If your closet is overflowing with clothing, shoes, and handbags you never wear, it’s time to initiate a closet cleanout. Not only can organizing your wardrobe “spark joy,” in the words of the illustrious Marie Kondo, but reselling your stuff — especially if it’s from a designer label and in good condition — can also pad your wallet.
Sure, you could donate your clothes, but I’ve personally made hundreds of dollars selling my family’s gently used clothes online.
That said, if you want to make the most cash possible, it pays to know the best places to sell your clothes. Choosing suitable sites for what you have can result in a significantly higher payout — whether that means avoiding high seller fees or reaching the right customer base.
The Best Places to Sell Clothing Online
Our pick for best overall online clothing consignment marketplace, Mercari, delivers on several levels and offers the best value for the most sellers.
Other sites on this list shine on one or two key points, like user-friendliness or a large customer base, or they’re the top site for their specialization in a certain type of clothing, such as men’s or children’s clothes or designer labels.
But which one’s right for you depends on several factors, including what brands you plan to sell, the clothing type, and how much time you have to spend. So choose the marketplace or marketplaces where you can get the most bang for your buck.
1. Best Overall: Mercari
Mercari fits the needs for most home resellers.
First, it’s user-friendly: Just snap a few pics, add your description, and set your price. Then wait for buyers to start snatching up your stuff. Plus, you can list all manner of clothing for sale, from women’s clothes, shoes, and handbags to men’s and kids’ clothing and accessories.
Additionally, if you find more in your closet than just clothes — the coffee mug collection from thoughtful co-workers, the flute you haven’t played since middle school, the creepy antique dolls you inherited from your mom — you can sell those too. Basically, if it fits in a box, it’s fair game.
And even if it doesn’t, a new service called Mercari Local lets you sell bulk items an Uber driver can pick up and deliver to your buyer’s doorstep within two hours of purchase for a flat fee of $10.99.
Additional features:
- There’s no fee to list a garment for sale, and sellers pay only a low flat-rate fee of 10% when an item sells plus a payment processing fee of about 3% (the standard fee charged by payment processors like PayPal).
- Mercari negotiates rates with all the standard shipping companies to save you an average of 63% on postage. You can also opt for a flat fee or pay for shipping based on the actual rate. And you decide who covers shipping — yourself or the buyer.
- More than 50 million users have downloaded its app, so if you’re looking for lots of built-in customers, Mercari has them.
2. Best for Name Brands: Poshmark
Poshmark is a popular resale site for listing high-quality clothing, shoes, and handbags. Apparel doesn’t have to be designer, but buyers are those looking for the latest trends.
For example, trending name brands include designers like Gucci and Louis Vuitton and luxury brands like Aritzia and Reformation. But buyers are also on the lookout for fast-fashion brands like H&M and Zara.
The focus is primarily on women’s clothing, but you can list men’s and kids’ fashion as well as home goods. And you can even sell pet accessories.
Additional features:
- Poshmark includes a social media component that lets you promote your stuff through regularly scheduled themed Posh Parties. If you have goods that fit the party’s theme, you can submit them, and Poshmark will feature them for faster sales.
- Buyers can make an offer, so the sale price is negotiable.
- Poshmark takes a seller’s fee of $2.95 for all merchandise under $15 and 20% of the sale price of pieces over $15.
- All apparel up to 5 pounds ships for a flat rate of $7.45 (paid by the buyer). Poshmark sends you a prepaid USPS shipping label to mail your wares. Shipments over 5 pounds incur additional shipping costs, which Poshmark deducts from the seller’s profits.
- Once the buyer receives and approves their purchase (they have three days to do so), Poshmark automatically deposits the funds into your account.
3. Best for a Large Customer Base: eBay
An auction site like eBay might not be your first thought when it comes to selling clothes online. But with over 185 million active buyers, it remains a top choice for scoring extra cash on just about anything you might find gathering dust in your closet, old clothes included.
In fact, according to an eBay commerce report, Americans have an average of 36 items in their homes they can sell on eBay for a total of around $3,600 — stuff they’d otherwise donate or throw out.
And while eBay’s offerings run the gamut from video game consoles to cars, its price structure is extremely favorable for clothing sellers since they don’t charge additional fees if you sell something for over $100, which many marketplaces do.
Your first 100 auction-style listings are free. (They’re $0.30 each after that.) And you pay only a 10.2% fee on the selling price of each garment, no matter its sale price, plus about 3% for payment processing fees.
