OfferUp Promote Plus vs Free Selling: What the Subscription Actually Buys

TL;DR: Promote+ is optional ads, not a fee

Promote Plus is an optional advertising subscription: $19.99 per month or $99.99 per year, billed through the App Store or Google Play, promoting one item at a time (you can switch which). The free local path costs nothing to use: $0 commission on in-person sales and listings free within your monthly allotment. Promote Plus is never a percentage of your sale — not a commission, not a sale take, and not required to sell. First-time subscribers get a 3-day free trial, one per app-store account.

Promote Plus vs free at a glance (United States, USD)

Prices are US, in USD, for individual sellers. The flat-subscription line above is the one that matters most: whatever you pay for Promote Plus is an advertising cost you choose, not a cut of anything you sell.

What free local selling includes

The free path is genuinely free at the point of sale. OfferUp's help center states it does not charge fees or take a commission on in-person transactions, so the cash a buyer hands you — barring anything you arrange yourself, such as delivery — is yours entire. There is no monthly charge to use the marketplace.

Listing is also free, within a monthly allotment per category that refreshes on the 1st of each month, with no rollover of unused slots. Two examples from the current limits: Furniture allows 25 free listings per month and Cars & Trucks allows 1; all remaining categories share a combined allowance of 200 per month. Those are examples, not the full schedule — the category-by-category table is on the OfferUp free listing limits page, and the yes/no question is answered separately in does OfferUp charge a listing fee.

In short: an occasional seller who stays inside the allotment and sells in person generally pays OfferUp nothing, ever. For the full take on what the platform does charge, see how much OfferUp takes.

What Promote Plus actually is

Promote Plus is an optional advertising subscription purchased in-app through the App Store or Google Play. What it promotes is one listing at a time: you pick the item getting the visibility boost, and you can switch which item is promoted, so over a billing period the benefit can move from listing to listing — but never to two items simultaneously.

One clarification, because it is the most common confusion in searches on this topic: Promote Plus is not a commission, not a sale take, and not a percentage of anything. OfferUp charges $0 commission on in-person sales whether or not you subscribe. If you sell a couch for $200 in person, $200 is what you walk away with on both paths; the only difference is that a subscriber chose to pay a flat subscription price for extra visibility along the way. Subscribing is entirely optional — the free path stands regardless.

Pricing and the 3-day free trial

Promote Plus costs $19.99 per month or $99.99 per year, with a first-time 3-day free trial limited to one per app-store account. OfferUp's help page says the yearly plan saves about 58% versus paying monthly, and the published numbers back that up. Feebrief's own check (derived): 12 × $19.99 = $239.88, versus $99.99 — a difference of $139.89, or about 58.3% off the monthly-equivalent price. The rounding in the claim holds.

A one-time Promote option of 1 Day or 3 Days also exists in the app, but its dollar price is not publicly available on help — it is shown only at purchase time in the app — so this page quotes no figure for it. The full cost mechanics, including that gap and the annual-vs-monthly math in detail, are on the OfferUp Promote Plus cost page.

When free is enough vs when Promote+ is an ads spend

Free is enough for most occasional sellers: if you list a handful of items a month, stay inside your category allotment, and price things to move locally, the $0-commission path already does everything a marketplace needs to do. There is no fee to avoid and nothing to optimize — you generally just wait for messages.

Promote Plus is better understood as a marketing-budget decision than a selling cost. It may be worth weighing when your listing sits in a high-competition category, when a listing is time-sensitive (a move date, a seasonal item), or when you are willing to treat $19.99 per month — or $99.99 per year — as advertising rather than a fee. Note what this page cannot promise: OfferUp publishes no sales-lift or performance data for promoted listings, and Feebrief has none either, so no results claim is made here. Whether the visibility is worth the price is a judgment only your own test — typically starting with the free trial — can settle.

Related fee guides

• OfferUp Promote Plus cost: the full pricing deep dive, including one-time Promote 1 Day / 3 Days and the annual-vs-monthly math.
• OfferUp seller fees: the parent overview of everything OfferUp does and does not charge.
• OfferUp seller fees explained: the fees landscape in plain language.
• Does OfferUp charge a listing fee?
• OfferUp free listing limits: the full category-by-category allotment table.
• How much does OfferUp take?
• Resale marketplace fees compared