Whatnot fees explained, with a worked example

Whatnot takes two fees from every completed sale: commission of 8% of the item's final sale price in most categories (4% on coins and money), and payment processing of 2.9% of everything the buyer paid plus a flat $0.30 transaction fee, per Whatnot's fee schedule as updated 17 September 2026. There are no listing fees and no monthly platform charge; creating, storing and managing listings costs nothing.

Both fees are charged per transaction, once each time a buyer checks out, on that same fee schedule as updated 17 September 2026. Whatnot's fee schedule states that fees apply each time a buyer checks out, and that even when purchases are later bundled into one order or shipment, the fees are still calculated separately per transaction. A buyer who wins ten cards can have them shipped together and you still pay ten flat fees, $3.00 of them, because bundling a shipment after the sale saves postage and never spreads that $0.30 across the package. What you are counting is checkouts rather than cards: several cards listed and sold together as one item are one checkout and one $0.30, however many are inside.

How that stacks up against the other marketplace card sellers know best is its own article: Whatnot fees vs eBay fees, and the two live rivals breakers weigh it against are in Whatnot vs Fanatics Live vs TikTok Shop fees.

What makes the fees confusing is not their size, it is that each one is charged on a different number.

Everything below matches Whatnot's published schedule as updated 17 September 2026, using the rates for the US, Canada and Australia. The UK and EU run 6.67% commission and 2.42% processing with VAT added to the fees, and Japan has its own rates with JCT, but the structure, two fees charged on two different numbers, is the same everywhere. Promotions change, so check Seller Hub before pricing anything around one.

Commission is a percentage of your item's final sale price, and only that. Buyer-paid shipping and buyer-paid tax are not in its base. The standard rate is 8%, which covers sports cards, trading card games, comics and toys; coins and money and wholesale pallets are 4%.

The final sale price means the price after your own coupons. If you list at $20 and offer a $5 coupon, commission is charged on $15. A coupon Whatnot issues, like a first-time buyer discount, does not touch your price at all: you are paid, and charged fees, as if the buyer paid full price.

Payment processing is 2.9% of the total order value plus a flat $0.30 per transaction. The total order value is everything the buyer handed over at checkout: the item price, any shipping they paid, and any tax they paid. That shipping and tax were never yours to keep, but they still raise the processing fee.

This is why two sales at the same price can pay you different amounts. A buyer far away pays more shipping, the order total rises, and the processing fee rises with it. It is also why very small sales keep a thin share: the flat $0.30 is the same on a $2 sale as on a $200 one, worked price by price in is a one dollar card worth selling on Whatnot. The buyer's tax in that base is not yours either, and who charges and remits it is covered in does Whatnot collect sales tax for sellers.

Which side of shipping you are on in the first place, and where the shipping you paid shows up, is its own guide: Whatnot shipping costs for sellers.

Say a card sells for $100, the buyer pays $6 shipping and $8.25 tax, and the category is standard rate.

Commission is 8% of $100, which is $8.00. The total order value is $114.25, so payment processing is 2.9% of that plus $0.30, about $3.61. Your payout is $100.00 minus $8.00 minus $3.61, which is $88.39. The buyer's shipping and tax pass through to the carrier and the tax office; they were only ever in the maths as the processing fee's base.

In many countries there is one more line: tax charged on the fees themselves, not on the sale. That is GST for Australian sellers, VAT in the UK and EU, and JCT in Japan, and Whatnot reports it as two separate columns, tax on commission and tax on the payment processing fee. For an Australian seller on this sale it is 10% of each fee, $0.80 plus $0.36, taking the payout to $87.23. Whether the fees themselves are tax deductible is its own question, answered separately.

To run your own numbers, the free fee calculator does this arithmetic live, and the break-even calculator runs it backwards to find the lowest price that still covers you.

