The Best Secondhand Shopping Apps to Get You Through Second Hand September

Start with Vinted. Of the five apps here, it was the only one charging sellers nothing at all in 2026: no listing fee, no commission, no processing cut. Its cost sits on the buyer instead, documented at roughly $0.70 plus 5% of the item price in the US, which is the smallest app markup you will pay to shop this way in September. If you want one app installed and nothing more to think about, install that one.

The rest of this piece is about when that is the wrong answer. Depop pays sellers better on anything mid-priced once you account for how the fees actually land. Poshmark takes the biggest cut of the five and is building a reason for you to accept it. Mercari is the one to use when the thing you are clearing out is not clothing. And ThredUp is the only option that requires no effort from you, which it charges for very steeply at the bottom of the price range.

Oxfam's Second Hand September runs for the full 30 days of the month and asks one thing: buy no new clothing. Oxfam, which opened Britain's first permanent charity shop on Oxford's Broad Street in 1947, lists three ways to take part, and shopping secondhand is one of them. The numbers it cites for why are worth having in front of you before you open any of these apps.

All figures below are the published rates as of the 2026 sources they come from. Every fee comparison we found uses a standard $50 item, so we have kept that, and all of it is US pricing. That matters because Second Hand September is a UK campaign and Vinted in particular is described as far more popular in Europe than in the US; UK fee schedules may differ from these.

At $50 the spread between Vinted and Poshmark is $10. ThriftWagon's comparison puts it in those terms; Voolist's $75 example makes the same point at $15 a transaction. If you are clearing out a wardrobe rather than running a business, that is real money but not life-changing money, and it should not be the only thing you decide on.

Vinted works because it does not take a cut from the person doing the work. On a $50 sale the seller keeps $50.00. There is no listing fee, no commission and no processing charge, and the platform funds itself by charging the buyer at checkout instead.

That structure has a consequence worth understanding before you buy. Because the fee is buyer-side, a $12 jumper is not a $12 jumper. Add roughly 5% plus $0.70 and you are at about $13.30 before shipping. On cheap items the flat component bites hardest, which is the opposite of how Poshmark and Mercari behave.

One change is scheduled. Value Added Resource reports that from 8 October 2026, in the US, UK and Australia, the "Buyer Protection fee" name is retired in favour of a generic mandatory "Vinted fee", with refund rights for lost, damaged, not-as-described and counterfeit items moved into a standalone Refund Policy. The reporting frames this as a rebrand rather than a change to how the fee is calculated. Two other details from the same terms: the window for a seller to produce evidence in a counterfeit dispute doubles from 24 to 48 hours, and in the UK, Vinted can hold an item verified as counterfeit for up to six weeks and then dispose of, recycle or destroy it. UK payment processing also moves from Adyen to Vinted's in-house Vinted Pay.

Wrong for you if: you are a US seller trying to run anything resembling a business. Vinted's US restrictions on personal-use-only selling are unchanged and Vinted Pro remains unavailable there.

Depop removed its seller commission, and what remains for US sellers is payment processing of 3.3% plus $0.45. On a $50 item that is $2.10 in fees and $47.90 back. On a $200 item SellerFeeCalc puts it at about $7.23, against $40 on Poshmark for the same sale. The percentage is low enough that it barely scales, which is the whole argument for Depop on anything above about $75.

The catch is not financial. Depop rewards photography and aesthetic curation rather than daily sharing activity, so a bag of items shot on a dim bedroom floor will sit there. Optional paid "boosts" exist and are separate advertising, not part of the base fee.

One caveat on the evidence: a second Voolist article describing platform usability still lists Depop's fee as a 10% transaction fee plus processing, which contradicts the 0% commission figure reported everywhere else in 2026, including Voolist's own fee comparison. We have gone with the 0% figure because three separate 2026 sources agree on it, but check the fee screen in the app before you price anything.

Poshmark charges a flat $2.95 on sales under $15 and 20% on sales of $15 and above, with the prepaid shipping label folded into that. It is the most expensive of the five for sellers at every price point we checked, and the effective rate at the bottom is worse than the headline: a $14 item costs $2.95, or about 21%.

The reason to pay it is that the 20% covers shipping and a buyer base, and the platform is moving further in that direction. In a blog post dated 3 August 2026, Poshmark said it is sunsetting its existing consignment programme and replacing it with a "consignment as a service" model built on operational facilities acquired from Linda's Stuff, adding authentication, white-glove intake and high-security handling.

