Shopify eBay integration that keeps one stock count
Shopify and eBay hold separate stock counts and neither updates the other, so a sync app is what puts one number behind both. Worth settling first: Shopify allows a 255-character SKU and eBay stops at 50, so the code matching a product across the two has to fit the shorter limit. Shopify tells us the moment something sells, so eBay is corrected in a second or two. eBay does not announce a sale, so we check it every couple of minutes instead.
No credit card · connected in about ten minutes · nothing changes until you say so · Updated 14 August 2026
Shopify
eBayWhat a Shopify eBay integration actually moves
One row per job, based on how QuickSync connects to Shopify and eBay today. Where a side does not allow something, the cell says so.
| What | Shopify | eBay |
|---|---|---|
| Stock count | Both ways | Both ways |
| New listings | We can create and update | We can create and update |
| Prices | Sent, with your rule applied | Sent, with your rule applied |
| Orders in | Into QuickSync | Into QuickSync |
| Tracking back | Sent to the order | Sent to the order |
| Photos and options | Photos, sizes and colours | Photos, sizes and colours |
| How fast we update it | Under a second | A second or two |
| How fast it tells us | The moment it happens | We check every two minutes |
Running Shopify and eBay by hand
Nearly every problem selling on both Shopify and eBay comes from each side keeping its own count. Sell the last one twice and you oversell somebody.
| Two shops, run by hand | Two shops, connected |
|---|---|
| The last one sells in both shops within the same hour | Whichever shop sells it, the other one drops to match |
| Typing the same stock numbers into Shopify and eBay each morning | One count, sent to both, without anyone opening a spreadsheet |
| Changing a price means editing the same product twice | Change it once and each shop gets the price you set for it |
| Orders in two dashboards, matched up by hand at the end of the week | Every order already matched to the right product |
| A refund leaves your numbers wrong until someone notices | A refund puts the stock back and tells both shops |
| Guessing how stale each shop’s number is | A sale on eBay is found within two minutes and Shopify is corrected straight after |
One eBay order, start to finish
Real timings, including the wait. A sale on Shopify is the quicker direction, because Shopify tells us and eBay does not.
eBay · order #447114:02:11eBay41sourceShopify41+0.3sCorrecting Shopify takes under a second once we have the sale. The order is in your packing list with the eBay order number on it, and a tracking number added later goes back to eBay on its own.
The other direction is faster: a sale on Shopify reaches eBay in a second or two, because Shopify pushes it to us the moment it happens.
Connecting Shopify and eBay takes about ten minutes
Most of that is us matching your catalogues. The two connections themselves are a login each.
Connect Shopify
You approve QuickSync from the Shopify app store. Shopify asks which permissions to grant and you can withdraw them from the Shopify side at any time.
Connect eBay
You sign in to eBay and grant QuickSync access to the selling account.
Let it match your products
We line the two catalogues up by SKU, then by title, and hand you a short list of anything we could not match. You decide what happens to those.
Watch, then switch it on
Leave it watching for a few days and check the numbers agree. When you are happy, let it start making changes, one shop at a time.
The limits: know them before you connect
Every Shopify eBay integration has constraints. These are the ones that apply here.
eBay waits; Shopify does not
A Shopify sale reaches eBay in a second or two. An eBay sale reaches Shopify on our next look, which is within two minutes. Hold back a little safety stock and that window stops mattering.
eBay is checked, not pushed
eBay does not announce sales to us, so we look every couple of minutes. A little safety stock on your fastest sellers covers that window.
Nothing publishes itself to Shopify or eBay
Copying a listing from Shopify to eBay (or the other way) always waits for you to look at it. Stock is the only thing that moves on its own, and only once you have turned it on.
Why eBay runs slower
A second or two, against under a second for Shopify. The gap has a cause.
eBay counts requests per selling account, and it counts them across everything hitting that account, not just us. So we hold our exports behind a queue rather than firing them the moment a change happens: when eBay answers with a rate-limit refusal, we wait and send it again instead of dropping the update. That queue is the whole of the difference between the two numbers on this page.
