells like storage, say so, or wash it and say you washed it. Smell is a return that photos miss. The buyer will not miss it.
When does the garment belong on eBay?
eBay is the search engine for a garment you can name precisely. A dated pair of Wranglers, a band shirt with a readable copyright, a coat with a union label and measurements, a size that is unusual, menswear a collector searches by era: that is eBay’s strength. The title can hold the words a careful buyer types. The sold filter can show you whether anyone typed them. How to read those sold listings is the method. This page will not repeat the difference between sold, completed, and still for sale. Use that note, then come back here only to decide that eBay was the right pile to read.
eBay is also the site where a vague “vintage Y2K” title goes to sit. If you cannot date it, do not date it. The label article is the limit. eBay’s fee page is longer than a closet app’s, because categories, a store subscription, and optional upgrades change the bill. Read the selling-fees help for the site you list on, ebay.com or another country site, and ignore a blog that collapsed that page into one percent.
Clothes on eBay still need the closet facts: flat measurements, fabric from the tag, flaws, and photos on a hanger or laid flat so the cut is visible. A mannequin that hides the side seam is a worse listing than a boring flat lay. Pack the garment the way you would want to receive it. A crushed coat arrives as a different condition than the one you photographed, and the return is yours to unwind.
Use eBay when the search words are the product. Use a feed when the photo is the product. A piece can be both, and you still pick one live listing. If you are not sure, search the exact garment on both, count real sales rather than active asks, and list where the matched sales are. That is the whole comparison. It is not a personality test about which app you like.
When is a local sale the better door?
A heavy coat, a pair of boots, a lot of children’s clothes, and anything that will not clear a label are often local. Selling on Facebook Marketplace is the pickup: photos, a meeting place, low offers, no-shows. Read it for the safety and the payment. Do not relist those warnings here. The clothes-specific point is only this: if the sold price on a national site is close to the cost of the label plus the fee, you are mailing the garment for practice. Look up the fee and the label. If the remainder is a number you would not get out of a chair for, the coat stays in town or it stays in the closet.
A local buyer can try the piece on. That is an advantage the feed does not have, and it is why a measured listing still matters. People will ask for the pit measurement in the comments. Put it in the description the first time. A lot of ordinary tees, sold as a bag at a yard sale, can be a more honest price than ten national listings that never clear. How to price a yard sale is the seller’s tag for that door. It is not an online fee.
Children’s clothes follow the same test. A single worn tee is usually a lot or a pass. A named jacket in sound condition can be a single if sold listings of that jacket exist. Do not invent a rule that “kids’ clothes don’t sell.” Look. Then decide.
How do you start if you have never listed?
Pick one site for the first ten garments. The first-month note is the sequence: do not buy a pile, comp before you pay, list a few, ship one, write down the result. This page adds only the choice of door. If your closet is recent brands and you will photograph them well, start on Poshmark, Depop, or the Vinted site for your country, and learn that fee page cold. If your closet is dated and you can read labels, start on eBay and learn the sold filter. If your closet is heavy, start local. Mercari is a fair first site when you want a straightforward listing and you are willing to answer offers without taking them personally.
The first listing, on any of them, contains the same bones. Front, back, label, flaw, measurements. Brand if and only if it is printed. Decade if and only if the labels support it. A price copied from the pricing article’s method, not from the active listing with the highest number. Then you wait. Relisting the same shirt to a second site because the first day was quiet is how beginners end up with two sales of one shirt. Give the listing longer than a day unless the fee page and the comps say you were wrong.
Do not buy inventory to “try an app.” Sell what you already own and can afford to learn on. A return on a shirt you were given is a lesson. A return on a shirt you financed is a bill. The fee article is the list of lines on that bill. The thrift decision, if you later buy to resell, sits on the thrifting page and in what is worth flipping. Those pages do not pick Depop for you. You pick it with the garment in your hand.
When a listing sells, record the site, the buyer’s total, the fee you were actually charged, and the label you actually bought. That note is worth more than a comparison chart. Next time, you are comparing your own net, on a garment you have already shipped, with a fee page that may have moved.
What can a photo settle, and what can it not?
A photo can show the label, the cut, the stain, and the tape next to the hem. Worth can read a clear brand it knows and give you a range from that picture. The range is one estimate. It is not a sold listing on Depop, and it is not Poshmark’s fee. It cannot tell you which feed is busy this month, whether Vinted’s pricelist changed, or whether your coat will survive a mailer.
You settle the door by naming the buyer, checking sold listings of that garment on the site you will use, and reading that site’s fee page before you print a label. Five marketplaces are not five prices. They are five audiences. One shirt gets one of them.