Whatnot fee calculator
Whatnot takes a commission plus payment processing per item sold. In a livestream where you move eighty lots in an evening, the per-item fixed fee stops being a rounding error.
Fees verified 02 August 2026 against Whatnot’s official fee page.
Live selling changes which fee hurts
On a normal marketplace you sell one item per transaction and the percentage is what matters. Live auctions invert that: streams move dozens of low-priced lots, each one a separate transaction with its own fixed processing component. Sell eighty $5 lots and the fixed fees alone take a meaningful bite before any percentage — the same arithmetic that makes penny lots a donation to the platform.
That is why experienced streamers structure differently: fewer, larger lots; bundles instead of singles; a floor price below which nothing gets its own auction. Run a typical lot price through the calculator above, then run the same total as one bundle — the difference is the fixed fee times the number of lots you avoided.
Commission applies to the hammer price. Shipping on Whatnot is charged to buyers through the platform's system, but what you keep from a stream is dominated by lot structure, not postage.
Questions
Why did my stream payout feel smaller than the sales total?
Per-item fixed processing across many small lots adds up faster than intuition expects, and refunds or cancellations from a live show settle against the same total. Multiply your lot count by the fixed fee for a quick sense of the invisible cost.
Is there a minimum sensible auction price?
Below a few dollars, the fixed fee plus commission takes a share most sellers would refuse if they saw it as a percentage. Set a personal floor and bundle anything under it — the calculator makes the floor obvious for your fee structure.
Are these rates current?
The verification date above shows when they were last checked against Whatnot's published schedule. Category promotions and negotiated rates exist for some sellers, so treat your dashboard as the final word.