For one sale it’s invisible — a second or two is nobody’s problem. It shows up when you change 5,000 prices at once. Shopify takes that in a single pass, and eBay takes it at the rate eBay allows, so the two shops can sit a few minutes apart while a bulk edit drains. Nothing is lost in that window; the last of the batch simply hasn’t gone yet.
Worth knowing before a sale weekend: schedule bulk price changes an hour ahead rather than on the hour you want them live.
How much safety stock
Two minutes of exposure is a sales rate, not a risk.
Every page like this one tells you to hold back safety stock and none of them says how much. It’s arithmetic, and the number is usually smaller than people expect. Take your busiest hour for a single item across both shops, and work out how often that item sells. Two minutes of that rate is your exposure.
An item selling 20 a day is one sale every 70 minutes or so, and a two-minute window is a fraction of one unit — a buffer of one covers it with room over. An item shifting 30 in an hour during a promotion is one every two minutes, and that’s the case worth planning for: hold two or three back on that item, and only for as long as the promotion runs.
The buffer belongs on the handful of items that actually move at that rate, not across the catalogue. Padding all 3,000 listings costs you sales in the 2,980 that were never at risk.
Moving in from eBay
We don’t rebuild your eBay listings inside Shopify. Here’s what connecting the two does instead.
Search for eBay to Shopify and most of what comes back is migration software, so it’s worth saying plainly: this isn’t that. We don’t read your eBay listings and create Shopify products out of them, and switching us on won’t fill an empty Shopify store. We match products that already exist in both shops, then keep their counts together from that point on.
That distinction matters most to the seller who has run eBay for years and opened Shopify last month. Get the catalogue into Shopify however suits you — a CSV export, a tool built for migration, or by hand for a short range — and give each product the same SKU it already carries on eBay. The SKU is what we pair on, and it’s the only preparation that changes how well this goes.
From there the direction barely matters, with one asymmetry worth holding on to: a Shopify sale reaches eBay in a second or two, while an eBay sale reaches Shopify on our next look, up to two minutes later. Orders travel the same route. eBay hands us its sales, and tracking you add against one comes back to the buyer’s eBay order.
The SKU length trap
Shopify holds 255 characters. eBay stops at 50. That gap breaks matching quietly.
We pair a product across the two shops on its SKU, which makes the SKU the one field worth measuring before you turn anything on. Shopify will hold one up to 255 characters. eBay stops at 50, and a longer one is cut down to fit on the way across rather than refused at the door.
Being trimmed rather than rejected is exactly what makes it worth a section. Nothing errors: a 60-character Shopify SKU reaches eBay as its first 50, the two stop reading as the same product, and the pair quietly stops holding one count between them. Long SKUs are nearly always generated ones, with a supplier prefix and a season code and a variant string bolted together, so if yours are machine-made rather than typed then sort the longest ones out first.
The fix is the dull one. Shorten the SKU on the Shopify side until it fits inside 50 characters and keep it identical on both. Nothing else about the two catalogues has to match: titles, photos, descriptions and categories can differ as much as you like between a Shopify product page and an eBay listing, and most sellers want them to.
Shopify Marketplace Connect
Shopify makes its own eBay channel. It is worth understanding before you pay us or anybody else.
The app is called Marketplace Connect, Shopify builds it, and it links a Shopify store to eBay, Amazon, Walmart and Target Plus. It is free to install. The first 50 marketplace-synced orders each month cost nothing, and after that it takes 1% of each synced order, capped at $99 a month. If Shopify and eBay are the only two shops you run and you are under 50 marketplace orders a month, start there. It costs nothing at that size, and we would rather say so on our own page than have you work it out after paying us.
What separates it from us is shape rather than a feature list. Marketplace Connect is a Shopify sales channel, so Shopify sits in the middle and the marketplaces hang off it. That is the right design while Shopify genuinely is your main shop. It fits less well when Shopify is one of several places you sell rather than the hub, and it has nothing to offer for a pair that leaves Shopify out altogether — a Clover counter and eBay, say, which is this same job with the middle removed.
The two prices also behave differently as you grow, because they are charged for different things. Ours goes by shop: Pro is $29 a month for two of them and stays $29 whether those shops take 40 orders or 4,000. Marketplace Connect starts free and then tracks what you sell, 1% at a time, up to its $99 ceiling. Below 50 orders a month it is cheaper than us. Above that the two lines cross somewhere, and where they cross depends on what your orders are worth rather than on any number either of us publishes.
