Takealot Fee Estimator
Estimate your net profit selling on Takealot, South Africa's largest online marketplace — monthly account fee, category-based success fee, and Fulfilment by Takealot's weight-tiered per-order fee, the same fee-stacking pattern as Amazon FBA.
Fees last verified: 2026-08-23 · How we verify fees
Your numbers
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The VAT-inclusive price the item is listed for on Takealot — Takealot's success fee is charged on this VAT-inclusive amount, not the ex-VAT price.
What you paid to source or manufacture this item.
Takealot's success fee varies genuinely widely by category — roughly 5-18% of the VAT-inclusive selling price, lower for tight-margin categories like electronics and large appliances, higher for categories like beauty, fashion, and homeware. Check your exact category's rate in Seller Portal rather than relying on this field's default.
Fulfilment by Takealot (FBT) charges a per-order fee based on your item's size and weight tier — reported to range from about R22 up to R390 depending on tier, and small weight differences can cross a tier boundary (a commonly cited example: 1.9kg costs R42, 2.1kg costs R62 — R20 more for 200g). Pull your exact fee from Seller Portal for accuracy. Self-shipped 'Lead Time' orders use a different, often lower fee structure entirely — see this page's content for that alternative.
Optional — for a more accurate result. FBT storage is free for roughly the first 35 days of stock cover; sources disagree on the exact billing unit past that (per cubic metre per day vs. a flat per-item monthly charge), so enter your own estimate from Seller Portal rather than a formula this calculator would have to guess at. Leave blank if your stock moves fast enough to avoid storage fees, or if you sell via Lead Time.
R400/month is the most commonly cited figure across sources (one source cites R460 instead — check your own Seller Portal billing for the exact current amount). Doesn't affect this item's own net profit — it's a fixed account-level cost factored into 'Project at scale' below, amortized across your monthly sales volume.
Net profit / unit
ZAR 253.00
Net margin
50.6%
Total Takealot fees
ZAR 97.00
Breakdown
- Product costZAR 150.00
- Fulfilment feeZAR 42.00
- Success feeZAR 55.00
- Storage feeZAR 0.00
- Net profitZAR 253.00
Project at scale
See how this holds up at units sold per month.
Revenue
ZAR 25,000
Costs
ZAR 12,750
Net profit
ZAR 12,250
How the Takealot Fee Estimator works
Enter your selling price (VAT-inclusive, matching how Takealot charges its success fee), product cost, and your category's success fee percentage — Takealot's own range is roughly 5-18% depending on category, so check Seller Portal for your exact rate rather than trusting the default. Add your fulfilment fee (per order, from Seller Portal's FBT fee table) and, if relevant, an optional storage fee estimate. The monthly account fee (R400 by default) doesn't affect this single item's profit directly — it shows up amortized per unit in the 'Project at scale' section below, based on your expected monthly sales volume.
Who this is for
For sellers evaluating whether a product is worth listing on Takealot, South Africa's largest online marketplace, or auditing an existing listing's real margin. Sellers frequently underestimate their total Takealot costs because they only check the success fee percentage — but for heavier or bulkier items, the Fulfilment by Takealot (FBT) fee can be larger than the commission itself, and it's genuinely easy to underestimate: a commonly cited example shows a product jumping from R42 to R62 in fulfilment fee for crossing from 1.9kg to 2.1kg, R20 more per sale for 200 grams of extra weight. This calculator treats both the success fee and the fulfilment fee as real, separately-tracked line items instead of collapsing them into one number.
Worked example
You list an item at R500 (VAT-inclusive), it cost you R150 to source, your category's success fee is 11%, and the item's fulfilment fee is R42 (matching the ~1.9kg tier). Success fee: 11% × R500 = R55. Total fees: R55 + R42 = R97. Net profit: R500 − R97 − R150 = R253, a margin of about 50.6%. Now suppose the same item, slightly repackaged, weighs 2.1kg instead of 1.9kg — crossing into the R62 fulfilment-fee tier. Total fees become R55 + R62 = R117, and net profit drops to R500 − R117 − R150 = R233 — R20 less, purely from crossing that weight boundary, with the success fee unchanged. At 50 units a month, that's R1,000 in fulfilment fees alone lost to a 200-gram packaging difference — worth weighing your item (with packaging) before assuming which tier it falls into.
