How do bid increments work?

Question: How do bid increments work?

Answer: If you’ve done any amount of buying on eBay and have a general understanding of how the eBay bidding system works, you’ve probably wondered just how eBay works out the amount of the next “minimum bid” required for a bidder to bid on an auction.

While it may seem to be arbitrary or even magical, it isn’t; the required increment for each new bid is calculated according to a price table of “bid increments” that eBay maintains as a matter of bidding policy. Here’s how the bid increments stack up.

• If the current high bid on the auction is from $0.01 to $0.99, then the next bid must be at least $0.05 higher.
  
  
• If the current high bid is $1.00 to $4.99, then the next bid must be at least $0.25 higher.
  
  
• If $5.00 to $24.99, at least $0.50 higher.
  
  
• If $25.00 to $99.99, at least $1.00 higher.
  
  
• If $100.00 to $249.99, at least $2.50 higher.
  
  
• If $250.00 to $499.99, at least $5.00 higher.
  
  
• If $500.00 to $999.99, at least $10.00 higher.
  
  
• If $1,000.00 to $2,499.99, at least $25.00 higher.
  
  
• If $2,50000 to $4,999.99, at least $50.00 higher.
  
  
• If $5,000.00 or higher, the next bid must be at least $100.00 higher.

Sample Cases

If this seems confusing to you, consider the following examples:

• For an auction with a current value of $5.35, any prospective buyer must bid at least $5.85 ($5.35 + $0.50) on the auction to be able to bid.
  
  
• For an auction with a current value of $112.36, any prospective buyer must bid at least $114.86 ($112.36 + $2.50) on the auction to be able to bid.
  
  
• For an auction with a current value of $5,444.25, any prospective buyer must bid at least $5,544.25 ($5,444.25 + $100.00) on the auction to be able to bid.

This policy of “bid increments” helps eBay to minimize the kind of exponentially huge bidding traffic that could occur if bidders and/or buyers were allowed to outbid each other by just a penny. More information on bid increments can be found on eBay’s bid increments page.

Keep in mind that bid increments don't tell the whole story about eBay bidding. To understand why some bidders seem to bid over and over again immediately after you, or why the debate between auction snipers and non-snipers continues to rage, you really must also understand the eBay proxy bidding system, which uses bid increments to bid automatically on behalf of interested buyers while they're away from eBay.