Two shops fits the smallest plan
Your catalogue size picks the plan, and your plan price covers two connected shops with every shop after that adding it again. Three shops on Lite is $38 a month.
Lite
$19/mo for two shops1,000 items and up to eight connected integrations, with stock matched on both sides automatically. Enough for Shopify and eBay on their own, at $19 a month for the two.
Pro
$29/mo for two shops2,500 items and up to eight connected integrations. Listings and orders sync here as well as stock. Most sellers running two shops properly end up here.
Ultra at $69 and Ultra+ at $99 add larger catalogues, price rules and setup help. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial and no card.
Questions people ask about this pair
How quickly does Shopify update after something sells on eBay?
Within two minutes. eBay has no way of telling us the moment a sale happens, so we check it on a short timer instead. Once we have the sale, correcting Shopify takes under a second. The other direction is much quicker: Shopify tells us straight away. If either shop has an outage, we hold the update and retry until it goes through.
How can I sync my Shopify inventory with eBay?
Give the same product the same SKU in both shops, then connect the two and match them. From that point a sale on either side corrects the other: a Shopify sale reaches eBay in a second or two, and an eBay sale reaches Shopify on our next check, up to two minutes later.
How long can a SKU be when syncing Shopify with eBay?
Fifty characters. Shopify itself allows up to 255, and anything longer than 50 is truncated on the way to eBay, which stops the two matching without reporting an error. Shorten the SKU before you connect rather than after.
How do I connect my Shopify store to eBay?
Approve QuickSync from the Shopify app store, sign in to eBay to grant access to the selling account, then match products by SKU. Keep SKUs to 50 characters or fewer — that is eBay’s limit, and anything longer is truncated, which stops the two matching without reporting an error.
Is there a free Shopify eBay integration?
Yes. Shopify’s own Marketplace Connect is free to install and free for the first 50 marketplace-synced orders a month, charging 1% of each order after that up to $99 a month. It is the cheapest route while Shopify is your main shop and volumes are low. QuickSync charges per shop instead of per order, from $19 a month for two, and starts with a 14-day trial that does not ask for a card.
Do I have to re-list my Shopify products on eBay?
No. We match your existing Shopify and eBay listings by SKU first, then by title, and hand you a short list of whatever we could not match. You can also copy a listing from one side to the other if you want it in both places; that step always waits for you.
Can I charge a different price on eBay?
Yes. Set a rule once for eBay: a percentage, a fixed uplift, or a price you type yourself. We apply it whenever the price changes, and nothing forces Shopify and eBay to the same number.
Does the tracking number go back to both shops?
Yes. When you add a tracking number to an order, we send it back to whichever of Shopify or eBay the order came from, and the buyer gets the shop’s normal notification.
Does an eBay order get recreated on Shopify?
No. The order stays on eBay. We pull it into your one QuickSync list next to your Shopify orders so you pack from one place, without creating a duplicate Shopify order for it.
What happens if a buyer cancels or I refund them on Shopify or eBay?
The stock goes back. A cancellation or a refund puts the item back into your count and we send the corrected number to both Shopify and eBay.
Which plan do I need for Shopify and eBay?
Lite covers Shopify and eBay. Lite is $19 a month for two shops and holds 1,000 items, with up to eight connected integrations. You would move up a plan for catalogue size, and your bill goes up by another $19 if you connect a third shop.
Guides for running Shopify and eBay together
Setup walkthroughs, edge cases and comparisons that go deeper than this page — each one is a sub-question, not another page chasing the same head term.
Selling somewhere else as well?
Each combination has its own page, including the limits that apply to that pair, not a generic Shopify write-up with the logo swapped.
Or read about one shop on its own
Every channel has a page covering exactly what syncs, what does not, and how fast.
Connect Shopify and eBay and watch one correct the other
Make one test sale and watch the other shop’s count drop. If it doesn’t work the way this page describes, you’ve spent ten minutes and no money.
No credit card required
Setup guides for this pair
Connect each shop with its own walkthrough, then come back to this page for how Shopify and eBay stay in step.