No pricing was disclosed for the new programme and the rollout is phased against facility capacity rather than a fixed date, so there is nothing here you can act on yet. If you are buying a designer piece this month and authentication is the thing standing between you and the purchase, Poshmark is the platform building for that. If you are selling a $20 jumper, 20% is simply the worst deal in this comparison.

One more thing for sellers: from 1 August 2026, Poshmark sellers pay $5 out of pocket towards USPS hazmat non-compliance fees, with Poshmark covering the remaining $45. Through 31 July 2026 the platform absorbed all of it.

Mercari takes a flat 10%, with the seller-side processing fee removed in a January 2025 restructuring and a 3.6% protection fee shifted onto buyers instead. On a $50 item that is $5.00 in fees.

The detail that changes the maths is that Mercari's 10% is calculated on the item price plus buyer-paid shipping. Heavy or bulky items are penalised in a way they are not on Vinted or Depop, so a coat or a pair of boots costs you more to sell here than the flat rate suggests. It is also described as the most passive of the peer-to-peer platforms: no equivalent of Poshmark's daily sharing obligation.

Mercari ran a beta from 19 March to 14 May 2026 reviving tiered fee discounts for high-volume sellers, placing them automatically based on completed sales from 19 January to 17 March 2026. It never published the discount percentages or the thresholds, and reportedly offered different tier amounts to different sellers as part of the test. Treat the 10% as your planning number.

Use it as a general marketplace, not a fashion one. If your clear-out is books, kitchen gear and one bag of clothes, this is the single app that takes all of it.

ThredUp is not a peer-to-peer app. You order a Clean Out Kit, fill it, send it, and ThredUp does the photography, listing, pricing, shipping and customer service. The payout is tiered on the final selling price, and the tiers are where the story is.

According to a 2026 ThredUp selling guide, items selling for $5 to $19 return 3% to 15% to the seller. Items at $20 to $49 return 15% to 30%, $50 to $99 return 30% to 60%, $100 to $199 return 60% to 80%, and anything at $200 or above returns a flat 80%. Earnings are calculated after markdowns and buyer promo codes, so the price you see on the listing is not the price you are paid on.

The threshold is roughly $25. Below it, ThredUp is a donation with extra steps, and if that is what you want, Oxfam takes bags at its physical shops and puts the proceeds into its anti-poverty and climate work. Above about $25 a piece, self-listing on Poshmark typically yields significantly more even after the 20% cut. ThredUp earns its place when the alternative is not selling at all.

This comparison is built on published 2026 fee schedules and platform announcements, cross-checked against each other using the standard $50 and $75 sale examples the fee-comparison sources use. Where sources disagreed, we said so rather than picking quietly.

What we did not do, and what you should not read into this piece:

We did not measure the quality of the finds. There is no reliable data in our sources on what is actually listed on each app, how it is priced against retail, or how the stock differs between the UK and US. That is the part of the decision you will have to make by browsing for ten minutes each.

We did not time deliveries or test returns. Shipping hassle is real and it varies by seller more than by platform, but we have no delivery-time figures for any of these apps.

Buyer-side fees are only documented for two apps. Vinted's roughly 5% plus $0.70 and Mercari's 3.6% protection fee are on the record. What Poshmark, Depop and ThredUp charge buyers is not covered by our sources, so check at checkout.

Cross-listing claims are unverified. One vendor blog reports 60% to 80% faster sell-through and 15% to 25% higher average sale prices when listing across multiple platforms. That figure comes from a company that sells cross-listing software, and no independent source in our research confirms it.

Half the month is gone, so pick on the simplest split. Buying only: Vinted, because the buyer fee is the smallest documented one here. Selling clothes you actually want money for: Vinted first, Depop if the pieces are good and you can photograph them. Selling a mixed pile of household stuff: Mercari. Selling something designer where authentication is the sticking point: Poshmark, with the caveat that its new consignment infrastructure has no published pricing yet. A bag of low-value fast fashion you will never list: donate it, and skip the ThredUp tier maths entirely.

Oxfam's campaign is built on the observation that 32% of British wardrobes went unworn in the past year and 51% of Brits regret a purchase made in 2025. The apps are useful mainly because they make the second half of that fixable. Richard E. Grant, featured in this year's campaign, credits a secondhand raincoat with launching his acting career forty years ago: "I owe it to Oxfam, and I owe it to that raincoat."