Pricing · Product case study · Lithuania
Vinted: Move the fee to the other side.
Vinted is a marketplace for second-hand clothes, founded in Lithuania in 2008. In 2016 a new 20% fee on sellers drove its users away and left it months from closing. This case study explains what Vinted is, how charging buyers instead saved it, and what the business looks like ten years on.
Decide who pays the fee ↓One sale, after 2016
- Item price
- €20.00
- Selling fee
- €0.00
- Buyer protection fee
- paid by the buyer
- Seller keeps
- €20.00
An example. The buyer’s fee covers secure payment, customer support and refunds.
Independent educational analysis by PMcademy. Figures are from Vinted’s own releases or the other sources listed at the end. The fee model and the practice scenario are fictional teaching material. No affiliation or endorsement is implied.
What Vinted is
An app where people sell clothes they no longer wear to people who want them. One member photographs a jacket and names a price. Another buys it. Vinted handles the payment, and steps in if something goes wrong. Its stated mission is to make second-hand the first choice worldwide.
- €10.8bn
- goods sold by members in 2025
- €1.1bn
- revenue in 2025
- 26
- markets
- €8bn
- valuation, April 2026
Lots of users, no business
Milda Mitkutė and Justas Janauskas started Vinted in Lithuania in 2008. It spread to Germany in 2009, the Czech Republic in 2011, then France, Poland, Austria and the United States in 2013 and the United Kingdom in 2014.
People loved it and it was free. That was the problem. Each country ran more or less on its own, and the only income was advertising, which an investor later said barely covered the cost of the servers. Vinted had traffic and no way to earn from it.
The fee that almost ended it
To fix the gap, Vinted introduced a 20% fee on sellers. Sellers left in large numbers. When Thomas Plantenga arrived as a consultant on a five-week contract, he found the company this far from going out of business:
9 to 12months,
by its investor’s account
Five moves, one of them about price
Plantenga stayed, and became chief executive about a year and a half later. Insight Partners, an investor, lists what changed.
- Cut the workforce by more than a third and closed every office except the headquarters.
- Scrapped the 20% seller fee and introduced a buyer protection fee.
- Merged the separate country apps into one platform.
- Ran a large television and digital advertising campaign.
- Rebuilt customer support.
The second move is the one people remember. Plantenga later told The Next Web that removing the seller fee was the biggest change of all, and that the company had to look after sellers first in order to attract buyers. In 2019 Vinted became Lithuania’s first technology company valued above a billion.
Who should pay the fee?
Run a small second-hand marketplace yourself. Start with Vinted’s old 20% seller fee, then move the fee to the buyer and watch the shelves, the sales and your income.
- Items listed
- 20
- Items sold
- 10
- Income for the marketplace
- 2.1
An illustrative model on a scale of 0 to 100, not Vinted’s data. The 8% buyer fee in the preset is a round number for teaching, not Vinted’s rate.
The same money, felt differently
A seller clearing out a wardrobe is doing unpaid work for a small sum. Take a fifth of it and the effort stops being worth it. And without sellers there is nothing for buyers to browse.
A buyer sees the fee differently. It comes with something: protected payment, help from support and a refund policy. A charge that buys a benefit is easier to accept than one that only takes. Meesho removed seller commission in India for the same reason, and CRED shows how a rule that looks like a cost can be the product.
Ten years on
Revenue
Millions of euros, as reported by Vinted.
Net profit or loss
Millions of euros.
Sales through the marketplace grew 47% in 2025 while profit fell 19%. Vinted says that was a choice: it spent to grow in Germany and to build the services below.
Own the parts that cost money
Once the fee was settled, delivery and payment were the next places to save. Vinted is now building both for itself, and widening what can be sold.
- Vinted Go: deliveryThrough delivery partners, members can use more than 500,000 pick-up and drop-off points across Europe. Vinted’s own carrier service runs in five countries.
- Vinted Pay: paymentIts own wallet, which the company expects to reduce what it pays others to move money.
- More than clothesElectronics from 2024, then sports goods and collectables in 2025.
Each of these lowers the cost of a sale or gives members more to sell. It is the same instinct as the fee decision: make the trade cheaper and easier for the people doing it. Zepto and Urban Company made the same bet on owning the hard, physical part.
What to take from Vinted
Charge the side that minds least
A seller of a €10 item feels a 20% fee as a loss. A buyer feels a small protection fee as a service. The same money can be easy or impossible to collect.
Protect the side that is hard to get
A marketplace is only as good as what is listed. If supply is scarce, do not tax it. Find out which side you are short of before you price.
A fee should buy something
Vinted’s buyer fee pays for secure payment, support and refunds. People accept a charge when they can see what it is for.
Survive first, then grow
The turnaround began with painful cuts and one shared platform, before any advertising. Narrow down to what works, then spend.
Your turn: the textbook exchange
Your fictional app lets students sell used textbooks to each other. You take 15% from sellers, and listings have fallen for three months in a row. You can change one thing. Pick one, then open it to see the trade-off.
Move the fee to buyers
Vinted’s move. Listings should recover, because selling costs nothing again. Buyers now see a higher total at checkout, so say plainly what the fee covers, and test how high it can go.
Cut the seller fee to 5%
A smaller version of the same problem. It is simpler to explain, and it may be enough if your items are expensive. On a €6 textbook, even 5% can decide whether someone bothers to list.
Keep the fee and pay for the seller’s postage
You give sellers something for their money, which softens the fee. Postage is a real cost on every sale, so work out whether 15% of a cheap book covers it.
Plan the change as a test with the experiment brief template, and decide what you will measure with a metric and its counter.
Questions people ask about Vinted
What is Vinted?
Vinted is an online marketplace where people sell second-hand clothes and other goods to each other. It was founded in Lithuania in 2008, has its headquarters in Vilnius and operates in 26 markets. Members sold €10.8 billion of goods through it in 2025.
How does Vinted make money?
Sellers list and sell without paying a fee. Buyers pay a buyer protection fee on each purchase, which covers secure payment, customer support and a refund policy. Vinted reported revenue of €1.1 billion in 2025.
Is it free to sell on Vinted?
Yes. Vinted removed its seller fee in 2016. It had introduced a 20% seller fee shortly before, and sellers left in large numbers.
Who founded Vinted?
Milda Mitkutė and Justas Janauskas founded Vinted in Lithuania in 2008. Thomas Plantenga, who joined as a consultant in 2016, is the chief executive.
Is Vinted profitable?
Yes. It reported a net profit of €62 million for 2025, down from €77 million in 2024 because it spent more on growth. It made €17.8 million in 2023, after a loss of €20.4 million in 2022.
How much is Vinted worth?
A sale of existing shares in April 2026 valued Vinted at €8 billion. A similar sale in October 2024 valued it at €5 billion. In 2019 it became Lithuania’s first technology company valued above a billion.
Sources
- Vinted: 2025 financial resultsSales volume, revenue, profit, cash flow, Vinted Go, Vinted Pay, new categories and markets. 9 April 2026.
- Vinted: 2024 financial resultsRevenue and profit for 2023 and 2024, electronics, employees. 29 April 2025.
- Vinted: secondary share transaction at €8 billionThe valuation, the investors and the count of 26 markets. 27 April 2026.
- Insight Partners: how Thomas Plantenga is remaking VintedAn investor’s account of the founding, the 2016 crisis and the changes that followed. 2 June 2025.
- The Next Web: interview with Vinted’s chief executiveThe removal of the seller fee, what the buyer protection fee covers, and the 2022 and 2023 results. 11 June 2024.
- Vinted: About VintedFounders, headquarters, mission, employees and the dates each country launched.
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