How Takealot fees actually work — and how they compare to Amazon FBA
Takealot's fee stack is structurally close to Amazon FBA's, which makes them a useful direct comparison for sellers weighing both.
- Monthly account fee — R400/month (most commonly cited; some sources say R460), charged whether or not you sell anything that month. Amazon FBA has no equivalent recurring account fee, which is the main structural difference between the two platforms.
- Success fee (commission) — a category-based percentage of the VAT-inclusive selling price, reported to span roughly 5-18%: lower for tight-margin categories like electronics and large appliances, higher for categories like beauty, fashion, and homeware. Functionally the same role as Amazon's referral fee, and similarly wide by category — there's no single accurate flat number for either platform.
- Fulfilment fee (FBT) — a per-order fee set by a size-class x weight-class grid, reported to range from about R22 up to R390. Small weight or packaging differences can cross a fee tier — the R42-to-R62 jump at the 1.9kg/2.1kg boundary is a commonly cited example. This is the fee sellers most often underestimate, since it's easy to only budget for the commission percentage and forget fulfilment scales with the physical item, not the price.
- Storage fee (FBT only) — sources disagree on the exact billing mechanism (per cubic metre per day vs. a flat per-item monthly charge past roughly 35 days of stock cover), which is why this calculator treats it as an optional estimate rather than a formula. Selling via Takealot's self-shipped 'Lead Time' option instead of FBT avoids FBT storage fees (and the FBT fulfilment-fee tier system) entirely, at the cost of handling your own shipping — worth considering for slower-moving stock.
The honest comparison to Amazon FBA: both platforms charge a commission-plus-fulfillment stack that can add up to considerably more than the commission alone suggests, and Takealot's R400/month is the one cost Amazon sellers don't have to budget for at all — it matters most at low sales volume, where it's a much bigger amortized cost per unit than at high volume.
Selling on more than one platform?
Compare all 5 side by side — Etsy, eBay, Amazon FBA, Poshmark & Shopify.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Takealot take from sellers?
Three stacked charges: a R400/month account fee (charged whether or not you sell anything), a category-based success fee of roughly 5-18% of the VAT-inclusive selling price, and a per-order fulfilment fee if you use Fulfilment by Takealot (FBT) — reported to range from about R22 to R390 depending on your item's size and weight tier. There's no single 'Takealot takes X%' answer, since the success fee alone varies by category and the fulfilment fee varies by item.
What's the Takealot monthly subscription fee?
R400/month is the figure most consistently cited across seller guides, charged regardless of whether you make any sales that month — one source cites R460 instead, so check your own Seller Portal billing for the exact current amount rather than assuming either number with certainty. There's no listing fee or upfront deposit on top of it.
Are Takealot's fees higher than Amazon's for South African sellers?
They're structurally similar — both stack a category-based commission with a size/weight-based fulfillment fee — but Amazon FBA has no monthly account fee, while Takealot's R400/month applies regardless of sales. For a seller doing meaningful volume, Takealot's per-sale fees (success fee + fulfilment fee) land in a broadly comparable range to Amazon's referral + FBA fulfillment fees; the R400/month becomes the deciding factor mostly at low volume, where it's a much bigger drag per unit (R40/unit at 10 sales a month vs. R4/unit at 100) — see 'Project at scale' above to check your own numbers rather than assuming either platform is definitively cheaper.
How can I avoid Takealot storage fees?
The most direct way is keeping roughly 35 days of stock cover or less, which sources describe as Takealot's free-storage threshold for Fulfilment by Takealot (FBT) — storage charges only kick in on overstocked inventory beyond that. Selling via Takealot's self-shipped 'Lead Time' option instead of FBT sidesteps FBT storage fees entirely, since you're holding and shipping the stock yourself rather than Takealot warehousing it — worth considering for slower-moving items where FBT's speed advantage matters less.
Is Takealot's success fee charged before or after VAT?
After — meaning it's calculated on the VAT-inclusive selling price, not the ex-VAT amount. This calculator's selling price field is documented as VAT-inclusive to match that, so enter the actual listed price a buyer sees, not a pre-VAT figure.
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