Reverb charges roughly a third of what eBay does on the same guitar, and the cheaper channel is still not automatically the right one. Here is one instrument worked through both, with every number visible and nothing hidden in a headline percentage.
An $800 guitar with $75 shipping charged to the buyer. It cost $450 to acquire, $65 to ship, and $20 to pack properly — a case, foam, and a double box, because gear that arrives with a cracked headstock is a claim, not a sale. Same instrument, same price, same costs. Only the channel changes.
| On $875 collected | Reverb | eBay |
|---|---|---|
| Selling / final value fee | $40.00 (5% of item) | $119.00 (13.6%) |
| Payment processing | $28.40 (3.19% + $0.49) | $0.40 (inside the fee above) |
| Total fees | $68.40 | $119.40 |
| Profit if it sells | $271.60 | $220.60 |
| Margin | 31.0% | 25.6% |
The structural difference is worth understanding, because it is why the gap is not simply “5% against 13.6%”. eBay’s final value fee normally has payment processing folded into it and runs on the whole order, so the one percentage is most of the bill. Reverb bills the selling fee on the item price only and the processor separately on the order, so the 5% headline is not the whole cost — the real comparison here is 5% of the item plus 3.19% of the order and $0.49, against 13.6% of the order. Still a large gap on this item: about $51 more in your pocket on Reverb.
Gear buyers inspect on arrival and return postage on an instrument is not $6. Counting an illustrative 6% return rate on Reverb against 8% on eBay, and the heavier return shipping that gear carries, the expected keep across a run of sales is $246.42 on Reverb against $192.07 on eBay — a $54.35 gap, slightly wider than the single-sale one. Returns do not flip this comparison. They can flip others: see how.
| Reverb | eBay | |
|---|---|---|
| Days to sell | 35 | 21 |
| Kept per day of wait | $7.76 | $10.50 |
| Worth per 30 days of shelf | $59.14 | $82.95 |
Reverb pays more per sale. eBay pays more per month of shelf. The cheaper channel loses on the measure that matters when your money is the constraint, because a slower sale ties up $535 of cash for another two weeks and that capital could have been another instrument. Which column you should read depends on which one you are short of:
There is a third answer the arithmetic cannot give you: gear buyers on Reverb arrive already looking for gear. Whether that audience will carry a higher price is a judgement about your particular instrument. What the calculator can tell you is the size of the premium you would need — eBay would have to sell this guitar for about $868, roughly 8.5% more, to leave what Reverb leaves at $800.
Every figure above is the calculator’s own arithmetic on the inputs named, not a published fee schedule, and the days-to-sell numbers are illustrative starting points rather than a claim about either marketplace’s velocity. Your acquisition cost, your shipping, and your own listing history are what make the comparison mean anything.
Put your own instrument through both → Reverb is switched off by default there, since most sellers are not selling gear — turn it on in the channel list. Once you have an answer, the comparison hands the same numbers to the Reverb calculator, which asks the questions this page cannot: whether to take an offer or counter it, whether a bump pays for itself, whether Safe Shipping beats carrying the claim risk yourself, and what consigning to a shop would actually net.
On the worked example of an $800 guitar with $75 shipping charged, Reverb's fees come to $68.40 against eBay's $119.40, so Reverb leaves about $51 more on the sale. Reverb bills a 5% selling fee on the item price and payment processing separately on the order; eBay charges around 13.6% on the order with processing already inside it. The gap narrows on cheaper items where the fixed fee matters more, and both rates are inputs you should replace with your own.
Not on its own. In the same worked example eBay returns $10.50 per day against Reverb's $7.76, because the illustrative 21 days to sell on eBay beats 35 on Reverb. Cheaper fees on a slower sale can be worth less per month of shelf than higher fees on a faster one. If your cash is the constraint, the faster channel can win even while paying more in fees; if the gear is not going anywhere, the cheaper channel wins.
About $864 on this example, against the $800 asked on Reverb — roughly 8.5% more, because eBay's percentage fee applies to the higher price too. Whether a listing can carry that premium is a judgement about the buyers on each side, not arithmetic, which is why the calculator prints the price to match rather than picking for you.