Vendora vs Facebook Marketplace — Which Should Greek Sellers Use?

On this page

• The short answer
• The fact that decides everything
• What each one costs
• What happens when it goes wrong
• Cash on delivery, and why Vendora refuses it
• Listing mechanics side by side
• How big each one is in Greece
• The antitrust case, and why Vendora is inside Marketplace
• Running both with FLUF Connect
• DAC7, and the rule that actually decides your tax
• So which one
• Sources and verification
• Related guides

The short answer

Use both, but understand that only one of them is a marketplace in the ordinary sense.

Vendora sells things for you: it takes the buyer’s money, holds it, generates the label, gives the buyer a window to inspect, and mediates if they disagree with you. Facebook Marketplace in Greece introduces you to someone nearby and then steps out of the room entirely — no payment, no shipping, no protection, and no record that a sale ever happened.

That is not a criticism of Meta so much as a description of the product it actually ships here. And it explains almost every practical difference below, including the ones about fees, disputes and tax.

The fact that decides everything

Load Meta’s help article on selling with delivery from a Greek connection and you get a single sentence: “Προστ το παρόν, η πώληση με δυνατότητα αποστολήσ στο Marketplace δεν είναι διαθέσιμη στην τοποθεσία σου” — selling with delivery on Marketplace isn’t available in your location at the moment — followed by a link to learn how to sell something locally instead.

The European Commission recorded the same thing in its 2024 decision, in language that is hard to argue with: “In the EEA, Facebook Marketplace does not facilitate sales transactions but simply provides a place for sellers to advertise their products without getting involved in price and shipping processes between the buyer and seller.”

Meta itself documents exactly two Marketplace transaction types — local transactions, where you message and meet, and checkout on Facebook using Meta Pay. Greek sellers have access to the first and not the second.

Everything downstream follows. No checkout means no selling fee, no buyer protection, no chargebacks, no payout timing, no record of what you were paid, and nothing that tells any other sales channel the item is gone. Marketplace in Greece is a very large, very free noticeboard.

It has been available here since 8 November 2017, incidentally — Greece was not in the original 17-country European rollout that August, arriving three months later alongside Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus and the Baltics.

What each one costs

Vendora’s model deserves a sentence of praise: listing is free and there is no sale commission, and the only charge is moving money out of the Wallet. That means a seller who buys as well as sells, or who takes gift cards, can genuinely transact at zero cost. The €0.99 is charged per withdrawal, so batching is worth doing. First withdrawal requires KYC — a passport or EU ID card — and funds land in three to five business days.

The one cost people forget is dormancy: after 24 consecutive months of wallet inactivity, payment provider Mangopay charges €30 a year. If you stop selling, empty the wallet.

On Marketplace, Meta told the Commission plainly that Facebook Marketplace “does not generate revenue through listing fees”. In Greece there is no fee of any kind, because there is no transaction for Meta to be part of. We are not going to repeat the 5% or $0.40 figures that circulate online: they describe a shipped-order checkout in other markets, and we could not verify them against any live Meta page in any case.

What happens when it goes wrong

This is where the two diverge most sharply, and where the free option turns out to have a price.

Vendora runs a genuine escrow. Its “Αγορά μέσω Vendora” service collects, holds and releases payment only when both sides are satisfied. The buyer gets two days after delivery to inspect a shipped item, or thirty minutes for an in-person handover. Refunds are due where the item differs significantly from the description or was damaged in transit; if you reject a request, the transaction is suspended and a Vendora mediator decides. Sellers are told to photograph or film the packed contents, and that evidence is mandatory in a dispute. Refunds hit the Vendora Wallet instantly, or other methods in three to five business days.

Facebook’s own scam guidance is the honest counterpart: eligible purchases made with checkout on Facebook are covered by Purchase Protection, and items exchanged in person using cash or other person-to-person payment methods are not eligible. In Greece, every Marketplace sale is the second kind. There is no claim to make.

Meta’s guidance is at least specific about what to watch for, and it is worth reading before your first meet-up. It names as scam signals: a buyer pushing the conversation off Facebook or Messenger early, to WhatsApp, phone or email; screenshots of payments presented as proof; overpayment followed by a refund request; gift-card payment requests; and fake payment-app emails. Its blunt line is the useful one — you should never trust screenshots of payments as confirmation.

