eBay vs WooCommerce: Marketplace Reach or Your Own WordPress Store?
eBay brings 136 million buyers and takes a cut of each sale; WooCommerce gives you a WordPress store with no commission and no built-in traffic. Fees, a worked example, and how FLUF Connect runs both from one inventory.
7 days for £1, then from £9/month.
If you want buyers this week and do not mind paying a cut of every sale, eBay is the answer. If you want a shop under your own name, your own customer list and no commission, WooCommerce is the answer, and you will be running a WordPress site to get it. Most sellers who ask this question end up doing both: eBay for reach, a WooCommerce store for margin and repeat customers. Below are the fees on each, who each one suits, a worked example on the same £40 item, and how FLUF Connect runs the two from one inventory.
Is this for you?
Choose eBay if you are starting out, selling one-off or second-hand items, or testing whether a product line sells at all. eBay brings the shoppers; your job is the listing. Choose WooCommerce if you already have a brand or a range you will restock, you are willing to bring your own traffic through search, social media or email, and you want to keep the customer relationship. WooCommerce is the e-commerce plugin for WordPress, so you also need to be comfortable owning a website, or paying someone who is.
A good test: if a stranger would only find your product by searching a marketplace, start on eBay. If people already know your name, or you sell something they will come back for, a WordPress store is worth the set-up.
What each one charges
eBay’s fees depend on which site you sell on and whether you are a private or a business seller. On eBay UK, private sellers pay no final value fee on most categories, get 300 free listings a month, and pay 35p per listing beyond that (page updated 30 September 2026). The buyer pays instead: eBay’s Buyer Protection fee on UK private listings is 10p per item plus 7% of the price up to £20, 4% from £20 to £300 and 2% from £300 to £4,000. It is added to what the buyer sees, so it still shapes what you can charge.
UK business sellers pay a final value fee of 10.9% to 12.9% in most categories on the total the buyer pays including postage, plus 30p per order up to £10 or 40p above it, plus a 0.35% regulatory operating fee, all excluding VAT. An eBay Shop costs £27, £77 or £437 a month and raises the free listing allowance. On eBay US, the final value fee in most categories is 13.6% of the total sale up to $7,500 per item, plus $0.30 or $0.40 per order, with 250 free listings a month and $0.35 per listing after that.
WooCommerce has no listing fee, no final value fee and no monthly plan from WooCommerce itself; the plugin is open source. What you pay for is the site around it. Hosting on WordPress.com, for example, starts at $25 a month billed yearly on the plan that supports WooCommerce, and other hosts have their own prices. Card processing through WooPayments is 1.5% plus 25p per UK card transaction and 2.9% plus $0.30 in the US (rates as of July 2026), with extra charges for international cards and currency conversion. Paid extensions for shipping, subscriptions or marketing are optional and priced per plugin.
The same £40 item on each
Take a £40 item with £3.50 postage sold by a UK business seller, so £43.50 paid by the buyer. On eBay, in a category charging 12.9%, the final value fee is £5.61, the per-order fee is 40p and the regulatory fee is 15p: £6.16 before VAT, about 14% of the total. On your WooCommerce store, WooPayments takes 1.5% plus 25p: 90p. The gap on this one sale is more than £5.
The gap is real but it is not the whole picture. The eBay buyer found you on eBay. The WooCommerce buyer found you because of marketing you paid for in time or money, and your hosting bill is due whether you sell one item or a hundred. On ten sales a month, a $25 hosting plan alone costs more per order than eBay’s per-order fee. On five hundred sales a month, WooCommerce is far cheaper per order. Work out your own break-even from your monthly volume before you decide which channel gets which stock.
Buyers and reach
eBay reported 136 million active buyers and $22.4 billion of gross merchandise volume in the second quarter of 2026, with buyers defined as people who paid for something in the previous twelve months. Every listing you post is searchable by all of them, and by Google.
A WooCommerce store has whatever audience you build. The platform’s scale is in the number of shops, not shoppers: W3Techs counts WooCommerce on 7.8% of all websites and 47.5% of sites with a known e-commerce system (19 October 2026), and WordPress itself on 39.6% of all websites. That tells you the tooling is mature and the help is easy to find. It tells you nothing about who will visit your store on day one, which is nobody until you send them.
Control, rules and the customer
On eBay you sell inside eBay’s rules: its categories, its listing format, its returns policies, its performance standards and its decision on which listings rank. In return, disputes, payments and buyer trust are largely handled for you. On a WooCommerce store you decide the design, the checkout, the returns policy and the data you collect, and you carry the responsibility that comes with it: payment disputes, site security, updates, backups and legal pages are yours to manage, directly or through your host.
The customer relationship is the quiet difference. An eBay buyer is eBay’s customer, and you contact them through eBay. A WooCommerce buyer gave you their email address at checkout, and you can write to them again. For a brand that lives on repeat orders, that alone can justify the hosting bill.