The big one is the high-value rate: since 14 January 2026, commission in select categories applies only to the first $1,500 of an item's price, and the portion above that is commission free. Sell a $3,000 card and commission is charged on $1,500. Whatnot's terms still call it a limited-time promotion it can end at any time, but it has run all year and was extended to more categories in June 2026. Two details matter: it covers the singles subcategories in sports cards plus categories like comics, TCG, coins and toys, and it explicitly excludes sports breaks and surprise products. If you sell breaks, your break sales pay full commission however large they are; your singles get the cap.

Australian sellers run on their own commission curve rather than a flat rate, and Coins and Money orders also carry 0% commission through 30 September 2026 on top of it. Promotional rates apply automatically when a sale qualifies. The full Australian tier table, and what GST does to Whatnot's own fees, is in Whatnot fees and GST for Australian sellers. Card sellers and breakers: we follow one full break from case cost to net profit in Whatnot fees for sports cards.

Giveaways carry no seller fees, because the buyer pays nothing. You do pay the shipping, which is why a giveaway shows up in your reports as a small negative amount: it is a marketing cost doing its job, not an error. We do the fuller seller-side math in what giveaways really cost on Whatnot.

A refund you accept, or Whatnot issues on your behalf, comes back out of your earnings as its own transaction. In the Weekly Order Report it appears as a second row sharing the original order id, which is one of the things that makes that file worth reading carefully. We wrote a full guide to it: how to download and read the Whatnot Weekly Order Report. Which side ends up paying for a refund, and what a cancellation costs, are the subject of do sellers pay for refunds and cancellations on Whatnot.

Because the two rates are charged on two different numbers, and on small orders the flat $0.30 looms large. Commission takes 8% of the item price, but processing takes 2.9% of everything the buyer paid, shipping and tax included, plus the $0.30. Measured against the item price alone, the total routinely lands several points above the advertised rates.

Take an $8 card whose buyer paid $5 shipping and $1.12 tax, at the US, Canada and Australia rates. Commission is $0.64. Processing is 2.9% of $14.12 plus $0.30, about $0.71. That is $1.35 of fees on an $8 sale, about 17% of the item price, from two fees advertised at 8 and 2.9. Nothing extra was charged; the base did the work. The cheaper the item and the larger its shipping share, the higher the percentage reads. To see where your own orders land, the free fee calculator runs this math on any sale, in any region.

No. Whatnot's published schedule (updated 17 September 2026, re-read 18 September 2026) lists exactly two seller fees, commission and payment processing, both charged per sale in every region, and states that creating, storing and managing listings costs nothing. No monthly charge or subscription appears on it; a month's fees are just that month's per-sale fees added up, and the Weekly Order Report itemises them.

Whatnot rewrote its fee schedule on 17 September 2026 and made tiered commission part of it. From 21 September 2026 for existing sellers, and a week later for new ones, your total sales over a four-week period set the commission rate you pay in the next four-week period, with no application and nothing to join. In the US that makes 8.00% the Standard rate for Sports and Trading Card Games, held below $15,000 of sales in a period, falling by steps to 6.50% at $500,000. Every rate elsewhere on this page is a Standard tier rate, which is what most sellers pay and what the calculators model.

Two things do not move with it. Payment processing is untouched, so the 2.9% and the $0.30 apply at every tier, and commission is still charged on the item price alone. Premier Shop, the service-based status that cuts commission by a tenth, still stacks on top of a tier rate through 31 October 2026 and stops carrying a commission discount on 1 November 2026. The full tier table, the mechanics of the four-week periods and what counts toward one are in does Whatnot lower your commission when you sell more.

Volume is also not the only thing that moves a rate: the high-value cap above, the regional promotions and Whatnot's limited-time promos all do it without reference to size. The help centre's Fees and commissions section held nine articles when we swept it on 18 September 2026, four of them dated promotions, and it held ten two days before that. Check your own rate on the day rather than pricing a break around a number you read here.

Every number above is about one sale. A week of selling is fees plus shipping labels, giveaways, refunds, and above all what the inventory cost you, which no Whatnot report can know.

BreakCount reads your Weekly Order Report, asks for one cost per purchase lot, and spreads it across the lot's sales, so every show ends with a real net profit instead of a guess.

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