There is a second-order effect worth naming. Because no money flows through Meta, a Marketplace sale is invisible to every other system you run. Nothing marks the item sold, nothing tells your other channels, and nothing records what you were paid. On a single-item wardrobe, that is how you end up selling the same coat twice.

Cash on delivery, and why Vendora refuses it

Greece is a cash-on-delivery market, still. The most solid recent measurement comes from AfterSalesPro’s Greek eCommerce Review, based on more than three million orders across 800 Greek e-shops and published through GRECA in March 2026: COD fell from 60% of orders in 2023 to 50% in 2025, with card payments rising to 35%. The same study puts locker adoption at 24.6% and the average order value at €68, up 11% year on year. BOX NOW’s chief executive independently put COD at roughly 45 to 50% of the market in late 2025.

Against that backdrop, Vendora’s position is a deliberate bet. It does not offer αντικαταβολή at all, and settling off-platform by bank transfer, cash on delivery or cash is a terms violation that can get an account suspended. Its stated reasoning is that a buyer gets two full days to inspect at home rather than a rushed doorstep check, that funds move only on confirmation, and that Vendora can mediate.

Marketplace, being cash-and-meet by construction, is where the other half of the market still lives. If your buyers expect to hand over notes, Marketplace fits their habit and Vendora asks them to change it.

Infrastructure is moving the other way, though, and quickly. BOX NOW reported over 200,000 locker compartments across roughly 2,300 points in early 2026, targeting 300,000 by year end, and the telecoms regulator EETT recorded parcel-locker installations growing 36.1% in 2024. Vendora ships through BOX NOW, ACS, ELTA Courier, Geniki Taxydromiki, Speedex, DHL Greece, DPD and Kronos Express, with a large BOX NOW parcel at €3.99 domestically plus a €1 island surcharge, delivered in two to four business days.

Listing mechanics side by side

Vendora auto-suggests a category from your title and photos, allows bundles where items share a category and one price, and permits a second account only if it is a business account. Its prohibited list covers the usual: pornographic material, drugs, pharmaceuticals, weapons, stolen goods, antiquities and gambling items.

Meta’s Commerce Policies hold one genuinely useful surprise for a resale seller: used clothing is not restricted. The only “used” prohibition is cosmetics — commerce content may not promote cosmetics that have been used or are not in their original packaging. Counterfeits are banned under third-party infringement, as are body parts and fluids, medical and healthcare products, and recalled items. Services are Jobs-only.

One Marketplace behaviour is worth exploiting: listings do not expire, and only get deleted after two years of inactivity — but renewing or editing any part of a listing resets that two-year window. A small edit is a free refresh.

Neither platform publishes a photo cap on the Marketplace side, or a title and description limit on either. The “10 photos, 100 characters” figures repeated in third-party guides are not Meta’s, and we will not repeat them.

How big each one is in Greece

Comparing these two honestly is harder than it looks, because they publish different kinds of number.

Vendora reports more than 2,000,000 registered users in Greece. It was founded in Athens in August 2017 by Robin Schuil, a Dutch entrepreneur who co-founded Marktplaats.nl before eBay bought it in 2004, and is operated by Vendora B.V., registered in Almere in the Netherlands. It launched in Cyprus in April 2023, raised an undisclosed multi-million round led by No Such Ventures in July 2023, and opened vendora.eu to all 27 EU member states in 2026. Similarweb estimated roughly three million monthly visits in July 2026, with 92% of traffic from Greece, a 62.65% male skew, a core age band of 25 to 34, and vinted.gr, skroutz.gr and car.gr as nearest comparables.

Facebook Marketplace publishes no Greek figure at all, and no monthly user count anywhere. Meta’s most recent first-party scale statistic, from July 2026, is that 430 million items are listed each month globally — the month Marketplace turned ten. The oft-quoted “over one billion monthly Marketplace users” has no traceable Meta source and we will not repeat it.