Effort and day-to-day work
eBay is quick to start and slow to scale: each listing is written by hand unless you use a listing tool, and fees rise in line with sales. WooCommerce is slow to start and quick to scale: a week or two to set up hosting, theme, payments, shipping and tax, then adding a product is a form in your WordPress admin, and the costs barely move as sales grow. Keeping a WordPress site healthy takes a little attention every month, which managed hosting can take off your hands.
What FLUF Connect does on each
FLUF Connect links both to one inventory, so the question stops being either/or. Install the FLUF Connect plugin for WooCommerce from your WordPress admin and connect your store; sign in with eBay from the Channels screen. From then on you can list store products on eBay, list eBay items in your store, and let a sale on either side update the other.
| Capability | eBay | WooCommerce |
|---|---|---|
| How you connect | Sign in with eBay from FLUF Connect | The FLUF Connect plugin, installed in WordPress and linked to your store |
| Account needed | An eBay seller account | A WordPress site running WooCommerce |
| Crosslisting and inventory sync | Included on every plan | Included on every plan |
| Item sells on another channel | The eBay listing ends or its quantity drops | Store stock drops |
| Item sells here | Detected; your other channels update and the order comes into FLUF | Detected; your other channels update and the order comes into FLUF |
| Relisting | From the Seller plan upwards | Not applicable to your own store |
| Offer management | From the Seller plan upwards | Not applicable to your own store |
Connecting eBay in FLUF Connect
Sign in with eBay from the Channels screen. Items you list go up on eBay, an eBay sale is picked up and your other channels update, and a sale elsewhere ends or reduces the eBay listing. Relisting and offer management on eBay are included from the Seller plan upwards.
Connecting WooCommerce in FLUF Connect
Add the FLUF Connect plugin to your WordPress site, then link the store from the Channels screen. Your WooCommerce products come into FLUF’s inventory ready to list on eBay and other marketplaces, and a sale in your store lowers stock everywhere else. Your WordPress site stays the shop your customers see; FLUF sits behind it.
Start with 7 days for £1, then from £9/month.
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly | You save | Crosslisted products |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | £9/month | £59/year | 45% | Unlimited |
| Pro | £29/month | £199/year | 42% | Unlimited |
| Super Seller | Custom pricing — tell us what you need | Unlimited | ||
Automatic relisting, offer management, smart pricing and listing boosts are included from Pro upwards. Starter covers unlimited crosslisting, inventory sync, order sync and Instagram posting without them. Accounting integrations are included from Pro upwards. Yearly billing is charged once a year. New accounts get 7 days for £1, then move onto a plan.
Running both
The usual split is simple. Put everything on eBay for discovery, and send the buyers who come back to your WooCommerce store, where the margin is better and the customer is yours. Keep one inventory in FLUF so that a sale in either place takes the item down in the other, and compare fees per order every quarter as your volume changes. If you would rather compare a hosted shop builder with the WordPress route first, read Shopify vs WooCommerce (Shopify being the main hosted alternative). For eBay against a hosted store, see eBay vs Shopify.
Sources
- eBay UK: fees for private sellers, updated 30 September 2026 (checked October 2026)
- eBay UK: Buyer Protection fee (checked October 2026)
- eBay UK: fees for business sellers, updated 30 September 2026 (checked October 2026)
- eBay US: selling fees (checked October 2026)
- eBay Inc. second quarter 2026 results, 5 August 2026 (checked October 2026)
- WooCommerce: the WooCommerce plugin (checked October 2026)
- WooCommerce: WooPayments fees and debits, as of July 2026 (checked October 2026)
- WordPress.com pricing (checked October 2026)
- W3Techs: usage statistics for WooCommerce, 19 October 2026 (checked October 2026)
- W3Techs: usage statistics for WordPress, 19 October 2026 (checked October 2026)
Frequently Asked Questions
Per sale, yes: a WooCommerce store pays card processing only, around 1.5% plus 25p per UK transaction through WooPayments, while a UK business seller on eBay pays roughly 11% to 13% plus a per-order fee. Per month, it depends on volume, because hosting is a fixed cost and eBay brings the buyers for its fee.
It works with a WordPress site that runs WooCommerce. You install the FLUF Connect plugin for WooCommerce from your WordPress admin and connect the store from the Channels screen; no developer is needed.
Yes. Once your store is connected, your WooCommerce products appear in FLUF's inventory and you can select them for eBay. A sale on either side lowers the stock on the other.
Not final value fees on most categories, as of eBay UK's page updated 30 September 2026. Private sellers get 300 free listings a month and pay 35p per listing beyond that. Buyers pay a Buyer Protection fee on top of the price instead.
No. WooCommerce gives you the shop, not the shoppers. Traffic comes from search, social media, email and marketplaces you also sell on, which is why many stores keep eBay running alongside.
No, those are marketplace tools and do not apply to your own store. On eBay, relisting and offer management are included from the Seller plan upwards. Crosslisting and inventory sync between eBay and WooCommerce are on every plan.