How to compare net payouts across marketplaces before you buy

Whether a pair is worth buying isn't about its resale price — it's about what you'll net after the marketplace takes its cut, after VAT, after shipping. A SKU that looks profitable at the sticker can be break-even or worse once fees land, and you only discover that after the stock is sitting in your hands.

The fix is to run the payout math before you commit cash. If you know the realistic net across your outlets, the buy/skip decision is arithmetic, not optimism.

Net payout differs from the visible ask for several reasons that stack up, especially as the price climbs. Rather than quote specific fee percentages — which vary by platform, account and region — the durable habit is to compare the actual net each outlet reports.

This is precisely what the Price Comparator surfaces: size-by-size payouts across enabled sites, with profit chips the moment you type a retail price, so you're comparing what actually lands in your account.

A net payout is only comparable if every site's number is expressed in the same money, and that's quietly one of the most important things the Comparator does. Payouts are normalised to your preferred currency before anything is compared, so a euro site, a dollar site and a pound site line up on one axis instead of fooling you with raw figures. A sticker that looks higher in USD can net less than a lower-looking EUR ask once it's converted — and the Comparator does that conversion for you.

For a quick one-off check there's also the Calculator: pick a site, enter a price, and see the projected payout, plus a VAT calculator for pricing B2B or working back to a target after-tax amount. Between normalised Comparator payouts and the Calculator's quick sanity check, the number you compare is the real, all-in figure — the amount that actually lands in your account — not a headline that falls apart under fees, VAT and FX.

Once the numbers are comparable, the workflow is fast. Type the retail price you'd pay and the Prices & Profit Grid colour-codes per-size profit across enabled sites instantly; toggle Show Extra for payout and profit chips, Show Sales for real recent transactions with quantity and site. In one screen you see whether the size run on offer is profitable, and on which outlet, before any money moves.

For a bulk buy, the discipline is to read the blended result, not the best size. The Grid exists precisely because payout swings hard by size: a size 9 can be healthily profitable while a 13 is dead stock dragging the average down. A run is only worth what its average net comes to once the slow sizes are included — and the Grid is where that blended reality becomes visible instead of a hopeful guess. Cross-check against the sales panel before you commit: a tempting payout with no recent sales at that level is an ask wall, not a market.

The Comparator opens with Recently Viewed and Trending Now, then breaks each item into three areas: Common Data (total sales, average sale price, average payout), the Prices & Profit Grid (size-by-size payouts across enabled sites) and the Sales / Charts panel. For a buy decision, the Grid is where you live.

Enter the retail price you'd pay and the Grid colour-codes per-size profit instantly. Toggle Show Extra for payout and profit chips, Show Sales to see real recent sales with quantity and site. In one screen you can see whether the size run you're being offered is profitable, and on which outlet.

Some buys aren't really a "where do I sell" question but a "how do I sell" one — resale, consignment or buyer-direct — and the payout math differs across them. Consignment Diagnostics answers that before you commit: it compares Consign, Resale and Direct average payouts per site from real sales history, computes profit against the retail baseline you enter, and ranks a recommended approach per row.

Three controls keep the signal honest: a Threshold % for how much better consign must be before it's recommended, a Min Sales floor so a thin sample doesn't drive a decision, and a 7/30/90-day timeframe. All payouts are normalised to your currency first, and you can export the analysis — baseline and profits included — to CSV. For a bulk buy you intend to consign, running this first tells you whether the channel actually pays before stock is routed into it, not after it's too late to change course.

A common sourcing trap is checking the payout for a single popular size and buying the whole run on that basis. The Grid exists because payout varies wildly by size — the size 9 might be profitable while the size 13 is dead stock that drags your blended return down.

• Check the full size run you're being offered, not just the easy size.
• Blend the result — a bulk buy is only as good as its average net, including the slow sizes.
• Cross-check the Sales panel so you're not pricing against asks that nobody is actually paying.

Buying the full run on the strength of one size is how dead stock accumulates. The Grid makes the blended reality visible before you commit.

The most expensive sourcing error after ignoring fees is pricing a buy against asks nobody is paying. An order book full of optimistic asks can make a SKU look healthier than it is; the only honest signal is what's actually selling. That's why the Comparator pairs the payout Grid with a sales panel and charts — real recent sales, with quantity and site, sitting alongside the asks.

Before you commit cash, cross-check the two. If the Grid shows a tempting payout but the sales panel shows almost no recent movement at that level, you're looking at an ask wall, not a market. Toggle Show Sales to see the genuine transactions, and weight your decision toward what clears rather than what's merely listed. A pair that "should" net well but rarely sells is dead stock with a flattering sticker — and the sales data is what exposes it before your money is tied up in it.

Sourcing a size run usually means you need more than a payout — you need the barcodes and available sizes to actually list or buy the lot. The Comparator hands off directly: right-click any row and jump into Barcode Search for that SKU, which returns every available size with its barcode, ready to copy individually or export as CSV.

That handoff matters for bulk buys specifically. You can confirm the payout in the Grid, sanity-check the movement in the sales panel, then pull the full size-and-barcode set for the SKU without re-searching anywhere — three connected steps in one place. The tools aren't separate utilities so much as different views onto the same product data, which is exactly what makes a pre-purchase check fast enough to run on every buy rather than only the big ones.

Comparing payouts before you buy also hands you something for after: the floor. The net payout that justified the purchase is the natural starting point for the Lowest Payout you'll set in Bricker Mode and the Offer Sniper. The same payout math runs through the Comparator, Bricker and the Sniper, so the number you decided to buy on flows straight into how you price and which offers you accept.

Sourcing, pricing and offer handling stop being three separate guesses and become one consistent calculation that starts before any money moves.