Poshmark still takes 20% of most sales, and its one attempt to change that fell apart in three weeks. This teardown breaks down the original model, the October 2024 split-fee structure and why it failed, how Poshmark earns now under Naver, and how marketplace builders can test fee changes safely.
TL;DR (Too long; didn't read)
- Poshmark charges sellers a flat $2.95 under $15 and 20% at $15 or above. Buyers pay flat shipping, and there is no listing fee.
- Its second revenue line is Promoted Closet, a seller-paid, pay-per-click advertising tool.
- In early October 2024 it tried a split structure: 5.99% plus $1, $2 or $3 charged to each side. It reversed that on October 24, 2024.
- On our reading, the split structure would have taken more than the old fee on items between roughly $8 and $75, which covers most of a resale catalogue.
- Poshmark's CEO said buyers spent about the same in total but shifted money from items to fees, and sellers reported double-digit sales drops.
- Naver bought Poshmark for $1.2 billion in enterprise value (closed January 2023), and its CEO changed in October 2025.
Poshmark makes most of its money from a seller commission: a flat $2.95 on sales under $15 and 20% on sales of $15 or more. Buyers pay a flat shipping rate on top, and sellers can pay for advertising through Promoted Closet. That is one of the highest seller fees among the big resale apps, and in October 2024 Poshmark tried to change it. The experiment lasted about three weeks.
That short episode is the most useful case study in resale pricing, because it shows what happens when a marketplace moves fees onto buyers and gets it wrong. This post covers how Poshmark earns, what the October 2024 structure did to the numbers, why it was reversed, and what a marketplace builder should take from it.
How does Poshmark make money under its original model?
Poshmark takes $2.95 on any sale under $15 and 20% of the sale price at $15 or above, and it has no listing fees. The buyer pays a flat shipping rate, which was lowered from $8.27 to $6.49 in September 2025 when Poshmark moved from USPS Priority Mail to Ground Advantage, according to Value Added Resource. The commission covers payment processing and buyer protection, so there is no separate processing line on a sale.
The model is a pure seller-side take rate. When Naver agreed to buy Poshmark in 2022, the companies described 2021 gross merchandise value of about $2 billion, a 20% take rate and an 85% gross margin. The last public quarter, Q3 2022, showed revenue of $88.4 million on $475.6 million of GMV, which works out to a take rate of about 18.6% by our calculation, a little under the headline 20%.
Two features explain why sellers tolerated a fee that high for years. Shipping is paid by the buyer and handled with a prepaid label, so the seller never does postage maths. And Poshmark built a social layer around selling: sharing, parties and live shows. That community is the product, and the 20% pays for the audience as much as for the transaction. If you are weighing flat, tiered and category-based structures for your own marketplace, Shipturtle's guide to marketplace commission models shows how each one behaves at different price points.
What did Poshmark try to change in October 2024?
In early October 2024, Poshmark replaced the 20% seller commission with fees on both sides. According to Modern Retail, sellers and buyers each paid 5.99% per item, and each also paid an extra $1, $2 or $3 depending on whether the item cost under $15, between $15 and $50, or more than $50. Buyers saw their share labelled a buyer protection fee. Poshmark also launched a Posh Pass beta that cut buyer shipping to $5.95 by shifting the cost to sellers. Charging both sides is one of several structures covered in Shipturtle's breakdown of marketplace revenue models, and the October 2024 episode shows why the choice of side matters.
The headline promise was a lower seller fee, and it was true. What the announcement did not make obvious was the combined take. The table below is our illustration, assuming the 5.99% applied to the item price as reported.
