How to calculate eBay sell-through rate from free data

What is sell-through rate on eBay?

Sell-through rate is one division: the number of a thing that sold recently, divided by the number listed right now, times 100. Both counts come off the same eBay search and both are free.

sell-through rate = (sold in the window / active right now) x 100

Twelve sold against forty listed is 30 percent. That's the whole calculation.

Before you compare your number with anybody else's, know that two denominators are in use and they do not produce the same answer.

• Sold divided by active. Twelve sold, forty active, 30 percent.
• Sold divided by sold plus active. Twelve sold out of fifty-two, 23 percent.

Both get called sell-through rate, and a rate quoted at you carries no label saying which one it used. We use sold divided by active throughout, because those are the two numbers eBay hands you directly.

The two counts are not the same kind of number, and that changes how the answer reads. The sold count covers a stretch of time. The active count is a snapshot of this second. You're dividing a flow by a standing pile, which is why the answer converts naturally into a length of time and never into a price.

Get both numbers off eBay for free

Run one search, read the result count, turn on the Sold items filter, and read the count again. The sold count is a filter on eBay's own search results, so the whole procedure costs nothing and needs no tool.

The procedure:

1. Search the way a buyer searches. Use words that would appear in a real listing title, not the words you'd use describing it to a friend.
2. Filter until the results describe one item. Category, brand, model, condition. Whatever it takes so the page shows the thing you are pricing and not its accessories.
3. Read the active count, the results figure at the top of the page.
4. Turn on Sold items. Look for the label. Its position on the page is not reliable, because eBay's filter chrome differs between desktop and mobile and it gets moved.
5. Read the sold count and divide.

One rule decides whether the answer means anything: both counts must come from the identical query and the identical filters. Change a word between the two readings and you have divided two different things.

Three avoidable traps sit inside that rule.

• Query noise. A search for a console pulls in cables, cases, empty boxes and units sold for parts. That padding usually inflates the active count more than the sold count, so noise drags your rate down and never up. Tighten until the page is all one item.
• The window is not documented. Sellers widely report that eBay's public sold results reach back about 90 days, consistently enough across third parties to plan around. We couldn't find that window on any eBay-hosted help page, so we won't tell you eBay says it. Sellers also report that Seller Hub's own research reaches back further, and that's community reporting too.
• Multi-quantity listings. A fixed-price listing offering ten of something is still one listing. How that gets counted on each side of the ratio is not something we could confirm, so in those categories treat the rate as a rough shape and don't read it as a measurement.

The sold half has to happen on eBay itself. We have no sold-price data at all, so our search can show you what's listed right now, free and signed out and eBay US only, but it cannot show you what anything sold for.

Where Terapeak went, and what it's called now

Product Research inside Seller Hub replaced it. eBay retired the Terapeak brand name in May 2024, and the research it used to do now sits in Seller Hub as Product Research, free with a Seller Hub account.

• Product Research is the free half. It reads eBay's own sold and demand data, so it isn't inferring anything from two result counts.
• Sourcing Insights, the demand-side half, is the paid half. In eBay's own words, it "will still require a qualifying Store subscription."
• The name is a date stamp on the article you are reading, with one wrinkle. A guide that sends you off to sign up for Terapeak as a separate product predates the rebrand. But eBay has not scrubbed the old name everywhere, and the help page linked above still sits at a terapeak-research URL, so the name alone doesn't convict an article. What settles it is whether the guide sends you to Seller Hub.

The catch for a buyer is the account. Seller Hub is a selling surface, so the free version of eBay's own research assumes you sell. If you're sourcing to resell, that's no barrier, and Product Research beats the manual method because it reads eBay's data instead of inferring from it. If you're buying for yourself, the manual method needs nothing.

Zik Analytics is the paid third-party tool aimed at the same job, and for this question it beats us, for the same reason Product Research does: both read sold and demand data, and we have none. The tools roundup carries its live status and current tiers, because a price in this paragraph would go stale quietly.

What counts as a good sell-through rate?

No threshold survives contact with a second category. A number handed to you as the minimum isn't describing your item. It's describing somebody else's storage space and somebody else's capital.

Start with what the rate literally says. Because you divided a flow by a snapshot, it converts into how long the standing listings would take to clear at the pace they have been clearing, over the roughly 90-day sold window sellers report.

