How Long Should Your Listing Last?

• When you list your item, you can have your listing last 1, 3, 5, 7 or 10 days.

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 and are listing a lot of identical items, consider a 1-day listing. With 1-day listings, you can offer more listings for identical items per week than with any other auction-format listing duration. Currently eBay allows you to list only 10 identical items simultaneously. If you are a high volume seller, the 1-day listing format lets you offer up to 70 listings for identical items per week, compared to only 20 per week with the 3-day listing format.

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 begins immediately, unless you have used the scheduled listing option to start it at a later time.

  Please note: eBay cannot guarantee exact listing durations as there are times when your listing may not appear when using a keyword or category search until several hours after you have created it. However, you will be able to find your listing by searching using the item number, or by going to My eBay and looking under Items I’m Selling.

• End Times - Listings end in whole-day increments from the listing's start time. For example, if you list at 1.14 pm. Sunday, and select a listing duration of 3 days, your item will end at exactly 1.14 pm on Wednesday.

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

• Time Zones - Listing times on the UK site correspond to GMT and BST depending on the season.

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