eBay had 135 million active buyers and 2.5 billion live listings at the end of 2025, and $79.6 billion of goods sold through it that year, according to its full-year results.
The UK is its biggest market outside the US. UK revenue was $1.57 billion in 2025, second only to the US in eBay’s annual report.
Where it’s strongest
eBay’s growth is led by what it calls focus categories: vehicle parts and accessories, collectibles, refurbished items, clothing, luxury goods and sneakers.
Pre-loved goods are a particular UK strength. In eBay’s own survey, 46% of UK consumers buy something pre-loved at least once a month, more than in any other market surveyed. Refurbished items sold in the UK come with a minimum 12-month guarantee, and eBay completed its purchase of Depop in July 2026.
Selling tools
Seller Hub brings eBay’s selling tools into one free dashboard. Promoted Listings come in two kinds: one charged only when a promoted item sells after a click, and one charged per click.
eBay handles buyer payments itself, and payouts go out daily by default, or weekly, fortnightly or monthly if a seller prefers. From August 2026, eBay International Shipping has been rolling out to UK sellers, with international selling fees waived.
The Sell APIs
eBay’s current APIs for sellers are a set of REST APIs: Inventory for listings and stock, Fulfillment for orders and refunds, Finances for payouts and fees, plus Account, Marketing and Analytics.
Listings created through the Inventory API are managed through the API from then on, rather than in Seller Hub, so it’s a choice to make at the start of a project.
The older XML-based Trading API still runs, and eBay publishes a schedule for retiring its individual calls. The Shopping and Finding APIs were replaced by the Browse API in February 2025.
Access and limits
Apps sign in with OAuth, using access tokens that last two hours and long-lived refresh tokens. The default daily call limits are generous, from 100,000 calls for orders to 2 million for inventory, and higher limits are available through a free Application Growth Check.
The sandbox runs on test users and test money. Some calls made on behalf of UK and EU sellers, such as refunds and finance data, also carry a digital signature.
Notifications
The Notification API can tell other systems when a buyer completes checkout or an item is marked as shipped, both added in December 2025. Apps that store eBay user data also subscribe to account deletion notices, so a closed account’s data can be deleted from every connected app.
Fees per order, and a 3PL’s channels
The order-level P&L in our case studies covers a retailer of health and beauty products selling on eBay alongside three Shopify stores, Amazon and TikTok Shop. eBay’s fees and payment costs come off each order individually, so every eBay sale carries its own profit figure and margin.
For a UK 3PL, eBay already connected to its warehouse system out of the box, along with Amazon and Shopify. Mirakl didn’t, and our Mirakl integration filled that gap, and the 3PL kept the client it was about to lose.