Depop vs The RealReal Fees: What Sellers Keep

At a glance: 0% + processing vs a consignment share

The real fee story is a model fork, and it starts with who does the work. On Depop you run the store — you shoot the photos, write the listing, set the price and ship the parcel, and the platform takes no selling fee, only payment processing. At The RealReal you consign — you send the piece in, and The RealReal typically authenticates, photographs, lists, prices and fulfills it, taking a commission from your seller share in return. Two models, side by side:

United States, USD.

So the gap in what sellers keep is partly a service gap, not just a pricing gap. Depop's flat processing leaves the labor with you; The RealReal's commission buys authentication, photography, listing and fulfillment. The sections below unpack each side, then run the identical $250 clothing item through both.

Depop fees explained (US)

Depop's fee card is short: no commission on your sale price, and a single processing charge whose base is wider than most sellers expect — the item plus shipping plus applicable taxes. The full card lives in Feebrief's guide to how much Depop takes.

United States, USD.

Selling fee: 0%

Depop charges no selling fee and no commission on the sale price. What you list the item for is what the fee math starts from — the only automatic deduction is payment processing.

Payment processing: 3.3% + $0.45

Every checkout carries a processing fee of 3.3% of the total plus a flat $0.45, applied to the item price, shipping and applicable taxes together — not the item alone. That base matters: raise shipping and the fee rises with it. The line-by-line breakdown, including how the base is built, is in Feebrief's Depop payment processing fee guide.

Optional Boost: 12%, off by default

Boost is optional and off by default, and it applies to new listings from 2026-03-23. When you switch it on and a sale is attributed to Boost, Depop takes 12% of the Boost base. That base is the item price, plus shipping only if you use your own label — listings shipped with a Depop Shipping label exclude shipping from the Boost base entirely. Whether a Boost actually wins the sale — a win-rate — is not publicly available, and this page does not guess one; the mechanics without the speculation are in the Depop Boost fee explained guide. Feebrief's Depop fee hub holds the full fee card — Boost off by default.

The RealReal fees explained (US)

The RealReal does not charge sellers a checkout-style processing fee at all. It is consignment: you send items in (or drop them off), The RealReal typically authenticates, photographs and lists them, and when a piece sells, its commission comes out of your seller share rather than being added at a buyer-style checkout. Thinking of it as a seller-share payout instead of a fee at sale is the single most common category error in this comparison.

For clothing under Trendsetter, the seller share is 20%–70% and varies — where a given item lands inside that range depends on its price band, and the item-level clothing bands are laid out in Feebrief's RealReal seller commission guide. At the top of the range you keep up to 70%; at the bottom, 20%. The RealReal also ties its Rewards to $200+ — the $250 worked example below sits above that line.

What the commission buys is the other half of the story: authentication of each piece, plus the photography, listing and fulfillment labor that a Depop seller does alone. That is why the two fee structures cannot be compared as percentages alone — they price different bundles of work.

Worked example: a $250 clothing item

One identical item — a $250.00 piece of clothing — through all three scenarios: Depop with Boost off, Depop with Boost on, and The RealReal as consignment under the clothing Trendsetter structure.

United States, USD.

Assumptions, stated plainly: the Depop rows assume $0.00 shipping and $0.00 applicable taxes — both sit inside the processing base, so real nets move with them, and with $0.00 shipping the Boost base equals the item price under either label rule. The RealReal row models the 55% seller-share point for a $250.00 clothing item, inside the 20%–70% Trendsetter range that varies; the commission is simply the remainder. No Boost outcome is claimed either way — a win-rate is not publicly available.

Which is cheaper?

There is no single answer: it depends on item price, category, and how much of the work you want to do. For lower- and mid-price fashion — streetwear, vintage, everyday pieces — Depop's 0% selling fee plus flat processing keeps more of each sale, and the identical $250 example above shows it: $241.30 with Boost off, versus a $137.50 RealReal seller share. For higher-value authenticated designer pieces, The RealReal is generally the right lane, and its commission buys authentication, photography, listing and fulfillment that a self-serve seller would otherwise do for free — badly, or not at all, without an authentication stamp behind the listing.

Read the $250 gap as a service bill as much as a fee gap: Depop's $8.70 leaves every hour of labor with you; The RealReal's $112.50 covers intake, authentication, listing and the shipping operation after it. Which is "cheaper" depends on what your time and your item's authenticity story are worth.

When to pick each

• Pick Depop when you are selling mid-price streetwear or vintage, you are set up to photograph, list, price and ship, you want pricing control, and you are happy leaving Boost off — it is off by default.
• Pick The RealReal when the piece is higher-value designer where authentication matters to buyers, you would rather not shoot, list or fulfill, and you accept a commission from your share in exchange for that labor — with Rewards on $200+ as a secondary consideration.
• Payout timing — when The RealReal actually pays you is out of scope here; see Feebrief's RealReal payout time guide.

Frequently asked questions

Does Depop charge a selling fee in the US?

No — the selling fee is 0%. What comes off a Depop checkout is payment processing of 3.3% + $0.45, applied to the item price, shipping and applicable taxes. The optional 12% Boost applies only if you switch it on, and it is off by default.

How much does The RealReal take?

A consignment commission taken from your seller share after the piece sells — not an upfront or checkout fee. For clothing under Trendsetter the seller share is 20%–70% and varies by price band; in the worked $250 example the share is 55%, so the seller keeps $137.50 and the commission is $112.50. The commission covers authentication, photography, listing and fulfillment.

Is Depop Boost worth it?

That cannot be answered honestly from published data: a Boost win-rate is not publicly available. What is known — Boost is optional and off by default, it applies to new listings from 2026-03-23, and the 12% is charged on the item price, with shipping in the base only under your own label — is covered in the Depop Boost fee explained guide.

Which nets more on a $250 clothing item?

Depop with Boost off nets $241.30, Depop with Boost on nets $211.30, and The RealReal pays a $137.50 seller share under the modeled 55% clothing point — with the Depop rows assuming $0.00 shipping and $0.00 applicable taxes, and the RealReal row covering authentication and listing labor the Depop seller does alone.

Sources

• Depop fee record — FACTS-batch4 · fees.json, prepared 2026-11-02 (selling fee, processing rate and base, Boost rate, eligibility and base rules).
• The RealReal fee record — FACTS-batch3, prepared 2026-11-02 (consignment model, clothing Trendsetter 20%–70% seller share, Rewards on $200+).
• Feebrief parent guides: Depop fees and The RealReal seller commission — clothing bands and Boost mechanics, retrieved 2026-11-02.
• Worked-example figures are derived from the records above; arithmetic shown in full in the worked example section. Missing data is marked not publicly available rather than approximated.

Related comparisons

• Depop vs ThredUp fees — another Depop fee comparison, against Clean Out consignment.
• Etsy vs The RealReal fees — the RealReal comparison cluster from the seller side.
• Depop fee hub · The RealReal seller commission — the two parent fee guides.
• Resale marketplace fees — the category hub covering every platform on Feebrief.

How this page was built, and how Feebrief earns money, are documented in the methodology and advertising disclosure.