Fees

How much does it cost to sell at auction in Australia?

It depends where you sell. Traditional auction houses typically charge sellers a 10–20% commission AND charge your buyer a 15–25% premium on top of the hammer — money that comes out of what buyers were willing to pay you. General online marketplaces usually take around 10–15% of the sale all-in once payment processing is counted. Hunters Auctions charges $0: no listing fee, no commission, no buyer's premium — the hammer price is exactly what you receive.

The three venues, honestly compared

A traditional auction house earns its cut with premises, staff and cataloguing — fair enough for a $40,000 estate clearance, brutal for a $400 dining table: between seller commission and the buyer's premium, a third of the room's money can go to the house. General online marketplaces are cheaper but their percentage still scales with your price — sell something big and the fee is bigger, for the same clicks. Classifieds are free but aren't auctions: you haggle one stranger at a time, and the price finds its floor, not its ceiling.

Why $0 works here

Hunters is funded by things sellers choose — labelled visibility boosts, and Plus/Business plans for high-volume sellers — never by a percentage of your item. That isn't a launch discount; “no commission” is the founding rule, written into the terms. The trade-off is honest too: at launch, sales settle as cash at pickup with optional PayID deposits, and card escrow is on its way — there's no venue, no valuer, no van. Your photos and your condition report do the cataloguing.

What that means in dollars

Hammer a table at $400: a traditional house might hand you $340 after commission — having charged your buyer up to $500 with the premium. A typical marketplace hands you roughly $345–$360. Hunters hands you $400, and your buyer paid $400. The gap IS the middleman.