What is Tesco Marketplace? A seller's guide to getting on it and whether it pays

Most of the people searching for Tesco Marketplace are shoppers wondering why a garden bench in their basket is coming from someone other than Tesco. This guide is for the other side: brands deciding whether to sell there. It belongs with our guides to selling on TikTok Shop in the UK and TikTok Shop fees, the other marketplace most UK brands weigh up next to Amazon. It covers what Tesco Marketplace is, how to get on it, what Tesco publishes about fees and fulfilment (and what it doesn’t), who it suits, and how to compare it with Amazon UK on the only measure that matters, the margin each order leaves you. If you are still choosing your first marketplace, start with our TikTok Shop vs Amazon guide; for running several channels together, see our multichannel guide.

What Tesco Marketplace is

Tesco Marketplace is the part of Tesco.com and the Tesco app where approved third-party sellers list products Tesco doesn’t stock itself. Customers add them to the same basket as their groceries, but the order splits: Marketplace items are delivered by the seller, by post or courier, separately from Tesco’s home delivery, Whoosh and Click+Collect⁶. Tesco takes the payment and puts returns requests through the customer’s Tesco account⁷¹⁰. Customers with a Clubcard collect 1 point per £1 on Marketplace products, the same as on groceries⁸.

When it started. Tesco launched it in the first week of June 2024. On its Q1 analyst call on 14 June 2024, Tesco said “last week we launched Tesco Marketplace”, describing it as a way to offer “a broader range of thousands of products alongside the groceries”. It also explained the difference from the old Tesco Direct: Marketplace is fully integrated into Tesco’s grocery home-shopping platform, while delivery is fulfilled by a third party³.

How big it is now. In its 2025/26 results on 16 April 2026, Tesco said Marketplace offered “c.450k third-party SKUs from >500 sellers” and that over one million customers had tried it. It also said the platform was “re-platformed with Mirakl” in October 2025 “to improve seller onboarding process and enhance the customer proposition"²⁴. Tesco reported UK online sales of over £7bn in the same results⁴, though that figure is mostly groceries, not Marketplace.

Why sellers are interested. Tesco’s own pitch is reach: “the UK’s largest grocery platform” and “tens of millions of Clubcard members who can earn points on your products"¹¹¹. Tesco says it is looking for sellers who share its values on “quality, trust and reliable customer service"¹. In other words, it is selective. It is not an open marketplace where anyone with a VAT number can list.

How sellers join

Tesco PLC’s suppliers page and the Tesco.com help centre both send sellers to a single application form¹¹¹. There is no self-service sign-up. The form asks for⁵:

• Contacts: a primary contact and the person who will sign Tesco’s terms.
• Company details: trading name (shown to customers), legal entity name, your biggest category by sales, projected sales over the next 12 months (under £1m, £1m to £10m, or over £10m) and estimated SKU count.
• Platform management: your own website (Tesco asks you not to give an Amazon storefront), your integration method, whether you use a channel manager, and which other marketplaces you sell on (Amazon, eBay, B&Q, The Range, Wayfair, Argos or others).
• Channel classification: brand owner or manufacturer (with a list of brands owned), authorised distributor (with a letter of authorisation for each brand), distributor, or reseller.
• Compliance: confirmation that your company is registered in the UK with a UK company number and UK VAT number, can ship to all UK postcodes, can manage returns and has customer service in place. If not, Tesco says it can’t progress the application.

The platform and partner route

Tesco Marketplace runs on Mirakl since October 2025⁴. The application form lists the integration routes Tesco accepts⁵:

Channel-management companies such as ChannelEngine publish their own Tesco set-up guides, and send sellers to Tesco’s application form first¹². A partner can connect your catalogue and stock; it can’t get you approved. The approval decision is Tesco’s.

GS1 UK, the barcode standards body, advises that Tesco may require valid GTINs for each product and variant, and that resellers must use the brand owner’s GTIN rather than create their own¹³. Check this for your category before you prepare the catalogue.

Categories

Tesco doesn’t publish a list of categories it is recruiting in, but its application form asks for your biggest category from this list⁵: Baby & Toddler; BWS (beer, wine and spirits); Clothing; Cook; Electrical Accessories; Food; Garden & Seasonal Events; Health & Beauty; Home Electricals; Home Lifestyle; Household; PC & Gaming; Pet; Sports & Leisure; Stationery & Office Supplies; Toys & Games; TV & Audio; and Trending.

Tesco’s launch commentary pointed at range that a supermarket can’t carry in store: specialised products in “food and food related missions”, stretching into clothing and home³. In our reading, the strongest fit is products a grocery shopper buys on the same trip or for the same household: home, garden, pet, baby, kitchen, health and beauty, and food specialities. Big, heavy and age-verified products may need specialist delivery⁶.

