Depop Business Model vs Vinted & Poshmark: Fee Lessons for DTC

Depop, Vinted and Poshmark now run three versions of the same resale experiment, and the sharpest difference between them is who pays. The Depop business model and Vinted both charge sellers 0% and move the fee to buyers; Poshmark still takes 20% from the seller on anything over $15. For a DTC brand, the lesson isn’t the headline number—it’s that each platform turned fee design, discovery and community into a customer-acquisition engine, and you can borrow the mechanics without ever listing a product on them.

“Take rate” is simply the share of each transaction the platform keeps. On a resale marketplace that take rate is split between seller fees, buyer fees and payment processing, and where a platform chooses to place it says more about its growth strategy than its margins.

What the Depop business model actually looks like now

Depop is a peer-to-peer social marketplace that, since 15 July 2024, charges US sellers nothing to list or sell. The old 10% seller fee is gone; in its place, US buyers pay a marketplace fee of up to 5% plus up to $1 per order. Sellers still cover payment processing of 3.3% + $0.45, and can opt into Boosted Listings that take roughly 8% of a sale in exchange for visibility.

That makes Depop’s revenue a blend of buyer fees, processing and seller-paid advertising rather than a single seller commission. The company was acquired by Etsy in 2021 for $1.625 billion and remains an Etsy-owned marketplace, skewed hard toward Gen Z—more than 90% of active users are under 26. Google’s own AI Overview still describes Depop’s “10% seller fee,” which tells you how far the public understanding lags the actual 2026 fee structure.

Depop vs Vinted vs Poshmark: the take-rate table

The quickest way to see the strategy is to line up seller fee, buyer fee and the growth lever each platform leans on. Every figure below reflects current US fee structures.

Platform	Seller fee	Buyer fee	Promoted-listing revenue	Discovery mechanic	Community lever	DTC-brand equivalent
Depop	0% (+ 3.3% + $0.45 processing)	Up to 5% + up to $1	Boosted Listings ~8%	Social feed, follows, likes	Creator-style seller profiles	Shoppable social + owned storefront
Vinted	0%	5% + $0.70 “Buyer Protection”	Bumps / spotlight	Catalog search + feed	Low-friction peer selling	Zero-friction resale / trade-in
Poshmark	$2.95 under $15; 20% at $15+	None	Promoted Closet (daily budget)	Parties, sharing, follows	Gamified “share” economy	Referral + loyalty mechanics

Depop and Vinted bet that a 0% seller fee floods the platform with supply, then recover revenue from buyers and optional promotion. Poshmark keeps a heavy 20% seller cut but gives sellers a free listing and a social-selling game in return. Vinted’s model works: its 2025 revenue hit €1.1 billion, up 38% year over year.

Who pays the fee—and why it matters for CAC

Fee placement is a positioning decision, not an accounting one. Moving the fee to the buyer, as Depop and Vinted do, removes the single biggest psychological barrier to listing and pulls in supply—which is the scarce input on any marketplace. Poshmark’s seller-pays model works because it pairs the fee with free, unlimited listing and a sharing mechanic that doubles as free distribution.

For a DTC brand the translation is direct: the “fee” you control is friction. Every extra step, charge or condition at checkout is a tax on acquisition, and where you place it changes who shows up. Resale platforms are living proof that the cheapest acquisition channel is often a pricing structure, not an ad.

Secondhand apparel will reach $393 billion globally by 2030, growing far faster than traditional retail. — ThredUp 2026 Resale Report

What is the downside to Depop?

The main downside to Depop is that “free” selling isn’t free—it’s redistributed. Sellers still lose 3.3% + $0.45 to processing on every order, and the buyer-side marketplace fee can quietly suppress demand or push price-sensitive shoppers to negotiate. Boosted Listings add another ~8% if you want reliable visibility in a crowded, discovery-driven feed. For a brand, the real risk is dependency: Depop owns the customer relationship, the data and the discovery algorithm, so traffic that lives there is rented, not owned.

How do I grow a Depop shop?

You grow on Depop the way creators grow on social media: consistent listings, strong photography and genuine engagement, not ad spend. Follows, likes, shares and fast replies feed the discovery algorithm, and active sellers who treat their shop like a content channel compound faster than those who just post inventory. That is the same social-commerce dynamic reshaping DTC—community replaces paid reach as the growth engine, and the brands that build an audience spend far less to make the next sale.

The DTC playbook: what to steal from each

The brand-side takeaway isn’t to copy a fee schedule—it’s to copy the mechanics underneath it. Depop shows that creator-style profiles and social discovery can replace ad budget. Vinted shows that removing friction from the seller side scales supply. Poshmark shows that a sharing-and-referral loop can turn customers into a distribution channel, the same compounding logic behind group buying’s low-CAC math and the scarcity-plus-community engine Pop Mart has ridden.

For Shopify merchants, the practical version is to let buyers bring buyers—through group buying, referrals or shoppable social—so acquisition cost falls as volume rises, exactly the inversion resale marketplaces engineered. Before you copy any of it, run the numbers on your own acquisition cost so you know which lever actually moves your margin. That is the whole point of a group buying model like Farabiulder’s: the discount is funded by the demand it creates, not by your ad account.

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