Revenue Models
| Item price | Old seller fee | New seller fee | New buyer fee | New combined take |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10 | $2.95 | $1.60 | $1.60 | $3.20 |
| $40 | $8.00 | $4.40 | $4.40 | $8.79 |
| $75 | $17.00 | $7.49 | $7.49 | $14.98 |
| $100 | $20.00 | $8.99 | $8.99 | $17.98 |
Sellers did pay less everywhere: $1.35 less on a $10 item, $3.60 less on a $40 item and $11.01 less on a $100 item. But the combined take was higher than the old fee between roughly $8 and $75, and about equal at $75. Buyers on those items paid a new fee that the old model never charged, while the platform's total take rose or stayed flat. Only above about $75 did the new model take less than the old one.
“A buyer fee is not neutral: when shoppers have a fixed budget, every dollar of fee comes out of the item price.”
Why did Poshmark reverse the change after three weeks?
Because buyers reacted to the new fee exactly as price sensitivity predicts. On October 21, 2024, Poshmark announced it would return to its original fees on October 24. Its then-CEO Manish Chandra wrote that shoppers had "spent less on purchases as they shifted their spending from orders to fees", which left sellers with less cash despite the lower seller fee. He apologized for the disruption.
Modern Retail's reporting adds the detail. Executives told top sellers that buyers still spent about the same total per purchase, but a larger share of those dollars went to fees rather than the item. A volume-seller group reported double-digit sales drops during the experiment. Sellers with lower-priced listings said they were hit hardest, and one said buyers sent lower offers to make up for the new charge. Poshmark scrapped the buyer protection fee and the Posh Pass beta, and rebated sellers for the fee difference on listings sold through Buy Now.
Two lessons sit inside that sequence. A buyer fee is not neutral: when shoppers have a fixed budget, every dollar of fee comes out of the item price, which is what lowers the seller's payout even when the seller's own fee falls. Sellers who can see their earnings order by order spot a shift like this quickly, which is the purpose of vendor dashboards that show each vendor their own sales and payouts. And the structure arrived with no warning. The company had teased a seller fee reduction at its September Poshfest event, and the reality turned out to be a more complicated structure that many sellers read as a net loss.
How does Poshmark make money now?
Poshmark has returned to the commission and has leaned harder on advertising and shipping economics. The second revenue line is Promoted Closet, a pay-per-click tool that launched in beta in 2023: sellers set a weekly budget, Poshmark spreads it across their closet, and they pay only when a shopper clicks a promoted listing. Poshmark does not publish how much Promoted Closet earns, and seven ways to monetize an online marketplace shows where advertising sits next to commission, subscription and listing fees. Value Added Resource has reported that Poshmark has been looking to advertising to lift revenue since the fee reversal, and that the company has since named its first chief revenue officer.
Shipping costs have also moved toward sellers. Poshmark covered the USPS hazardous materials noncompliance fee of $50 at first, then reduced its share, and ended its subsidy on October 19, 2026, leaving sellers responsible for the full $50, per Value Added Resource. It ended overweight shipping protection for sellers on October 26. Poshmark has not explained either decision publicly.
None of this changes the headline structure. A seller still gives up 20% on most sales, which fee guides rank as the highest among the major resale apps. Depop and Vinted charge sellers no commission, and eBay made selling free for private sellers in the UK. That leaves Poshmark relying on its social audience to justify the gap.
What happened after Naver bought Poshmark?
Ownership changed first, then leadership, and public data dried up. Naver agreed to buy Poshmark in 2022 for $17.90 per share in cash, an enterprise value of about $1.2 billion, and the deal closed in January 2023. Poshmark then became a private subsidiary and stopped reporting quarterly numbers, so the Q3 2022 figures above are the last public ones.
In August 2025, Poshmark announced that co-founder Manish Chandra would step down as CEO. Namsun Kim, Poshmark's executive chairman and Naver's president of investments, took over on October 1, 2025. Other co-founders have left in 2025 as well, according to Value Added Resource. Sellers have read the changes, including the removal of the Bulk Sharing tool (which Poshmark later reversed), as a sign that the company is moving away from its community-first roots toward monetization.