The nearest honest proxy for Greek reach is the platform underneath it: DataReportal put Facebook’s Greek advertising reach at 5.10 million people, 51.4% of the total population, as of October 2025, split 51.0% male and 49.0% female, against 8.64 million Greek internet users. That is the whole social network rather than Marketplace, and it should be presented as such — but it does mean Marketplace’s ambient audience is materially larger and more gender-balanced than Vendora’s.

For context on the market both are fishing in: one in two Greeks bought something secondhand during 2025, 72% citing financial reasons, 88% buying used items through apps, and physical secondhand store turnover grew from €8.6m in 2020 to €57.1m in 2025 on ELSTAT figures.

The antitrust case, and why Vendora is inside Marketplace

On 14 November 2024 the European Commission fined Meta €797.72 million for abusing its dominant position in relation to Facebook Marketplace — €395,202,000 for one infringement and €402,520,000 for the other, with the conduct dated from 14 August 2017.

The two findings are worth reading, because the first describes exactly why Marketplace has scale in Greece without anyone choosing it. Meta was found to have tied Marketplace to Facebook, such that “all Facebook users automatically have access and get regularly exposed to Facebook Marketplace whether they want it or not”; and to have imposed unfair trading conditions on rival classified-ads services advertising on its platforms, letting Meta use their advertising data for Marketplace’s sole benefit. Margrethe Vestager’s line was blunt: “Meta must now stop this behaviour.”

Meta appealed, and simultaneously complied. It launched the Facebook Marketplace Partner Program on 13 February 2025, opening Marketplace to eligible third-party classified-ads providers in the European Economic Area — and on 22 May 2025 the first two European partners went live: Catawiki and Vendora, in select EEA countries.

Which makes the framing of this page slightly unusual. Vendora and Facebook Marketplace are competitors and partners at once. Meta has not said which countries the partner listings reach, so we cannot tell you whether a Greek buyer currently sees Vendora inventory inside Marketplace — the announcements say only “select countries”. But the direction is clear, and it is a regulator’s doing rather than a commercial choice.

Running both with FLUF Connect

Most Greek sellers should be on both, for the plain reason that they reach different people and neither charges to list. FLUF Connect holds one master record per item and pushes it to the channels you connect.

Sold-out protection is the feature that earns its keep here, and specifically because of the Marketplace problem described earlier. Meta will never tell you an item sold, because Meta never knew. If you sell a jacket through Vendora’s escrow, FLUF can pull the Marketplace listing — which is the only mechanism that stops a stranger driving across Athens for something you posted to Thessaloniki last Tuesday.

Neither channel reports orders back into FLUF. On Vendora that is a gap; on Marketplace it is not even conceptually possible, since there is no order.

Both are hosted by a real browser session rather than a server calling an API. FLUF Connect also runs on iOS and Android, and the mobile app can host some device-executed channels directly — check the channels screen in the app for the current list rather than assuming a desktop is required.

DAC7, and the rule that actually decides your tax

The two platforms sit on opposite sides of the reporting line, and for a mechanical reason rather than a policy one.

DAC7 catches platforms that facilitate consideration. The directive explicitly excludes software that merely “allows users to list or advertise a Relevant Activity” without further intervention, and requires that consideration be known or reasonably knowable by the operator. Vendora facilitates payment through Mangopay, so it is squarely in scope; it collects your ΑΦΜ and full address, reports at 30 or more sales or over €2,000 in a year, and may restrict account features if you do not comply. Facebook Marketplace in Greece takes no payment and therefore has no consideration figure to report. That is our reading of how the definition applies rather than something AADE has published about Meta specifically.

Greece transposed DAC7 by ν. 5047/2023, implemented by AADE decision Α.1016/2024, with reports due by 31 January each year and platform penalties running from €1,000 to €500,000. Reported data includes your name, address, ΑΦΜ, date and place of birth and the IBAN credited, broken down by quarter. Vendora makes a fair point on its own page that is worth repeating: the €2,000 figure concerns the reporting obligation only and does not mean you will be taxed.

Now the part that matters more. Neither platform’s threshold is the Greek tax rule. Article 21 §3 of ν.4172/2013 defines a business transaction by profit intent and systematic conduct, and AADE circular Ε.2031/2023 explains the presumption: three similar transactions within a six-month window are treated as systematic activity, counted from the date of the first sale. What counts is the number of transactions, not the number of items in each, so a single bundled sale of ten jumpers is one transaction. Profit intent must exist at acquisition, and the circular excludes assets inherited or gifted by relatives to the second degree, and assets held for more than five years.