Additional features:
- You can sell a piece for a fixed price or for auction. Buyers can also make you an offer.
- Set a minimum sale price or Buy It Now offers to limit negotiating parameters for potential buyers.
- You set the shipping fees, so you can opt to cover them yourself or have the buyer pay them.
- Reach an international audience with eBay’s Global Shipping Program. Just send your apparel to eBay’s domestic shipping center, and they take care of the rest.
4. Best for Selling Accessories: Tradesy
Tradesy focuses on reselling clothes, mostly designer labels like Louis Vuitton, Prada, Staud, Ganni, and Nanushka. But handbags and sunglasses are its two consistently hottest-selling accessories. Jewelry and shoes also do well on the site.
And if you’re looking to resell a wedding dress rather than have it collect dust in the back of your closet, Tradesy is a top site to do it. They have an online consignment shop for wedding dresses and accessories, including designer brands like Vera Wang and non-designer brands like David’s Bridal.
Additional Features:
- Tradesy deducts a flat commission fee of $7.50 from the sale price of anything under $50 and a 19.8% commission for anything $50 or more.
- Set your own price, or let them choose one based on smart data and the details you provide.
- It features complimentary image enhancing to increase the quality of your photos, which the site says can sell your items 25% faster.
- You can request a free Tradesy shipping kit, which includes branded packaging and a prepaid label — everything you need to send your things in style.
5. Best for Ease-of-Use: ThredUp
If you want to earn extra cash without a lot of effort, it doesn’t get any easier than ThredUp. Simply order a cleanout kit from the site, then bag up your old clothes and drop them at the post office or FedEx or schedule a free pickup. If you don’t want to wait for a kit, you can print a prepaid shipping label. Either way, the shipping is free.
They take care of the rest, from sorting your clothes to determine which are worth reselling to snapping pics, deciding on prices, listing your pieces for sale, and interacting with buyers. So there’s nothing to do on your end except mail your stuff.
The site cautions that it accepts less than 40% of what the average person mails for resale. ThredUp has high standards. Clothes must be freshly laundered and new or like new with no damage, signs of wear, or alterations. So turn a discerning eye to your garments.
If ThredUp doesn’t accept your apparel, you can have it shipped back for a $10.99 fee. Alternatively, you can have your clothes recycled, which won’t earn you anything, but it beats them ending up in a landfill. Or you can donate your entire bag to charity, in which case ThredUp sends $5 to the charity of your choice.
Additional features:
- You get paid within 14 days of the date of sale, assuming the buyer doesn’t return it within that time frame.
- Payouts vary by brand and consignment window. For example, you can earn 60% to 80% for clothes that sell for $100 to $199.99 but only 5% to 15% for those that sell for $5 to $19.99. See ThredUp’s payout estimator for more details.
- ThredUp accepts more than 35,000 women’s and children’s brands.
- Get paid in cash or shopping credit.
6. Best for Bargains: Vinted
There are no seller fees on Vinted, including listing fees or commissions, which means you get to keep 100% of your profits. It also means you can list a ton of secondhand clothing that might be a tough sell elsewhere. Pretty much anything goes on Vinted.
So if you’ve got some vintage clothing, old T-shirts, or gently worn clothes that aren’t from any trendy name brands, Vinted’s a better place to list them than a site that leans more toward designer garb. Its commitment to providing a second life for all clothing means you can list plenty of pieces in the under-$10 range.
Additional features:
- The cost of shipping is always covered by the buyer, who decides on the method and carrier for shipping from a list of options you offer them.
- Vinted is global: It has more than 37 million registered members across 13 countries.
- It offers tips and tricks to help move goods faster — including purchasing a “bump” for $0.95 per item, which displays your listing to more members in Vinted’s newsfeed and search results for three consecutive days.
- You can swap with other sellers, which is a fantastic opportunity to trade goods that might not sell for cash.
7. Best for Designer Clothes: The RealReal
If high-end pieces like Prada, Chanel, Dior, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton fill your closet, The RealReal is the place to resell them. As the only secondhand site that authenticates every garment and accessory it sells, it’s the leader in luxury consignment stores.
Over 100 experts inspect thousands of designer items daily to ensure their authenticity. It’s the reason tens of millions of shoppers trust the site.
Additional features:
- Your commission is based on a sliding scale, so the more you sell, the more you earn. Rather than paying you per piece, you receive a commission for everything you sell over a calendar month, starting at 55% for sales of $1,500 or less and reaching as high as 85% for sales of certain collectibles and designer watches.
