How to Add Postage Costs on eBay 2026 Easily

From Seller Hub's account menu, open Shipping Preferences, which sits alongside Seller Account, Business Policies, and Selling Preferences in the left-hand list. This one page controls the shipping defaults that apply across your listings instead of settings you'd otherwise repeat on every item.

Combined Shipping Rules control the charge eBay works out when a buyer takes multiple items from you in one order, split into a flat rule, a calculated rule, and a promotional rule, each editable on its own. By default, before you turn on combined shipping, eBay treats every item in an order as its own transaction with its own postage. Leaving the rules on "Not specified" after that keeps buyers paying full shipping per item, which tends to cost you the sale when someone is filling a cart, so configure at least one rule if you regularly sell multiples.

Under Rates and Exclusions, Carrier Rate Settings decides whose shipping price a buyer sees when you use calculated shipping: eBay's own rates, negotiated with USPS, UPS, and FedEx and available through eBay Labels, or a custom discount if you hold a separate account directly with a carrier. Most sellers stick with eBay's discounted rates since they need no extra setup.

This setting only affects calculated shipping; flat-rate listings and rate tables always charge the price you set yourself, discount or not. Shipping rate tables, in the same section, let you define flat costs by buyer region instead of typing a price into every listing, split into Domestic and International tables that both start at zero until configured. Build these once and new listings can reference the table instead of you recalculating postage each time.

The Exclude Shipping Locations screen breaks the world into regions (Africa, Asia, Central America and Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, North America, Oceania, South America, and Southeast Asia), each with checkboxes and a "Show all countries" link, plus a Domestic section for Alaska and Hawaii, US APO/FPO, and US Protectorates. eBay is specific about what this does and doesn't do: it stops a buyer from completing checkout with an address in an excluded location. It does not stop them from bidding on or agreeing to buy the item in the first place; only eBay's separate Buyer Requirements settings block that. If you're enrolled in eBay International Shipping, eligible items can also still reach some excluded locations through that program, since it runs on its own settings.

Once your rates and exclusions are set, you can fold shipping into the item price and mark the listing as free shipping, which commonly improves how listings rank in eBay search, or keep it broken out so buyers see the exact carrier cost. Testing both on similar items is the only reliable way to know which converts better for what you sell; margins on shipping-inclusive pricing move differently by category and weight.

Instead of reconfiguring shipping on every new listing, save your settings as a Business Policy once you're happy with the rules, rate table, and exclusions. From then on, applying a shipping policy to a new listing takes one selection, and updating the policy later updates every listing that references it automatically.