Vinted makes selling free and charges buyers instead — €10.8B GMV by 2025

Vinted, founded in Vilnius in 2008, spent years struggling to make peer-to-peer clothes selling work, and by 2016 it had about €400,000 left on its balance sheet. Listing and seller fees made casual sellers hesitate, so the marketplace never reached the inventory depth buyers needed.

Charge the side with less choice: make selling 100% free and let the buyer's protection fee — roughly 5% plus a small fixed amount — fund the platform.

In 2016 Vinted removed every seller fee: sellers keep 100% of the price, while buyers pay a protection fee (in France, €0.70 plus 5% of the item price) that funds escrow, refunds and dispute handling. Integrated shipping labels and pick-up-point delivery handled logistics, optional listing boosts and a Pro tier for businesses added revenue, and a TV campaign in France explained the change to save the company. Vinted was later split into marketplace, logistics (Vinted Go) and payments businesses.

France became Vinted's first breakout market and the model rolled out to 26 countries. The company became profitable in 2023, and by 2025 it reported €10.8 billion in gross merchandise value, up 47% year on year, with about €1.1 billion in revenue. Sharetribe's analysis estimates more than 100 million registered users, and even eBay began dropping seller fees under the competitive pressure.

Vinted began in 2008 in a Vilnius apartment with a mission to make second-hand fashion the first choice, but the economics did not cooperate for years. Sellers faced listing fees and commissions, casual sellers hesitated, inventory stayed thin, and by 2016 the company had roughly €400,000 left on its balance sheet.

The pivot, led by Thomas Plantenga, who joined as a strategy consultant that year, inverted who pays. Vinted removed every seller fee: a seller keeps 100% of the sale value, and the buyer pays a protection fee — typically around 5% plus a small fixed amount, such as €0.70 in France — which funds escrow-style payment holding, refunds and dispute resolution between strangers.

Vinted also built the surrounding logistics: integrated shipping labels, delivery to pick-up points, and later its own Vinted Go locker network, which lowered delivery cost and carbon at the same time. Optional paid 'bumps' for visibility, display advertising and a Pro subscription for business sellers became secondary revenue streams on top of the buyer fee.

The company gambled its remaining cash on a French TV campaign explaining the change, and France took off. As marketplace CEO Adam Jay later put it, thin margins are the point: 'That is what reduces friction.' The model was then rolled out market by market — France first, Germany only succeeding on roughly the seventh attempt.

The barrier sat on the supply side: casual sellers would not list if fees could exceed the value of an old T-shirt.

A buyer protection fee is easier to accept than a seller commission because it buys visible security — escrow, refunds, dispute help.

Free supply created a liquidity flywheel: more items drew more buyers, who drew more sellers.

Owning logistics and payments let Vinted keep fees thin without sacrificing margin to middlemen.

One successful market (France) proved the model before capital was risked on further expansion.

In a marketplace, find which side faces the real friction and make that side free: abundant supply creates the liquidity that lets the other side pay for trust.

Vinted's buyer-pays model became the template for European resale: profitable from 2023, it reported €10.8 billion in gross merchandise value by 2025, up 47% year on year, with about €1.1 billion in revenue across 26 markets. A 2026 secondary share sale of €880 million valued the group at about €8 billion. It split into marketplace, logistics and payments arms, moving cautiously into the US after about seven attempts at Germany. Competitors adjusted their fee structures, and Vinted's impact reporting tied delivery to emissions savings, framing the model as commercial and environmental.