- You don’t have control over pricing, but you can schedule a video call or email a local representative to see if the site will accept your apparel and get an estimate.
- In addition to clothing, shoes, accessories, and fine jewelry, The RealReal accepts home decor and fine art.
- You can arrange a home pickup or drop-off or request a free shipping label.
- The RealReal does all the work of selling for you, including photographing, measuring, writing descriptions, listing, and shipping the pieces to the buyers.
8. Best for Niche Brands: Depop
Although Depop features tons of the name brands we all know and love, it’s also home to some of the hottest niche fashion out there. Thus, it’s no surprise it has a huge Gen Z following. So if you have independent brands or vintage apparel to resell, Depop is the site for you, as these pieces tend to be most popular among buyers on the site.
The look and feel of the social app are similar to Instagram. You upload a picture of your merchandise in the typical square format, then add a caption underneath with a description of what you’re selling.
The result is a profile page with grid photos of your listings, complete with clickable hashtags, which work just like Instagram hashtags. You can use them to categorize your merchandise for buyers looking for specific things, such as #vintagenike or #dolcegabbana.
Additional features:
- All garments and accessories have fixed prices, so there’s no negotiating.
- Depop charges a commission of 10% of each sale plus a PayPal payment processing fee of about 3%.
- You can also list other goods for sale, like posters, old books, and records — almost anything goes.
- You can swap with other sellers rather than sell your wares for cash.
9. Best for Menswear: Grailed
Many online clothing resale sites focus on women’s clothing, but Grailed is all about menswear. Otherwise, pretty much anything goes: Their rotation of apparel ranges from luxury designers to streetwear to fast-fashion brands and even vintage clothing and includes shoes and accessories.
As with most other online clothing consignment marketplaces, you take pictures of your merchandise, upload them to the site, describe each piece, and set the price.
Additional features:
- Grailed takes a 9% commission on all sales plus the standard PayPal processing fee of about 3%.
- Every seven days, sellers can “bump” their offerings to the top of the feed. After a month, sellers must drop their price by 10% to bump.
- Sellers can drop their price by 10% at any time, and Grailed automatically notifies potential buyers that have favorited their listing.
- Prices are negotiable. Buyers can make an offer, and sellers can counteroffer.
- Create, print, and pay for USPS shipping labels to mail your goods
10. Best for Kids Clothes: Kidizen
As any parent knows, kids can grow out of clothing practically overnight, which can get expensive fast. It’s why I buy almost all my son’s clothes secondhand. With Kidizen, you can also resell your gently used children’s clothing and set aside the money to buy even more kids clothes.
The process for individual sellers is relatively similar to other online clothing resale sites, except that you must set up a shop to sell and promote your pieces. Otherwise, as with other online marketplaces, you take pictures of your apparel, upload them to the site, describe each piece, and set your prices.
Alternatively, you can work with one of Kidizen’s personal sellers and let them take care of all the hard work of selling for you.
Additional features:
- Kidizen takes a 12% commission plus a $0.50 fee on each garment that sells.
- You can download free business cards to promote your shop.
- You can also sell goods in related categories, like baby gear and accessories, children’s books and toys, and clothes and shoes for Mom.
Methodology: How We Select the Best Places to Sell Clothing Online
We use five key metrics to evaluate online clothing consignment marketplaces and select the best for our readers.
Some factors concern the sites’ selling tools, such as how user-friendly it is to list items for sale and reach buyers, while other factors consider the sites’ usefulness, such as the range of merchandise it accepts for resale. Because listing your clothes for sale is about making the most profit from selling your old stuff, sites with lower commissions and fees generally rank higher in our methodology.
Ease of Use
Reselling your old clothes can be a lot of work. Doing it right means taking several high-quality photos, measuring pieces like handbags and accessories, writing descriptions, and researching appropriate prices to ensure your goods sell. No one wants to add becoming a tech wizard to that list.
So the best online consignment stores need to be plug-and-play. Uploading your pictures, adding descriptions, and setting prices should be straightforward.
Large Customer Base
If you have stuff no one wants to buy, you can list it anywhere you want and it will never sell. But a site with a dedicated shopper base in the tens or even hundreds of millions helps stack the deck in your favor so it’s less likely you’ll hear crickets when your listing goes live.
Low Fees
The whole point of selling your stuff is to make money. So if the site you choose gouges you with seller fees and high commissions, that cuts into your profits. It’s a rare site that doesn’t take any commission from your sales. After all, they need to make money too, and they’re providing you with the advertising and customer base to make your sales possible. But the best sites let you keep most of the profits.