Fees: what Tesco publishes, and what it doesn’t

Tesco does not publish its seller fees. Neither the Tesco PLC sellers page, the Tesco.com help centre nor the application form states a commission rate, a monthly fee or a set-up fee¹¹¹⁵.

Third parties describe the model. ChannelEngine, an integration partner, says Tesco “does not charge a setup fee or a monthly fixed fee” but charges a commission that “varies per product category”, and lists payment as monthly on the 1st and 15th¹². GS1 UK also describes a commission by category, and advises sellers to confirm whether any set-up, listing or subscription charges apply under the current terms, and to remember that VAT may apply to marketplace fees¹³. These are not Tesco’s own statements, so treat them as a guide until you see Tesco’s terms.

The costs you can count on, whatever the commission:

• Fulfilment. You pick, pack and ship every order. There is no Tesco equivalent of FBA.
• Delivery charges are capped. For most products, customers pay up to £3 for standard delivery (3 to 5 working days) and up to £6 for express (1 to 2 working days) per seller. Big, heavy or age-verified items go by specialist delivery: up to £10 standard (5 to 7 working days) and £20 express. Tesco’s Delivery Saver doesn’t cover Marketplace⁹. Whatever your courier charges you above what the customer pays comes out of your margin.
• Returns. Tesco’s Marketplace return promise lets customers change their mind within 30 days for a replacement or refund, and says faulty items within 12 months get a refund, repair or replacement. Standard delivery charges are usually refunded if the item comes back within 14 days¹⁰. Budget for returns on that basis.
• Integration. A channel manager or connector subscription, if you don’t already have one.

How it compares with Amazon UK, on margin

The fair comparison is margin per order, after every cost, for the same product. Here is one, with Amazon’s fees as published and everything else illustrative.

A home product sells for £30 including VAT, which is £25.00 without it at the 20% standard rate¹⁶.

Amazon’s referral fee for Home is 15% on items above £20, its digital services fee is 2% of selling and fulfilment fees for UK-established sellers¹⁴, and the referral fee is calculated on a fee base that includes taxes¹⁵. The Professional selling plan adds £25 a month¹⁴.

Tesco leaves £10.50 before its commission. The product earns the same on Tesco as through FBA when the commission is £4.17, which is 13.9% of the £30 price (assuming, as on Amazon, the commission is charged on the VAT-inclusive price).

Three things the table doesn’t show:

1. Volume. Tesco Marketplace has about 450,000 products². In our experience, for most brands Amazon UK sells many times more units of the same product, because far more shoppers start their search there. A higher margin on a small number of orders can be worth less than a thinner margin on many.
2. Advertising. On Amazon, most brands pay for visibility with Sponsored Products; our break-even ACoS guide shows how to keep that profitable. We found no self-serve advertising option for Marketplace sellers on Tesco’s published seller pages, so ask what visibility options come with your terms.
3. Operations. Selling through FBA means Amazon ships and handles customer service. On Tesco you do both, to Tesco’s standards, for every order. If you already ship from your own warehouse or a third-party logistics provider, that is a small change. If you only use FBA, it is a new operation. Our FBA fees guide and Seller Fulfilled Prime guide cover the trade-off on the Amazon side.

Who Tesco Marketplace suits

From what Tesco asks for and how the marketplace works, it suits:

• UK brand owners and authorised distributors with a UK company and VAT registration. Tesco asks resellers to say so, and distributors to provide letters of authorisation⁵.
• Brands that already ship their own orders, from their own warehouse or a fulfilment partner, and can deliver anywhere in the UK within Tesco’s standard and express windows.
• Products that belong in a household shop: home, garden, pet, baby, kitchen, health and beauty, and specialist food and drink.
• Brands with margin to spare after their own fulfilment cost, so that a category commission still leaves a profit.
• Brands with a channel manager or a Shopify, Magento or Linnworks set-up, which keeps stock in sync with Amazon and your own site.

It suits less well:

• FBA-only brands with no way to ship orders themselves.
• Products that rely on search discovery, where Amazon’s demand does the work.
• Low-price, heavy or bulky items, where your delivery cost is high against the £3 or £10 the customer pays.
• Resellers of other brands’ products without authorisation.

The way we approach it for the brands we work with: get Amazon profitable first, then treat Tesco as an incremental channel with a small, well-chosen range, judged on contribution per order after fulfilment and returns. If it sells, extend the range. If it doesn’t, the cost of trying was mostly the integration.