Most sellers know the number. On Motors Parts & Accessories the final value fee runs 13.6% on the portion of a sale up to $7,500, and 2.35% above that, plus a per-order fee of $0.30 on orders of $10 or less or $0.40 above.
That is not the part people get wrong. What eBay actually takes is more than most yards calculate, and the reason is the base, not the rate.
The percentage is charged on the total the buyer pays
Not the item price. The total - including the item, your handling charge, the shipping the buyer paid, and sales tax.
Work a real example. You sell a $120 alternator with $20 shipping and, say, $9 sales tax collected. The base is not $120. It is $149. At 13.6% that is $20.26, plus the $0.40 per-order fee: $20.66.
$4.34
The gap on that single sale between 13.6% of the item price and 13.6% of what the buyer actually paid. At 300 sales a year of that shape, roughly $1,300 you never accounted for.
Why shipping is where it bites hardest
Used parts are heavy. That is the whole difference between this category and most of eBay. A seller shipping small light goods has shipping that is a rounding error against the item price. A yard shipping an alternator, a starter, a transmission has shipping that can be a third of the total or more - and the percentage applies to all of it.
Which produces a counter-intuitive result: charging the buyer for shipping and building it into the price cost you the same fee, because the fee follows the total either way. Free shipping is not a fee-avoidance strategy. It is a marketing decision with no fee consequence, and it is worth knowing that before you agonise over it.
The per-order fee is brutal on cheap parts
Forty cents sounds like nothing. On a $9 sensor with $8 shipping it is a different story: a $17 base, $2.31 at 13.6%, plus the per-order fee - over 15% of the total and nearly 29% of the item price.
This is the arithmetic that decides which parts are worth listing at all. For some of the cheap end, the fee and the labour together exceed the margin - and the labour is the bigger half.
When does a store subscription pay for itself?
A Basic Store or higher drops the final value fee to 12.35% - 1.25 percentage points, or $1.86 on the $149 example. So it pays for itself somewhere around the point where your monthly fee divided by $1.86 is less than your monthly order count.
The honest answer for most independent yards is that this is worth twenty minutes with a calculator and your actual last-quarter numbers, not a rule of thumb. Check current subscription prices yourself; they change, and the break-even moves with them.
What this is not
It is not the biggest cost in listing a used part. Storage, the pull, photography, description and fitment writing, packing and returns together typically double the base cost basis. The fee is real, well under half the picture, and the only line that does not respond to being better at your job.
Which is the actual reason to know it precisely: you cannot optimise it, so it belongs in the price rather than in your hopes.
The rate is 13.6%. What surprises people is that it is 13.6% of the shipping and the sales tax as well.