Clothing Selection
These days, there’s a resale site for just about every kind of closet, whether yours tends to harbor mass-market brands, vintage T-shirts, or designer handbags. Some of us might even have a little bit of everything. So our top selection covers the gamut since it might be tough to keep track of where all your stuff is on five different niche sites.
But sometimes, the niche site is exactly what you need. If you’re selling a specialty piece, you might be more likely to fetch the best price there since the ideal buyer for that type of product is more likely to frequent a niche site specializing in what you’re selling.
Thus, our methodology reflects the top generalist and niche marketplaces.
Selling Features
Many top resale sites incorporate tools to help you sell your wares quickly for the best price. These include things like image enhancers, social media promotion, auction and price-negotiation features, and even free promotion. These extra features make one site stand out over another in our methodology.
Selling Clothing Online FAQS
If you’re new to selling clothes online, it’s natural to have questions about the process. These are the answers to the most pressing questions online clothing resale rookies have.
What Clothes Can I Sell Online?
Most clothing resale sites focus on women’s clothing. But the top sites also feature categories for men’s and children’s clothing. However, the focus on women’s clothing tends to reflect the primary buyer — which is women. So you may have less luck selling men’s clothing.
Also, the clothes that sell the best are from trending brands and styles. That doesn’t mean your clothes have to be designer, but they must be in demand. In other words, you have to be selling what people want to buy. So if it’s a few years old and no longer in fashion, it likely won’t sell. The exception is vintage clothes that are in vogue again.
Additionally, your clothing must be gently used or like new. It should be free of stains, holes, or fading. If your apparel isn’t in resale condition, investigate places where you can recycle clothes for money or rewards instead.
Does It Cost Money to Sell Clothes Online?
Most of the top sites don’t charge fees to list your apparel for sale. However, you typically pay fees and commissions when your goods sell. That can include a percentage of the sale price and payment processing fees. Note that the payment processor (usually PayPal) charges the payment processing fees, so the resale site can’t control those.
You may also have to pay to have your merchandise shipped, depending on the site’s policies or the arrangement you made with the buyer. Some sites always charge shipping to the buyer, some make the seller responsible for covering shipping costs, and some leave it to the seller’s discretion.
So don’t forget to include a reasonable estimate of shipping costs if you’ll be covering them yourself. Otherwise, you risk forfeiting your profits just to get the goods to the buyer.
Many sites have shipping cost estimate charts in their seller FAQs. If not, consider using flat-rate options like Priority Mail shipping boxes from the U.S. Postal Service.
How Do I Get Paid?
The policies vary by site. But in general, you receive your profits some time after the buyer gets your shipment. Sometimes, the buyer has a certain amount of time to approve or return the shipment, anywhere from three to 14 days.
Once the buyer receives and accepts the shipment, the marketplace deposits money into your account. With most sites, you can then opt to have it transferred to your bank account via direct deposit or transferred via PayPal. Some sites give you the alternative option to use your funds for store credit, where it could be worth even more than the cash value.
Is It Worth Selling Clothes Online?
If you’re looking to keep your things out of the landfill or make some extra cash, selling your clothes is unquestionably worth it.
I’ve made a few hundred dollars reselling my gently worn clothes online. My sister has made over $600 reselling her used clothes, shoes, and handbags — and that was from a single closet cleanout.
Neither of us has ever owned designer brands. So if you have any designer labels in your closet, you can make even more, as these garments have the highest resale value.
However, you won’t get rich reselling stuff you already own, and it can be a lot of work to photograph, list, pack, and ship the merchandise.
My favorite way to resell clothes is to take them to a local biannual pop-up consignment sale. It’s less work (no photographing and shipping), and I earn more. I make an average of $500 to $600 per year reselling our clothes through local consignment.
How to Choose the Best Place to Sell Your Clothing Online
If you’re not sure which site to choose, consider your buyer. Who’s most likely to buy what you have to sell?
Younger generations tend to hang out on Depop. Vinted has a similar vibe but is more popular with millennials and Gen X. You’ll find suburban moms on Poshmark and Mercari. And if you’re selling authentic designer goods, go straight to The RealReal.
But if you have something you’re unsure about, try an all-purpose site like eBay. To keep your listing from getting lost in the sea of millions of other random offerings for sale, see our piece on eBay selling tips to help it stand out.
