Poshmark vs. thredUP for Selling
Poshmark and thredUP are both well-known platforms for selling to make extra money, but they operate very differently. This post provides a comparison of Poshmark vs. thredUP for sellers so that you can decide where you want to sell your items.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. This means that I may receive compensation when you click on a product link or purchase an item linked on this site. Click here for details.
** If you don’t have a Poshmark account, you can receive a free $10 bonus when you sign up with my code SFGIRL2015.
** If you don’t have a thredUP account, you can receive a free $10 bonus when you use this link to sign up.
FYI: thredUP and Poshmark policies and procedures are always changing. I try to keep the information here up to date, but the latest changes may not be reflected in this post. Review the companies’ websites for the latest information.
Let’s dive in!
Poshmark and thredUP are two online marketplaces for selling new and used clothing, shoes, and other items.
thredUP homepage
Inventory: How companies obtain and store items
Poshmark: The seller maintains all inventory. You can think of each apartment or house as a little warehouse of its own. Sellers joke about their “Posh rooms” and share pictures of their inventory taking over their houses.
thredUP: thredUP houses all the inventory they sell in warehouses around the country. They get their items from people like you and me sending in our clothes and other goods.
The first step is to order a cleanout bag from thredUP. You fill it out and send it back to them with the pre-paid shipping label. You have several options for types of bags:
Standard bag – free. Your bag is likely to have a longer processing time.
Expedited bag - $16. Your bag is supposed to be processed within 1 week of arrival at a warehouse but can take longer.
Donation bag – free. Your items are donated to charity and a tax receipt will be sent to you.
The processing time varies regardless of which bag you pick. I’ve heard of processing taking anywhere from a few days to 6+ months. It depends on which warehouse receives your bag, if there’s a backlog, and other factors such as COVID procedures.
thredUP processes your bag meaning they look through what you sent in and select what they want from it to sell. They accept items on consignment, meaning you get paid when the item sells and the transaction is completed. More on this below.
What about the things that are not accepted?
When picking the bag that you want, you can decide if you want return assurance for an additional $10.99. thredUP will return the items they don’t select back to you.
Any costs related to selecting a bag or return assurance are deducted from your earnings.
Otherwise, thredUp distributes, resells, or recycles unaccepted clothing.
thredUP cleanout bag options
Inventory: What’s allowed for sale
Poshmark: Poshmark allows women's, children’s, and men's fashion and accessories, new personal care products, select home goods, and select pets' items. I’ve seen lots of jewelry, makeup, children’s toys, and dining ware.
The list of allowed items grows as they expand into new categories. Any brand is allowed as long as it fits in one of those categories.
thredUP: thredUP accepts women’s and children’s clothing as long as it has a size tag. Specific categories include dresses, jackets, activewear, and backpacks.
They don’t allow categories such as sleepwear, undergarments/slips, and jewelry. You can take a look at this list to see the many categories of items they accept and don’t accept.
Since your items are inspected by thredUP, it makes sense that your items are more likely to be accepted if they’re more current styles, clean, and in good condition.
thredUP is not accepting fast fashion from new sellers as of December 2021. While they don’t mention specific brands, examples of fast fashion brands include F21, H&M, and Fashion Nova.
Listing items & Pricing
Poshmark: The seller does all the work listing and pricing items. This requires time and possibly materials like a body form and a lighting kit if you need them.
If you’re a seller who is looking to get rid of items from your home closet and don’t care how much you make, you can price your items based on your preference and how quickly you want to sell.
If you’re a reseller looking to maximize your profits, you’ll need to spend some time researching sold prices of your items to price them competitively.
Listings can stay up indefinitely. I’ve had items stay up in my Poshmark closet for over 1-2 years.
Poshmark’s listing template showing earnings when sold
thredUP: thredUP does all the work of listing and pricing for you. They take pictures of items. Clothes are shown on a body form with good lighting. Most items only get 2-3 pictures though.
As a seller who likes to describe items thoroughly, I don’t think 2-3 pictures are enough to show used items well. They may describe an item stating it has minor pilling but don’t show it in a picture.
