OfferUp vs ThredUp Fees: $0 Local vs Clean Out

Bottom line: free in person, or ThredUp's service fee plus its cut of the anchor

Meet a buyer at the gas station, close the deal at $200, and OfferUp deducts nothing — every in-person sale is commission-free. Send that coat to ThredUp's Clean Out program instead and the published $200 anchor carries an 80% payout share, so $160.00 heads your way — and that's before the $14.99 or $34.99 service fee enters the conversation.

OfferUp's one recurring cost is entirely optional: Promote+, flat-rate advertising at $19.99/mo or $99.99/yr, billed whether you sell five items or none — it is never a percentage of a transaction. ThredUp, for its part, operates a second lane called Direct Listing where you photograph, list, and ship the item yourself and keep 100% of the payout (0% fee). Reading this comparison in reverse — "thredup vs offerup" — changes nothing; the arithmetic runs both directions.

First, the model fork: meetup classifieds vs managed consignment

On OfferUp you do every part of the selling: photograph the item, write the listing, answer messages, agree on a price, and meet the buyer in person. Because the deal closes face to face, the platform never touches the money — which is why it can charge $0 commission.

ThredUp Clean Out inverts that bargain. You order a Clean Out kit, fill it with clothing, and mail it in; ThredUp then photographs, prices, lists, and ships everything. In exchange for doing that work, it charges a service fee upfront — $14.99 Standard or $34.99 Premium — and pays you a share of what each item resells for, a share that rises up to 80% at its published $200 anchor. Direct Listing is the third lane: you keep the listing and shipping work, and ThredUp charges sellers 0%. Decide which machine you want to feed before comparing any single fee line.

How OfferUp seller fees work (US)

Local, in-person commission: $0. No percentage is taken from meetup sales. That is the whole fee stack for a standard sale.

Shipping is gone. New listings were local-only from 2025-09-23, and shipping was removed from the platform entirely by 2025-10-21. Any comparison that still nets out an OfferUp shipping fee or buyer-paid shipping economics is quoting a retired system.

Promote+ is optional advertising, not a commission. The subscription costs $19.99/mo or $99.99/yr and buys listing visibility; skipping it costs $0 in commissions. The price of a one-time promote day and of a paid single listing is not publicly available on OfferUp's help pages — Feebrief lists those as unavailable rather than guessing. Full details live on the Promote+ cost page and the OfferUp seller fees parent.

How ThredUp seller fees work (US)

ThredUp's costs come as two separate charges that most comparisons blur together. Unbundle them:

1. The Clean Out service fee. Standard costs $14.99 and Premium costs $34.99 — you pay this for the mail-in processing service itself. The Clean Out kit fee page tracks what that fee covers and how it applies.

2. The payout share. ThredUp pays you a percentage of each item's resale price, published only as anchors: a $5 item pays 3%, rising up to 80% at a $200 item. Percentages between those anchor prices are not publicly available, and Feebrief does not interpolate them — any site showing a smooth curve between $5 and $200 is inventing it. The size of ThredUp's buyer-side facilitation fee is likewise not publicly available.

Direct Listing: 0%. If you photograph, list, and ship the item yourself, ThredUp charges sellers 0%. That lane gets its own deep dive on the ThredUp seller payout parent page; it matters here only as the no-service-fee fork.

Fee snapshot: OfferUp vs ThredUp (US sellers, USD)

Every figure above traces to OfferUp's and ThredUp's published help pages, with Feebrief's OfferUp seller fees and ThredUp seller payout pages as the source of record — see the methodology and disclosure. Feebrief has no live calculator embedded on this page and no live calculator for ThredUp; these numbers are static and dated.

Worked examples at published anchors only

ThredUp publishes its payout share only at anchor points, so the math below runs only at those points — no curve-filling in between.

• $5 resale price: ThredUp pays 3%, or $0.15. The same $5 item sold at an OfferUp meetup puts $5.00 in your pocket.
• $200 resale price: ThredUp pays 80%, or $160.00. The same $200 item at an OfferUp meetup pays $200.00.

One deliberate omission: Feebrief does not net the $14.99 or $34.99 service fee against a single item, because ThredUp does not publicly specify whether that fee applies per kit or per item. Subtracting it from one $5 blouse would manufacture a worst-case number nobody has published — the kit fee page carries what is confirmed about the fee's scope.

The Promote+ arithmetic, framed as advertising

Promote+ billed monthly costs 12 × $19.99 = $239.88 per year; billed annually it costs $99.99 — a difference of $139.89. That is the entire pricing decision: it is advertising spend you can decline, not a commission you cannot. A seller who never subscribes still pays $0 in OfferUp commissions on every meetup sale.

Which should you sell on?

Bulky or local-pickup items, and you're comfortable meeting buyers: OfferUp. Furniture, gear, and anything expensive to ship has no lane on ThredUp, and the $0 commission means the agreed price is the payout.

A closet to clear by mail with zero listing work: ThredUp Clean Out. You accept the $14.99–$34.99 service fee and a payout share that tops out at 80% in exchange for skipping every step of the selling.

Willing to list and ship yourself, but want ThredUp's rack: Direct Listing at 0% seller fee — you keep the work and skip the service fee.

Verdict: there is no single "cheaper"

OfferUp is the $0-commission choice whenever a local meetup is realistic — you keep every dollar of the sale price. ThredUp trades a $14.99–$34.99 service fee plus a payout share (up to 80%) for doing the photographing, pricing, listing, and shipping for you. Compare the models first; the fee lines then compare themselves.