Offer to Buyers and Best Offer

Engage your interested buyers by offering a reduced price on your listing or giving them the opportunity to make their best offer.

Did you know?

Approximately 44% of listings transactions featured at least one of our promo tools*

Why use Offer to Buyers?

You can send a private offer with a reduced price to buyers who are watching or have viewed your listings. You can choose the discount amount, but you must offer at least 5% off the item price if it is £200 or less.

  • Watchers were at least 30% more likely to buy when they received an offer from the seller**.
  • Approximately 44% of transactions occurred through listings that featured at least one of our promo tools*.

Benefits to you

  • Close a deal with interested buyers
  • Present a bargain without reducing the item price for everyone
  • Can accelerate sales of long-tail inventory


Benefits to your customers

  • Receive a personalised offer 
  • Nurture a relationship with the seller



How does it work

We track how many people are watching and interacting with your listing. When you send a private offer for a listing from Seller Hub Active Listings, we target the most relevant buyers, who can then accept or decline.

Send a message with your offer

Add a personal touch by sending a message to your interested buyers. We recently increased the number of interested buyers you’ll be able to send an offer to simultaneously, so you could see a higher conversion on your items with a large number of watchers.

Please note that buyers can opt-out of these messages and will be able to see that others may have received the offer.

Replying to buyers with an offer

If a buyer asks you a question before the transaction, you can reply with an offer. This is a great opportunity to close the deal quickly.

If a buyer asks a question about a fixed price listing you can send them an offer to purchase the item at a lower price. Go to My eBay > Messages and select Reply with an offer.
You can send an offer for any fixed price listing as long as the listing is active, does not use variations, and is not listed in the Cars, Motorcycles & Vehicles category.
Just remember, you cannot include contact information such as an email address, phone number or URL when sending an offer. You also should not respond to a buyer who asks to purchase an item outside of eBay. Doing so violates our policy regarding offers to buy or sell outside of eBay.



Send an offer to buyers

  • Go to your Active Listings in Seller Hub
  • Tick the box for “Send offer to Buyers” - this will show which listings are eligible
  • Send interested buyers a price reduction offer
  • Time your offer to suit your items and buyers

Automate your offers

Once you’ve sent an offer to your interested buyers, the auto-send feature gives you the option to send the same offer to interested buyers in the future. We’ll automatically check for new interested buyers every 48 hours from when you first send the offer until the listings end or you cancel the auto-send option. The automatic offer will use the same discount that you set up in the original offer.

You’ll find the option to “automatically send offers” in offer settings. You can control these offers in the Offer Settings tab of the Manage offers page.


Create custom rules to send new offers automatically

eBay Shop subscribers can save time and effort with rule-based automatic offers. Instead of manually initiating offers to buyers, this feature lets you automate your offers based on criteria such as category, price range, and item condition. When an eligible buyer shows interest in a listing that fits your criteria, we’ll automatically send them your offer.

Here’s how to create and manage rule-based automatic offers:

  1. From your Seller Hub Marketing tab, go to the Buyer Groups section.
  2. Select "Send Automated Offers". 
  3. Choosing the percent discount, select what listings to include, and choose how long you want the offer to run, up to 150 days.

Why use Best Offer?

The Best Offer option invites buyers to negotiate with you. It’s a great way to test your pricing and potentially make a faster sale. The next time you use Buy it Now or Auction on your listings, you can also add Best Offer. 

After a buyer makes an offer, you can choose to accept or decline it, or make a counteroffer. You can also set up rules to auto decline or approve, so you don’t have to manage every offer manually.

Best Offer allows you to test the pricing of your item, accept offers where you are willing to make a deal or encourage sales on listings that may have had limited success to date. Sellers who use Best Offer often find it makes a difference to their sales and visibility. Many buyers opt to pay full price anyway as they don't want to spend the time negotiating.

To keep track of your offers, go to My eBay > More Actions > Manage offers.

If you are accepting Best Offers on a listing, you can send offers to buyers who ask questions - as long as the buyer hasn't already sent a Best Offer.

As soon as all of the items have been sold the listing is immediately closed and any further offers are automatically cancelled.


Frequently asked questions

Apart from the standard fees for fixed-price listings, there is no additional cost to you for using these features.

Unlike Best Offer (an option you select at the time of listing) you can use this feature to make an offer to buyers who are watching your listings. If you’re accepting Best Offers on a listing, you can still send an offer to a buyer if they are watching a listing. This does not apply if the buyer previously sent you a Best Offer.

Once the listing has ended and regardless of whether the buyer purchased the item from you at a discounted price or not, we will only show the original Buy it now price.

It is not currently possible to send an offer in either of these cases.

Having an open offer does not prevent others from buying the item. In addition, any offers which haven't been accepted when the item is sold to another buyer, will be cancelled.

No, Send an offer applies only to the item price and does not cover postage. You can, of course, adjust the offer price to offset the postage cost.

Visit My eBay > All selling and select More Actions > Review all offers for the relevant listing to cancel an offer. You can only do so if a buyer has not already accepted your offer.

** eBay global data surveyed from January 2020 to June 2020 
*eBay internal data, business seller transactions Q1 2021, US, UK, DE, FRITES, seller hub promotions (multi-buy, order discount, sale event, offer to buyer, and best offer).