Pricing is set by their algorithm based on past sales for that brand and other criteria they have set. You have some control of pricing. Some tips:
Check that your items are listed under the correct brand. If you’re selling St. John clothing, make sure it’s listed under the high-end brand St. John and not the JCPenney brand St. John’s Bay.
Check the price of your items. There’s currently a 12-hour window to edit the price of an item after the item has been accepted. Then there’s a 12-hour bidding window, where the price is uneditable. The price can be edited again after that.
If you raise the recommended price by 50% or more, you’ll pay $5.99 per item to reclaim the item if it doesn’t sell. This is to keep items reasonably priced for buyers. More on this below.
Listings stay up for 60-90 days depending on the brand.
thredUP listing windows
Promotion
Poshmark: Poshmark does the major advertising like TV commercials and online ads to attract buyers, but sellers do the in-platform promotion to make the sales. Poshmark has several promotional tools available for sellers to try to make sales:
Closet Clear Out – On designated days, sellers drop the price of items meeting Poshmark’s criteria, and buyers will get discounted shipping on the item. It’s usually a few dollars difference in the shipping price, but it’s covered by Poshmark.
Offers to Likers – Sellers can make an offer to people who like an item at any time. The offer has to include a shipping discount so that sometimes entices people to buy.
Bundle discounts – Sellers can automate discounts on bundle purchases of a certain number of items from their closets.
The Offers to Likers and Bundle discounts result in the seller covering the difference in costs, therefore making less money.
thredUP: thredUP does the advertising that brings buyers to the platform and influences pricing promotions. They price items and sellers can change that price within a certain limit.
You might notice that thredUP often has discount codes or promotions. Those discounts encourage people to buy, but your earnings are reduced up to 20%.
Shipping
Poshmark: Sellers have to have shipping supplies and be familiar with Poshmark shipping procedures, although it’s relatively easy compared to many other platforms.
Poshmark sends you a shipping label that the buyer paid for (up to 5 lb). You attach it to a mailer or box and send it off via USPS.
Poshmark uses only USPS Priority mail service. You can get free Priority shipping boxes and envelopes through USPS.
Once you’re familiar with how their shipping works, you’ll have no problem doing it.
Order free USPS shipping materials to use on Poshmark sales
thredUP: thredUP handles all the shipping, so this one is no work for sellers. Items are sent wrapped with tissue paper set in a polymailer or box.
Commission structure
Poshmark: Poshmark takes a flat rate of $2.95 on items sold below $15 and 20% items on items sold at or above $15.
thredUP: The commission or payout structure is more complicated for thredUP and varies by listing price.
For example, if your item sells for $5-$19.99, you’ll receive a 3%-15% payout. It goes up from there. If your item sells for $200+, you’ll receive 80%.
What does this mean?
If you sell something for $19.99 with a 15% commission, you would make $2.99. If you sell something for $200, you’d make $160. See below about selling strategy for more on this.
You can see the chart below for more detail and go to this page to use their payout estimator.
thredUP payout structure
Payment: When & how do you get paid?
Poshmark: Buyers have 3 days after an item is tracked as received to open a case for return.
If not, the transaction is finalized on the 4th day, and funds are transferred to the seller. Buyers can accept a packager earlier and the seller will receive payment earlier.
Sellers can withdraw the money via direct deposit to a bank account or request a check. Funds take 2-3 business days to transfer via direct deposit once requested.
thredUP: Sellers get paid 14 days after an item is tracked as delivered because buyers have a 14-day return window.
Sellers can withdraw the money via PayPal or Stripe direct deposit.
PayPal: 2% transfer fee
Stripe: $0.25 and 1.5% transfer fee
Earnings remain in an account for 1 year. After that, they are converted to an e-gift card to be used on thredUP.
thredUP consignment timeline showing when you get paid
Customer returns
Poshmark: Poshmark’s policy is that no returns are accepted unless the item never ships or is not as described in the listing.