Cross that line and you are expected to register before trading, not after. The domestic small-business VAT exemption sits at €10,000 of annual turnover under article 39 of the VAT Code, with an EU-wide €100,000 ceiling for the cross-border scheme from January 2025. And note that a cash Marketplace sale is invisible to DAC7 but is not invisible to the law — the systematic-activity test applies identically on both platforms. None of this is tax advice; a Greek accountant should confirm your position.

So which one

Shipping anything, to anyone you have not met: Vendora, and it is not close. Marketplace cannot ship in Greece.

Bulky, local, cash-friendly items — furniture, white goods, a bicycle: Marketplace, where the buyer is nearby, the audience is larger and there is no fee at all. Accept that you carry all the risk.

Fashion and small goods: both, listed simultaneously. Vendora gives you escrow, labels and a national audience; Marketplace gives you a free second shopfront in front of half the country’s population. The only thing that makes running both safe is a reliable way to delist on the other side when one sells.

If you want to be paid without meeting anyone: Vendora is your only option of the two, and its zero-commission model means the whole cost of that is €0.99 plus 5.1% plus VAT when you cash out.

Sources and verification

• European Commission press release IP/24/5801, 14 November 2024 — the €797.72 million fine, the tying and unfair-trading-conditions findings, and the Vestager quotation; case AT.40684 for the fine split and the 14 August 2017 start date, and recital 25 for the finding that Marketplace does not facilitate EEA transactions.
• Meta’s Greek-locale help page on selling with delivery and its description of the two Marketplace transaction types.
• Meta on Purchase Protection and its scam guidance, which states that in-person cash exchanges are not eligible.
• Meta’s Commerce Policies — used cosmetics and counterfeits prohibited, used clothing not restricted; and the two-year inactivity deletion rule.
• Meta Newsroom, July 2026 — 430 million items listed monthly and Marketplace’s tenth anniversary; and Meta’s response to the Commission, including the Partner Program launch and the 22 May 2025 Catawiki and Vendora go-live.
• Vendora service fees — free listing, no commission, €0.99 plus 5.1% plus VAT on withdrawal, and the fee-free gift-card route; and the wallet for the €5 minimum, KYC, and the €30 Mangopay inactivity charge.
• Vendora’s escrow service, its refund and mediation rules, and its refusal of cash on delivery.
• Vendora ad creation for the 12-photo cap and 600×600 minimum, and its courier list.
• DataReportal, Digital 2026 Greece — Facebook’s 5.10 million Greek advertising reach at 51.4% of population, October 2025.
• To Vima on Greece’s secondhand economy — the ELSTAT turnover figures and the one-in-two and 88% survey findings.
• AfterSalesPro’s Greek eCommerce Review 2025 via GRECA — cash on delivery falling from 60% to 50%, 24.6% locker adoption and a €68 average order value, from over three million orders across 800 e-shops.
• Vendora on DAC7; Directive (EU) 2021/514 for the platform definition and the Excluded Seller test; and árthro 21 ν.4172/2013 with AADE circular Ε.2031/2023 for the three-transactions-in-six-months presumption.

What we could not verify, and therefore left out. Any Facebook Marketplace user figure for Greece, or globally — Meta has published no monthly user count since 2018, and the “over one billion” figure traces only to third-party aggregators. Marketplace’s maximum photo count and its title and description character limits, none of which appear on any Meta-owned page; Meta’s listing-limits article returns “this article doesn’t apply to your region” for European visitors. Whether Greece is among the “select” EEA countries where Marketplace partner listings appear. The status of Meta’s appeal against the Commission decision. Whether Meta collects DAC7 information from EU Marketplace sellers at all. Vendora’s title and description limits, its listing duration, and its app download counts. And any Marketplace fraud statistic — Meta publishes none.

Related guides

• Sell on Vendora — the complete seller guide
• Sell on Facebook Marketplace — the complete seller guide
• Crosslist from Vendora to Facebook Marketplace
• Vendora vs Vinted compared
• Crosslist from Vendora to Depop
• All marketplace guides