The headline: Trade Me is now free to list for casual sellers
Here’s the thing most NZ sellers haven’t fully caught up on yet: as of 10 March 2026, Trade Me removed its 7.9% casual Success Fee. For a casual seller, listing an item — and relisting it if it doesn’t sell — is now free, unless you choose to add paid extras. The old “list it, sell it, lose nearly 8% of the sale price” maths no longer applies to private sellers.
That single change reshapes the whole Trade Me vs Facebook Marketplace question. For years the calculus was simple: Facebook Marketplace was free, Trade Me took a cut, and you traded that cut for reach and trust. Now both platforms are free to list for casual NZ sellers, and the comparison comes down to what you actually get for nothing — payments, protection, reach and hassle.
To be clear about why this happened: Trade Me cut its casual fees specifically in response to pressure from Facebook Marketplace, which has been pulling Kiwi sellers toward free, local, cash-in-hand sales. This isn’t a generic platform comparison — it’s a live 2026 market story, and the fee change is the centre of it.
What each platform actually charges in 2026
Facebook Marketplace (NZ)
For the way almost everyone uses it in New Zealand — local pickup, private sales, cash or bank transfer on collection — Facebook Marketplace is genuinely free. No listing fee, no seller fee, no commission on the sale.
The trade-off is that there’s no buyer protection and no built-in payment system on those local sales. You arrange payment yourself, you meet a stranger, and if something goes wrong after the cash changes hands, there’s no platform sitting behind the transaction to help.
Facebook does have checkout and shipping fees in some markets, but that’s largely a US construct. In New Zealand, Facebook Marketplace is overwhelmingly a free local-pickup marketplace, and that’s the version Kiwi sellers are actually using.
Trade Me (NZ)
As of 2026, casual sellers list for free. The 7.9% Success Fee that used to apply to private listings is gone, and relisting an unsold casual item is free too. You only pay if you opt into paid extras — feature listings, bold titles, gallery upgrades and the like.
There are two figures worth knowing if you want Trade Me’s payment and protection layer, Ping:
- If a casual seller uses Ping (Trade Me’s pay-now system with buyer protection), the seller pays a 2.19% Ping transaction fee.
- The buyer pays a tiered service fee on top: free up to $20, then $0.99 / $1.99 / $4.99 depending on the price band.
So Ping isn’t free, but the cost is modest, and it buys you actual payment processing and buyer protection — the two things Facebook Marketplace doesn’t give you on a local sale.
One caveat: in-trade and professional sellers still pay Success Fees. The free-listing change is specifically for casual, private sellers. If you’re operating as a business on Trade Me, your fee structure hasn’t changed in the same way. Always confirm the exact current figures on help.trademe.co.nz before you price an item, as Trade Me adjusts these from time to time.
Worked example: selling a $120 item
Let’s run the same $120 item through both platforms so the difference is concrete.
On Facebook Marketplace (local pickup):
- Listing fee: $0
- Seller fee: $0
- You receive: $120 — but in cash or bank transfer, arranged in person, with no buyer protection and no platform-handled payment.
On Trade Me (casual listing with Ping):
- Success fee: $0 (removed for casual sellers in March 2026)
- Ping transaction fee (2.19% of $120): about $2.63, paid by you, the seller
- Buyer service fee: $1.99, paid by the buyer ($120 falls in the $100.01–$250 band)
- You receive: roughly $117.37, with payment processed for you and buyer protection in place.
The gap is about $2.63 out of $120 — a little over 2%. That’s the price of having Trade Me handle the money and stand behind the sale, instead of meeting someone in a car park with cash. For some items and some sellers, that’s well worth $2.63. For a quick local sale of something cheap, it might not be.
If you want to model your own numbers across platforms, our Facebook Marketplace selling guide walks through more scenarios, and the Trade Me fees breakdown for New Zealand covers the casual-vs-professional distinction in detail.
So which is actually cheaper?
On raw fees, for a free local cash sale, Facebook Marketplace still wins — it’s $0, full stop. There’s no Ping fee because there’s no Ping, and there’s no commission because there’s no platform taking a cut.
But “cheaper” and “better” aren’t the same question, and the March 2026 change narrowed the gap dramatically. Here’s the honest comparison:
- Facebook Marketplace wins on simplicity and zero fees, but offers no buyer protection and no built-in payments. You’re on your own for the money and the meet-up.
- Trade Me now matches “free to list” for casual sellers, while keeping its trust signals, structured search, and optional Ping buyer protection. You can sell for free and add payment protection only when you want it.
And on reach, it’s not close. Trade Me still dominates NZ buyer attention with around 13.5 million monthly visits — a national audience that arrives specifically to buy. Facebook Marketplace reach is real but more local and more scroll-driven; people stumble onto your listing rather than search for it.
So the practical answer: for a cheap item you can hand over locally, Facebook Marketplace is the lowest-friction, lowest-cost option. For anything where reach, payment safety or buyer trust matters — higher-value items, items that need to reach buyers beyond your suburb, or sales to strangers you’d rather not meet in person — Trade Me’s now-free listings plus optional Ping make it very hard to beat in 2026.
A practical way to play it: list on both
You don’t actually have to choose. The lowest-risk strategy for a Kiwi seller in 2026 is to list the same item on both platforms and let whichever audience converts first take it — Facebook Marketplace for fast local buyers, Trade Me for national reach and protected payment.
The catch is the admin: posting twice, answering messages in two places, and remembering to pull the listing down on one platform the moment it sells on the other. That last part matters, because a stale “still available” listing wastes buyers’ time and yours.
This is exactly the kind of cross-listing busywork Shopfront is built to remove. You list once and push the same item to multiple channels, and when it sells in one place the others can be taken down — so you keep Facebook Marketplace’s zero fees and Trade Me’s reach without doubling your workload.
FAQ
Did Trade Me really get rid of its selling fees? For casual sellers, the 7.9% Success Fee was removed on 10 March 2026, so casual listings and relists are free unless you add paid extras. In-trade and professional sellers still pay Success Fees. Check help.trademe.co.nz for the current details.
Is Facebook Marketplace free in New Zealand? Yes — for local pickup and private NZ sales, there’s no listing fee and no seller fee. The trade-off is that there’s no buyer protection and no built-in payment on those sales; you arrange payment yourself.
What does Trade Me’s Ping cost? If you use Ping as a casual seller, you pay a 2.19% transaction fee. The buyer pays a tiered service fee on top — free up to $20, then $0.99, $1.99 or $4.99 depending on the price band. In return you get processed payment and buyer protection.
Which has more buyers in NZ? Trade Me, comfortably. It draws around 13.5 million monthly visits from buyers who arrive specifically to shop. Facebook Marketplace reach is more local and discovery-driven.
Do I have to pay tax on what I sell? Possibly, depending on whether you’re selling as a one-off declutter or running an ongoing trading activity. The rules turn on intention and pattern, not the platform. See our NZ reseller tax guide for 2026 for how Inland Revenue looks at it.
A note on tax and accuracy
This article is general information, not tax or financial advice. Fee figures are accurate as of 2026 and reflect Trade Me’s March 2026 changes, but platforms adjust their pricing — confirm the current numbers on help.trademe.co.nz before you rely on them. For anything tax-related, consult Inland Revenue or a qualified accountant about your own situation.
