This is the single most confusing thing on eBay UK right now, and the confusion is understandable. Two sellers can look at the same sale and see completely different numbers, and both of them are right.
Here is what is actually happening.
The short answer
If you sell as a private seller in the UK, eBay takes its cut from the buyer, not from you. The buyer sees a Buyer Protection Fee added at checkout. You receive the price you listed at.
If you sell as a business seller, nothing is added for the buyer. Instead the fees come out of your side, as a final value fee on the sale.
So eBay is not charging twice. It is charging one side or the other, and which side depends on your account type.
Why this trips people up
Three things collide.
The buyer sees a bigger number than you listed. A private seller lists at 20 pounds. The buyer pays 20 pounds plus the protection fee. People assume the seller pocketed the difference. They did not.
Offers get awkward. A buyer offers 18 pounds and is surprised when checkout shows more. The offer is on the item price. The fee sits on top.
Auction bids display without it. You win at 15 pounds and the total at checkout is higher. Nothing has gone wrong, but eBay's own interface does a poor job of signalling it.
What it means for your take home
For a private seller the maths is refreshingly simple. List at 20 pounds, sell at 20 pounds, receive 20 pounds. Your costs are what you paid for the item and what postage costs you.
The catch is that "no fees" is not quite true in every case. Deliver to an address outside the UK and eBay charges you an international fee of 3 percent of the whole sale, even as a private seller. On a 20 pound sale that is 60p. It is easy to miss because it only appears on cross border orders.
For a business seller, the final value fee depends on the category, and it is not one flat number. Most categories sit around 10.9 percent, electronics closer to 9.9, home and garden nearer 11.9, and jewellery higher again. On top sits a fixed fee per order and a small regulatory operating fee. Payment processing is already inside the final value fee under managed payments, so there is no separate card charge to add.
Private or business, which are you?
This is not a preference, it is a legal question. Broadly, if you are buying things specifically to resell at a profit, HMRC and eBay both consider that trading, and you should be on a business account. Selling off your own unwanted possessions is private selling.
Plenty of people start private and grow into business without noticing the line. Worth knowing that eBay has been migrating accounts it considers to be trading.
Working it out without doing the sums
The reason this question keeps coming up is that nobody wants to do category lookups and percentage maths while standing in a shop.
ScanJunki does the fee side automatically. Scan a barcode, and it works out what the item sells for on eBay and what you would actually keep after the correct fees for that category, your seller type and whether the sale goes abroad. It is free and it does not need a card.
You can also use the [free fee calculator](/ebay-fees) if you just want to check a number quickly.
The short version
Private sellers in the UK pay no eBay fees on domestic sales, because the buyer pays a protection fee instead. Business sellers pay a category based final value fee, and buyers see no extra charge. Everyone selling abroad pays 3 percent on top. And the number that matters is not the fee, it is what lands in your account once it is gone.