Poshmark said in 2024 that it had 130 million registered users and that sellers had sold more than 300 million items. Since then, competitors have moved: eBay completed its purchase of Depop on July 30, 2026, which gives a zero-seller-fee rival a much larger parent. A 20% commission is harder to defend when the alternatives charge a fraction of that. For marketplaces that grew without a corporate parent, Shipturtle's roundup of multi-vendor marketplace examples built on Shopify is a useful comparison.
What can a marketplace builder learn from Poshmark's experiment?
Four things. Test fee changes on a slice of the marketplace before you roll them out everywhere, and measure the whole basket, not just fee revenue. Never change both sides at once: Poshmark moved the seller fee, added a buyer fee and launched the Posh Pass shipping terms together, so it was hard to tell which lever was causing the drop. Explain the change in one sentence, because a structure sellers cannot summarize is one they will assume is against them. And keep the old rate ready to restore, which Poshmark managed to do in three weeks.
This is where configuration matters more than pricing. Shipturtle is a Shopify-native multi-vendor marketplace platform that handles vendor onboarding, order splitting, commissions and payouts. Commission automation sets rates per vendor, category or product, so a new fee can run on one category or one cohort of new vendors while the rest of the catalogue stays on the old rate. Because those rates are settings rather than custom code, going back is a configuration change, not a rebuild. Payout integrations then pay vendors through Stripe and PayPal on the schedule you set.
Before you change anything, Shipturtle's list of essential multi-vendor marketplace features is a useful checklist. Setup typically takes one to two weeks at most, and the customers page shows how live marketplaces structure their fees. Shipturtle supports C2C and used-goods marketplaces alongside multi-vendor ones, but the live shows, sharing and community that give Poshmark its audience are a product you build around the platform, not features of it.
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Poshmark makes money the old-fashioned way, by taking 20% of most sales, and its biggest recent lesson is what happens when the fee moves. Sellers paid less under the October 2024 structure and buyers paid more, yet total spending on items fell, because shoppers treat fees as part of the price. If you are planning a fee change on your own marketplace, book a demo with Shipturtle and walk through how to pilot it on one category before it reaches everyone.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Poshmark take from sellers?
How much does Poshmark take from sellers?
A flat $2.95 on sales under $15 and 20% on sales of $15 or more. There is no listing fee, and the buyer pays a flat shipping rate.
Does Poshmark charge buyers a fee?
Does Poshmark charge buyers a fee?
Not a separate fee at present. In October 2024 Poshmark added a buyer protection fee as part of a new split structure, then removed it on October 24, 2024. Buyers now pay the item price, shipping and any sales tax.
Who owns Poshmark?
Who owns Poshmark?
Naver, the South Korean internet company. It agreed to buy Poshmark in 2022 at an enterprise value of about $1.2 billion and completed the deal in January 2023. Namsun Kim has been CEO since October 1, 2025.
How does Poshmark make money besides commission?
How does Poshmark make money besides commission?
Mainly through Promoted Closet, a pay-per-click advertising product for sellers, plus the shipping economics around its flat buyer shipping rate. Poshmark no longer publishes a breakdown of revenue by line.
Can I build a social resale marketplace like Poshmark on Shopify?
Can I build a social resale marketplace like Poshmark on Shopify?
You can build the marketplace layer: vendors, commission rules, order splitting and payouts, which Shipturtle's marketplace product supports for C2C and multi-vendor models. The social features, live selling and community behind Poshmark are a separate build.
About The Author
Disha Krishnani
Disha Krishnani is a marketing professional with hands on experience in building and scaling digital businesses. With a background in finance and e-commerce, she’s passionate about helping startups grow smarter, not just bigger.
Currently working in the C2C marketplace space, Disha combines SEO, business development, and a deep understanding of user behavior to create strategies that drive visibility and sustainable growth. She believes every marketplace has its own story, and her goal is to help brands tell it better while optimizing for conversions.
A postgraduate from Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Disha approaches every project with a practical mindset, blending creativity with real-world business insight. Her curiosity for how startups evolve keeps her exploring new ideas, tools, and trends that shape the future of digital commerce.