That conversion assumes the pace holds and nothing new gets listed, so it's a way to feel the number and not a forecast. No row says good or bad, because the rate cannot.

Where you draw your line is decided by facts about you, not about the item:

• How long your money can sit. A rate implying a year on the shelf is fine on something that cost almost nothing and painful on something that took the whole month's budget.
• How much room you have. Bulky items at a slow rate are the standard way a spare room stops being a spare room.
• How many things you list. Somebody listing two items a week and somebody listing two hundred are not asking the same question. The r/Flipping version of it runs "If anyone is listing more than 10, what is your minimum sell through rate to pick up an item?", and the answers scatter, because everybody is answering about their own constraints.
• How seasonal the category is. A 90-day window landing entirely inside or entirely outside a season is measuring the season.
• How many listings are in the sample. One sold against two active is 50 percent and means nothing. Our own deal score won't label anything with fewer than five comparable listings, because below that a single odd listing decides the answer. The same instinct applies to a rate.

So the usable version isn't a number at all. It's a procedure: work out what a slow rate would cost you, in weeks and in shelf space, then look at the rate. A number that would sink one buyer is routine for another, and no article can know which one you are.

Three things the rate doesn't tell you

The rate contains no prices, it flattens the whole window into one number, and it doesn't check that your two counts describe the same item. The first one catches almost everybody.

It contains no prices

No dollars appear anywhere in it, so it can't tell you what the item sold for, what you should pay, or what would be left after fees, shipping and your own time. A 100 percent rate on a nine-dollar item and on a nine-hundred-dollar item is the same number.

Pricing is a separate check. You run that one against sold comps, and a pair of result counts cannot stand in for them. Working out whether a price is good is where that belongs, and it's worth being exact about our own part in it. Our deal score compares a listing against the asking prices of similar active listings, it needs at least five of them before it will say anything, and there's no sold-price data behind it because we have none. Price history has the same shape: ours starts the day you add an item, and nobody, us included, can show you an eBay price from before somebody started recording it.

It flattens time

A rate over the roughly 90-day window sellers report is one quarter of one year presented as a constant. Two things disappear into it.

• Seasonality. Measure a heater in July or a costume in January and the number is telling you about the calendar.
• How long each individual sale took. Twelve sales in 90 days could be twelve in the first week and silence since, or one every eight days. The ratio can't tell those apart, and they are very different things to own.

It doesn't check that both counts describe the same item

Both numbers inherit whatever your search matched. If the sold results are mostly graded, boxed or complete examples while the active results are mostly loose ones, you have divided one item by a different item and got a number anyway.

Condition bites hardest. Filter on the condition field itself, and don't go by the seller's wording in the title. eBay publishes the official condition list, and filtering both counts to the same condition costs one click. Lots versus singles is the same failure in a different coat: a page mixing lots of twenty with single items gives you a ratio about neither.

Work the number backward from a sourcing decision

Start at the decision and pull the number toward it, instead of calculating a rate and then wondering what to do with it. A rate you calculate first becomes the justification for whatever you already wanted to do.

Here's the sequence:

1. Write down the most you'd pay, before you look at the rate. That number comes from sold comps. Sell-through has no opinion about it.
2. Write down how long you're willing to own it, in weeks. People skip this step, and it's the one that makes a rate actionable.
3. Now calculate the rate, on the tightest query that genuinely describes the item.
4. Convert it to days on the shelf using the table above and compare that to step 2. If the arithmetic says a year and you said six weeks, the rate has answered you and no threshold was required.
5. Check the sample. Three sold against five active isn't a rate. It's an anecdote with a percent sign on it.
6. Re-run it in a month on the same query and keep both readings. A direction is worth more than a level, and one reading cannot give you one.

A slow rate is information, and it isn't a verdict. In a category that clears slowly, the standing listings have been standing a while, and a listing that has sat is a different conversation from one posted this morning. What to do with listings that have been sitting is the other half of that.

And sell-through rate is a fact about a category, and nobody buys a category. You buy one listing, on one day, at one price. The rate tells you whether things like it move. It says nothing about whether the listing in front of you is priced well, and nothing at all about when the next one will appear.