What is left after a Vinted sale
In the European markets Vinted operates, it takes no commission from a private seller — check your own payout statement. The buyer pays the protection fee, on top of the price on the listing, so you collect the listed amount: which makes the profit simpler to work out, and the mistake easier to make.
The calculation
Commission is left at 0: Vinted takes nothing from a private seller. If your payout statement says otherwise — business seller status, a paid option, or a market where the rules differ — put your real rate in.
Amounts are in euros here. Vinted bills in the currency of the market you sell in, so if that is not the euro, read the € signs as your own currency — the arithmetic is identical. We would rather leave the symbol alone than convert at a rate we cannot keep current, which is the same reason no fee percentage is printed on this page.
Where the money goes anyway
| Line | Who pays | Effect on your profit |
|---|---|---|
| The listed price | The buyer | You collect all of it |
| Buyer protection | The buyer | None — but it makes your listing dearer |
| Standard delivery | The buyer | None, as long as you do not cover it |
| Shipping you throw in | You | Direct, and usually underestimated |
| Packaging | You | Direct, never counted |
| Refunding a dispute | You | Total, on a sale already booked |
So the trap is not the commission line. It is in the last three rows, and above all in the second.
The price you list is not the price you are compared on
Buyer protection is added to what the buyer sees at checkout, and so is delivery. Your item is therefore never compared against the price you typed in: it is compared against a higher total, next to other listings running through exactly the same mechanism.
Two practical consequences, and they pull in opposite directions. The gap works against small amounts: on a cheap piece a flat protection fee weighs heavily in proportion, which makes the item less attractive than it looks. On the other hand every competitor is subject to it too — so there is no advantage to be had, only an illusion to avoid when you hold your own price up against the listing next to it.
It is also what makes bundles worth doing on this platform: one shipment, one protection fee, several pieces. The trade-off is worked through in vendre en lot ou à l’unité (in French).
Free shipping, the most expensive line there is
It is the concession buyers ask for most, and the one that costs the most, because it comes out of the net profit rather than the listed price. On a thin-margin piece, covering delivery can absorb half of what it was meant to earn.
Try it in the calculator: take one of your recent sales, set the shipping to zero, then to what it actually cost. The gap in percentage terms is almost always wider than it feels at the moment you agree to it.
If you are going to cover the shipping, build it into the listed price rather than concede it afterwards. The same euro given up in advance is negotiated once; given up on request, it gets renegotiated on every sale.
Disputes, or a sale turning back into a loss
A refund lands after the sale has already been counted as won. That is what makes it so hard to absorb: the month’s figure is already set, the item is already out of stock, and the correction happens mentally in the following month — or not at all.
Lost parcels, refund requests and abusive returns each have their own path through it. The three guides below are in French — the site’s guides are written for the French market and are not translated.
- Colis perdu — a lost parcel: which remedies to use, and in what order.
- Demande de remboursement — a refund request: what is well founded and what is not.
- Retour abusif — an abusive return: how to protect yourself before you ship.
The best protection is still an honest description, flaws included. A listing that hides them produces returns, disputes and bad ratings — a deferred cost that outweighs the sale you won.
So what actually decides the amount?
Whatever your own statement deducts, the variable that decides the amount is the price the piece actually goes for — not the price it is listed at. And a listing price proves nothing: the listings still visible are, by construction, the ones that did not sell.
That is what the estimating method is for, and the reason our own estimates are built on completed sales rather than on what is still on screen.
Free account — 10 estimates a month
Read next: Estimating a resale price · Profit margin calculator