Vinted vs Depop: which is better for UK resellers in 2026?

The TL;DR

Vinted is bigger, faster, and better for volume. Depop is smaller, slower, and better for premium or brand-led items. Most serious UK resellers end up on both.

• Vinted — roughly 20 million UK users. No seller fees. Buyer pays a Buyer Protection fee (around 5% plus a small fixed charge). Fast-moving, chat-first, everyday clothes and household items.
• Depop — roughly 5 million UK users. As of 2024 Depop removed its 10% seller fee in the UK and switched to a buyer-pays model too. Curated, Instagram-style, vintage / Y2K / streetwear.

Fees in 2026 (and why they both changed)

Both platforms moved to the same basic fee model in 2024, but they got there for different reasons and the detail matters.

Vinted has always been free for sellers in the UK. There are no listing fees, no final value fees, no payment fees on the seller side. The buyer pays a Buyer Protection fee on top of the item price — roughly 5% of the sale plus around £0.70 fixed. What the buyer pays for the item goes straight to your Vinted wallet.

Depop used to charge a 10% seller fee on every sale in the UK, plus PayPal / Depop Payments processing fees. In 2024 they scrapped the 10% seller fee for UK sellers and introduced a buyer protection fee instead, putting them roughly in line with Vinted. The change was explicitly a response to sellers leaving for Vinted.

The practical upshot: on a £20 sale, you now keep roughly £20 on both platforms (minus payment processing on Depop, which is small). A few years ago the same £20 sale on Depop would have netted you around £17 after the 10% fee and PayPal. It is genuinely a different platform to sell on now.

Worth noting: Vinted still monetises through promoted listings (“Bumps”) and optional Wardrobe Spotlight. Depop does the same with boosted listings. Neither is required, but both platforms nudge you toward them.

Audience: who actually shops on each

This is the single biggest reason to pick one platform over the other. The fees are now similar; the buyers are not.

Vinted's UK audience is broad and skews a bit older than you'd expect. Think mums buying kids' clothes, students looking for cheap everyday basics, households clearing out their wardrobes, and people who want high-street brands at charity-shop prices. New Look, H&M, Zara, Primark, Next, George, Matalan — this is Vinted's bread and butter.

Depop's UK audience is younger, more Gen Z, more style-led, and more willing to pay for a look. It's where Y2K crop tops, 90s Adidas, Carhartt, vintage Levi's, band tees, Dickies, Stüssy and archive-piece hunters live. It behaves more like a curated vintage fair than a car boot sale.

What sells well on each

After months of selling across both, a pretty clear split emerges.

Vinted wins for: high-street fashion, kids' clothes (enormous category on Vinted), household bits and bedding, shoes under about £40, maternity wear, plus-size fashion, and anything you need to shift quickly. If the item's worth under £25, it usually sells faster on Vinted.

Depop wins for: vintage (genuine vintage, not “vintage-style”), streetwear, designer, Y2K, archive pieces, statement accessories, graphic tees, and anything where presentation and a coherent “shop vibe” matters. If the same item could be worth £40 to the right buyer but £20 to a casual one, Depop is where you'll find the first kind.

Listing experience: speed vs polish

This is where the platforms feel most different, and it shapes how you work.

Vinted is built for speed. Listing an item takes under a minute once you know the form: photos, title, description, category, brand, size, condition, price. There are structured fields for everything, so buyers filter confidently. Buyers and sellers chat inside the app all day — Vinted's whole UX is built around that back-and-forth (haggling, bundles, questions, offers).

Depop is built for polish. Listings look and feel like Instagram posts. Good photography genuinely matters — a flat-lay on a plain background outperforms a cluttered shot by a lot. Descriptions can be casual and personality-led. Your shop as a whole works as a feed, so a coherent aesthetic compounds over time. The trade-off is that each listing takes longer, and the platform rewards presentation skills that a Vinted seller doesn't need.

In practice, most resellers draft an item once and then crosspost it to both — which is the kind of thing Wrenlist exists to make painless.

Shipping and payouts

Vinted handles shipping end-to-end. The buyer picks a carrier at checkout (Evri, InPost, Yodel, Royal Mail) and you get a prepaid label. You drop it at a locker or shop, and once the buyer confirms delivery (or two days pass without a complaint) the money lands in your Vinted wallet. You can withdraw to your bank — usually within a couple of working days. The whole thing is designed so you never touch the postage cost.

Depop gives you more flexibility and more responsibility. You can use Depop's ship-through labels (Royal Mail and Evri integration) or ship yourself and add tracking manually. Payouts land in your linked bank account via Depop Payments, typically within a few working days of the buyer confirming delivery. If you self-ship without tracking, disputes are harder to defend.

Dispute handling: both platforms lean toward buyers, but Vinted's verdicts tend to come faster because the evidence (their own label, their own tracking) is all inside the app. Depop disputes can take longer and rely more on the seller providing evidence.

Our verdict

For most UK resellers the honest answer is “both” — but if you have to start somewhere, use this:

• Pick Vinted if: you're selling high-street fashion, kids' clothes, household items or anything under £25; you want volume over margin; you'd rather list fast than list pretty; or you're clearing out a wardrobe rather than running a shop.
• Pick Depop if: you're selling vintage, streetwear, designer or anything where the buyer is paying for a specific vibe; you enjoy styling and photography; you want to build a recognisable shop rather than shift stock; or your price points start around £25 and go up from there.
• Pick both if: you're serious about reselling as a side hustle or a business. Different items sell on different platforms, and the audiences barely overlap — crossposting is how you stop leaving money on the table.

The one thing both platforms now share, apart from the buyer-pays fee model, is that HMRC sees your sales on them. That brings us to the awkward bit.