Allegro fees explained: what actually comes off each order
Allegro is the largest marketplace in Poland and the usual entry point for sellers reaching that market. Most know their category commission rate and stop there. It is one line out of several, and the others together are often larger.
Commission is charged on the gross price
On the amount the buyer paid, with VAT inside it. At 149 PLN and an 11% rate that is 16.39 PLN, not the 13.33 PLN the net figure would give — a difference of 23%, exactly the Polish VAT rate.
It sounds like a detail and is not. At a 25% margin those three zloty per unit are more than a tenth of the profit, and at volume it is a line you can see in the accounts.
Note in passing that the VAT inside that price is Polish. Selling to a Polish consumer from another member state is a distance sale: past the €10,000 threshold you charge 23% and report it through OSS, not your own domestic rate — see OSS or local registration.
Commission on delivery
The amount the buyer pays for shipping frequently enters the commission base as well. Charging 15 PLN for delivery then adds 1.65 PLN of commission at an 11% rate.
On expensive goods that is noise. On cheap goods at volume it is a real line, and an easy one to forget when deciding whether to charge for delivery or absorb it.
The rules vary by category and programme, which is why the Allegro fee calculator makes it a switch rather than a hardcoded assumption.
Smart! is not a fee, it is a delivery decision
Under Smart! the buyer pays nothing for delivery and you absorb the cost. There is no separate “Smart! fee” — there is a shift of the shipping cost from the buyer to you.
In numbers: a product at 149 PLN with 11% commission, 60 PLN of goods, 12.99 PLN of shipping and 4 PLN of advertising yields 27.76 PLN of profit under Smart!. The same product outside Smart!, with 15 PLN of delivery charged to the buyer, yields 38.30 PLN.
The 10.54 PLN difference is the price of Smart!. That does not make it a bad deal — it lifts conversion and visibility, and at 10.54 PLN per unit you need roughly 38% more sales to break even on it. It means only that the figure is worth knowing before the decision rather than after the quarter.
The rest of the stack
- Allegro Ads. Billed separately, so it drops out of the per-unit calculation. Divide monthly spend by all units sold, not just the ones attributed to ads.
- Promotion and highlighting packages. Often bought periodically, so they too stay outside the unit cost until you deliberately convert them.
- Payment fees. Charged on the gross amount including delivery.
- Returns. You lose shipping both ways and a share of goods come back unsellable.
- Currency. You are settled in zloty and your costs are in euro. A conversion spread of 1.5 to 2% applies to the whole of revenue, not to the margin: at a 25% margin, two points of spread eat eight. The currency conversion calculator prices the gap between your bank and the mid-market rate.
- The commission invoice itself. To a VAT-registered business outside Poland it arrives without VAT and is reverse-charged on your own return, so the figure that belongs in a margin calculation is the net one.
The first two share a trait: they are billed periodically rather than per order, so they vanish from unit economics and reappear in the monthly statement.
How to find your real rate in a minute
Not from the table — from your own documents. Take one settlement or commission invoice and calculate:
effective rate = commission charged / order total
Compare the result against the item price alone. If the rate came out higher, commission covered the delivery too. If it differs from the published table, price thresholds or a programme you are enrolled in are involved.
That single number is worth more than the whole category table, because it describes your account rather than an average.
What you cannot see until you calculate it
The Allegro calculator runs the whole stack at once and returns the break-even price — the lowest at which the sale still covers everything. That is the number worth writing on every listing: it tells you how far a competitor can push you before you start paying to sell.
A useful habit: run it once on your real figures, then again with advertising doubled and the price cut 10%. If it still clears zero, the listing survives a bad quarter and a price war.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, on the amount the buyer paid. At 149 PLN and 11% that is 16.39 PLN instead of the 13.33 PLN from the net figure — a difference equal to the VAT rate.
It depends on whether the conversion lift covers the delivery cost. Compare profit both ways: the difference is what Smart! costs per unit, and you know how much it lifts your sales. At a 10.54 PLN difference on 27.76 PLN of profit you need about 38% more volume.
Usually price thresholds, a subcategory other than the one you assumed, or a programme you take part in. Calculate the effective rate from a settlement — it is the only figure that describes your account.
As a VAT-registered business, normally yes, like any other cost invoice. So use net amounts in your margin calculation, or you will overstate the cost and understate the margin.