If a buyer opens a case for a return, Poshmark will notify the seller about the case, and the seller can then provide additional information and pictures. A Poshmark employee then decides the case, and that’s the end of it.
This sometimes goes the way of the buyer and sometimes the seller. If a return is granted, Poshmark provides the buyer a shipping label. The buyer gets a refund when the item is tracked as delivered back to the seller.
thredUP: Buyers can initiate a return within 14 days of delivery unless the item was marked a final sale. Once the item is returned to thredUP, it goes back up for sale.
I’ve heard sellers say that the item is listed for the amount of time it had left before the sale.
Reclaiming unsold items
Poshmark: Sellers keep all the inventory, so there’s no need to reclaim anything.
thredUP: Items are listed for 60-90 days depending on the brand. It’s important to keep an eye on when those items expire and reclaim them within the 7-day window before they expire.
If the items expire, they belong to thredUP and are not able to be reclaimed. Sellers can no longer use their points (earned by shopping) for free shipping here.
It costs $5.99 total to have up to 30 items returned after their 60-day or 90-day listing window is completed.
If you raised the price of any item by 50% or more from its recommended price, it costs $5.99 per each of those higher-priced items.
Buyer & seller facts
Poshmark: Here are some numbers based on Poshmark’s SEC filing dated December 17, 2020:
31.7 million active users as of 9/30/20
6.2 million active buyers as of 9/30/20
4.5 million active sellers as of 9/30/20
The average order value in 2019 was $33.
87% of purchases were preceded by a like, comment, or offer in 2019.
thredUP: Here are some numbers as of December 31, 2020, based on thredUP’s SEC filing:
1.24 million active buyers
428,000 active sellers
80% of orders in 2020 were by repeat buyers.
The average order value was $68.95 with approximately 4 items in an order.
Active buyers made an average of 3.2 orders in 2020.
Additional thoughts
1) You have to pick one or the other platform at least to start.
It’s impossible to sell on both marketplaces at the same time. Many sellers do both sequentially. Here are two examples what of sellers can do with their items:
Start by selling on thredUP -> reclaim items -> list to Poshmark -> yard sale or donate items that don’t sell.
Start by selling on Poshmark -> send items that haven’t sold in a certain amount of time to thredUP -> reclaim items -> list again to Poshmark and other marketplaces.
2) How much time do you have?
One of the major differences between Poshmark and thredUP is the amount of time (and effort) required to sell items.
If you have the time and inclination to sell, Poshmark might be best for you. You have to prepare clothes to sell, take pictures, write descriptions, price items, pack items away, and ship them when they sell.
There’s some learning involved to optimize your listings and make the most sales you can.
If you are limited on time, thredUP may be the way for you. You can be hands-on or hands-off in the selling process.
Hands-on would be making a spreadsheet of everything you send in, taking pictures of items in case they are damaged or lost, checking updated processing dates, checking reclaim dates, adjusting prices of items, and checking to get paid.
You can be hands-off and not do those things, although they may ensure against the disappearance of items and help you make more money.
3) How much money do you want to make?
The tradeoff then is profit. In general, you will make more money with Poshmark because their commission is lower. You keep 80% of sales $15 and up. That makes sense since you are doing most of the work of selling.
But there is potential to make money on thredUP as well, especially if you tried selling items elsewhere and they didn’t sell. More often than not though, you will make more money on Poshmark than on thredUP because of their commission structures.
4) Do the math
Do the math to see what’s most worth it for you. The math is easy on Poshmark and more complicated on thredUP.
On Poshmark, if you have several top brand items like Mother jeans and Farm Rio dresses, they’re going to sell and you’re going to want to keep 80% of those sales.
On thredUP, you’ll want to enter your items into the payout calculator. Don’t forget to factor in other possible costs:
$16 expedited processing fee
$10.99 for return assurance
$5.99 to reclaim up to 30 items
$5.99 to reclaim each item whose price was raised 50% or more
Fees eat away at profit, so try to keep your costs and fees as low as possible.
thredUP payout estimator
5) Track your items
Keep track of every item you sell no matter which platform you use. Track information such as
The item’s name
Amount it cost to acquire
Items sent to thredUP
Dates items sold
Commission & payout
Technology has glitches and mistakes happen. You have to catch the mistakes that would otherwise cost you sales and profits.
