Guides / eBay

eBay image requirements (2026)

What eBay actually requires of listing photos, where the real floor sits, and the parts no rule covers.

The rules, in one table

500 pixels is a floor, not a target

eBay accepts a photo at 500 pixels on the longest side, which is the size a listing is allowed to go live at, not the size that sells it. eBay itself recommends around 1600 pixels, and that is where the zoom viewer finally has something to show. Photolint fails anything under the 500 floor outright and treats 1600 as the target: below it, the ×4 upscale runs and the result is measured again before it ships.

No white background rule, which is why yours has to earn its place

eBay does not impose a background colour the way Amazon and Walmart do, so nothing is rejected for a grey backdrop. Search results still put your thumbnail beside a hundred others, and a busy or uneven background is what makes it lose that comparison. Photolint will still cut to pure white when you ask for it, and the batch consistency check catches the shot where your backdrop drifted warmer or darker than the rest of the set.

The 12MB ceiling is generous, and that is the trap

The uploader takes files up to 12MB, so nothing stops you from shipping a 9MB photo that a phone on a train will never finish loading. Weight is not a rule you can fail, it is a rule your buyer enforces by leaving. Photolint compresses in quality steps until the file fits the target you set rather than the ceiling eBay allows, and strips the EXIF payload on the way out.