How Long Should Your Listing Last?

When you list your item, you can choose a 1, 3, 5, 7 or 10 day listing. If you're an eBay Shop owner selling your item using a fixed-price format, you can also choose a 30-day or Good 'Til Cancelled listing.

Some considerations when choosing your duration:

• Your buyers - Many buyers watch items for a while and think about them before placing a bid or using Buy It Now, so a longer duration may be to your advantage.

• Time dependencies - If your item is related to a certain event, for example a ticket for a concert or a holiday gift, you should make sure your listing ends in time to allow time for you to dispatch the item to the buyer before the holiday or event takes place.

• Your selling volume - If you're a high volume seller listing a lot of identical items, you should consider using the multiple-item listing format, which allows you to list any number of identical items in a single listing.  This saves time – you only have one listing to maintain – and money, as you only have to pay the same fee as you would pay for a single item listing.

Extending the duration of a listing

You're not permitted to extend the duration of a listing if two or more hours have passed since the listing was submitted. Find out more about what you can do to Revise Your Listing.

Listing Times

• Start Times - When you list an item using the Sell Your Item form, the listing is created immediately, unless you have used the scheduled listing option to start it at a later time.

  
  Note: eBay cannot guarantee exact listing durations because there are times when your listing may not immediately be searchable when using a keyword or category search, until several hours after you have created it. You can always find your listing by item number or through My eBay.
  
  

• End Times - Listings end in whole-day increments from the listing's start time. For example, if you submit your auction listing at 1:14 p.m. Sunday, and select a listing duration of 3 days, your item will end at exactly 1:14 p.m. on Wednesday.

  Note: Fixed Price listings and auctions with the Buy it Now option end immediately when a buyer agrees to purchase the item.

To see eBay's official time right now, click on the "eBay official time" link at the bottom-left corner of this page.