I’ve also read of many sellers who have had items lost or damaged. You’ll need to keep track of your items and their condition so that you get the appropriate payout if anything happens to them.
The payout will be small, nowhere near the retail value or what you thought was the potential sale value of the item. That’s another risk with sending your items to someone else to sell.
6) Selling strategy
thredUP’s change to its policies and procedures in late 2020 made it more difficult for resellers to profit from selling on thredUP.
I heard people used to source items specifically to send to thredUP. That might have been items that are new with tag purchased for $1 or items bought by the pound at Goodwill Outlets.
With the changes such as the introduction or increase of fees for certain things, disallowing use of credits for free shipping on reclaimed items, altering the payout structure, and lowering prices of items, many resellers are having to rethink their thredUP selling strategy or turning to other marketplaces altogether.
Some sellers are only sending in items that are likely to sell above a certain price like $50 or $100. Use the payout calculator and comparable items already on thredUP to see if the payout is worth it to you.
An item has to sell for approximately $27 to receive a payout of $5. You have to sell something for $40 to make $10, and that’s if the buyer doesn’t use a coupon code, or you’ll be making less.
If you sell an item for $27 on Poshmark, you’ll keep $21.60. And if you sell something for $40, you’ll keep $32. That’s a huge difference!
Many sellers have pointed out that threduUP may still be worth using for high-priced items. Selling an item for $200 will net you $160 on both Poshmark and thredUP.
I mentioned a little above another common use of thredUP, which is to sell items that haven’t sold on Poshmark or elsewhere in a certain amount of time.
Another common use of thredUP is to clear your home closet of items you don’t want to wear anymore. Those items would have been donated, so even a few dollars earned from selling those clothes might be worth it.
Look for more changes from thredUP as time goes on. thredUP is not favorable for resellers looking to make a consistent and significant profit from them.
You’ll need to examine the cost of the items you source, how much you can send it, and your estimated profits to know if it’s worth it for you.
7) Children’s clothes
I don’t find either platform great for selling children’s clothes. People generally don’t pay a lot for children’s clothes. So those clothes can sell, but the payouts are low.
On Poshmark, selling children’s clothes for under $15 incurs a $2.95 fee. Buyers have to pay shipping ($7.45 as of this writing) and possibly state sales tax.
But you set the price and know the payout amount before your sell. You can also offer bundles to make the sale more worth it for you and the buyer.
On thredUP, the payout is usually less than $1 per children’s item.
Your best option is to sell locally on Facebook Marketplace, in mom groups, and children’s consignment shops.
8) Cross-listing items
Finally, it may seem like I’m promoting only Poshmark here. I do think Poshmark is the better selling option when compared to thredUP primarily because of the higher payout, but it’s not the only option.
When you keep your items to sell them for yourself, you have the opportunity to list your items to multiple marketplaces. This can greatly boost your sales.
Some buyers stick to the same one or two platforms like eBay or Facebook Marketplace to find what they want. You can cross-list to those marketplaces.
Your items will likely show up in Google searches, so you can get buyers that way too.
You can cross-list manually. I’ve done that and found it worthwhile when I didn’t have many items to cross-list.
After having about 100 items, it ate up too much of my work time. That’s when I turned to cross-listing services.
I’ve tried Vendoo and ListPerfectly services to date. Both have their pros and cons but will save you time cross-listing items and hopefully lead to more sales.
This post details my experience with Vendoo and this post is about List Perfectly.
Wrap Up
As you can see, Poshmark and thredUP are very different marketplaces.
While there is money to be made selling on thredUP, following recent changes in its policies, it has become less favorable to sellers trying to sustain and maximize profits.
If you are interested in selling on thredUP, evaluate your items and calculate your earning potential. Do the same with Poshmark and decide which is best for you to pursue first.
Good luck with your selling!
What are your thoughts on selling on Poshmark and thredUP?
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