How to Sell Items on Steam: One at a Time or in Bulk

Published October 26, 2026 · 6 min read

Summary: To sell an item on Steam, open your inventory (or the Community Market's "Sell an item" option), pick a marketable item, enter a price, and confirm. With the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator you confirm in the Steam Mobile App; without it, the listing can be held for up to 15 days. Identical "commodity" items such as cases, keys and many cosmetics can also be listed together on Steam's Multisell page. When the item sells, the money goes to your Steam Wallet. Your account needs a purchase more than 7 days old (and less than a year old) and Steam Guard enabled for 15 days.

Selling on Steam means listing an item on the Steam Community Market, where another Steam user buys it and the money lands in your Steam Wallet. There are three ways to start a listing. Which one is best depends on how many items you have and whether they're identical copies or one-off items. This guide walks through all three, then covers pricing, confirming and what happens after the sale.

If you're new to the Market itself, start with the Steam Community Market guide.

Before you start: can your account sell?

Steam's Market FAQ requires two things:

A successful purchase on the account that is more than 7 days old and not older than a year. Redeeming a gift doesn't count.
Steam Guard enabled for 15 days.

The Restrictions FAQ adds that Steam Wallet funds, games, DLC and software count as purchases, but retail CD keys and gifts don't. It also lists temporary blocks, such as signing in on a new device or resetting your password. If something is in the way, why you can't sell on the Steam Market explains each message.

Strongly recommended: set up the Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator in the Steam Mobile App and leave it on for a week before a big sale. The Mobile Authenticator FAQ says listings created before you add it, or in the first 7 days after, are held for 15 days. Listings created more than 7 days after you add it aren't held.

Method 1: sell from your inventory

This is the usual way to sell a single item.

Open your Inventory on the Steam website or in the Steam client.
Pick the game's tab. Trading cards, backgrounds and emoticons are under the Steam tab.
Click the item. If it can be sold, you'll see a Sell button in the item panel. If you don't, the item isn't marketable yet or at all (see the troubleshooting guide).
Enter your price. Steam shows what the buyer pays and what you receive. The Market FAQ says the fees are shown on the confirmation page.
Accept the terms and confirm. With the authenticator, approve the listing in the Steam Mobile App.

The item leaves your inventory while it's listed and comes back if you remove the listing before it sells.

Method 2: start from the Community Market page

On steamcommunity.com/market, signed-in users can choose Sell an item. Steam opens your inventory in a picker. The Market FAQ notes that "only items that are eligible to be sold will be visible", which makes this a quick way to check what you can sell right now. The pricing and confirmation steps are the same as in Method 1.

Method 3: list many identical items at once with Multisell

Listing 40 different cases one at a time takes a while. Steam's Multisell page (steamcommunity.com/market/multisell) shows several items on one screen, each with its own price and quantity. It only works with commodity items, which the Market FAQ defines as items where "all the items are identical, and can be traded interchangeably".

The catch is that Steam doesn't link to Multisell from your inventory. You need a link that names the game and each item's exact Market name. That's what Steam Bulk Sell builds:

Make your inventory public.
Pick your game on the Steam Bulk Sell homepage and paste your profile URL, custom URL name or SteamID64.
Tick the commodities you want to sell. The builder shows how many of each you own.
Open the generated link while signed in to Steam, set a price for each row, and submit.

The Multisell guide has batching tips for big inventories.

How to price an item

Every Market listing page shows the lowest current listings, the open buy orders, and a chart of recent sales. Read those before you type a number.

To sell now, price at the highest buy order. Commodities trade through buy orders, and the Market FAQ says buy orders let you "see what other users are willing to pay for an item, and you can choose if you want to do a lower price to sell immediately; or go for a higher price and wait".
To get more and wait, list above the top buy order. When a buyer comes along, Steam fills the cheapest listing first and, among equal prices, the oldest one. If you only match the lowest listing, you're at the back of that queue.
For one-off items such as CS2 weapon skins, there are no interchangeable copies. Compare listings with the same wear and features. See CS2 skins vs commodities.
Mind the minimum fee. The 5% Steam Transaction Fee has a $0.01 minimum, so on items under about $0.20 Steam's cut is more than 5%. Our fees explainer has a worked table.

You list in your own wallet currency. The Market FAQ says buyers in other currencies see a converted price, and exchange rates update daily. Some currencies also have a minimum sale price.

What Steam takes from a sale

Item from	Fees listed in Steam's Market FAQ	You keep, roughly
Most games, and Steam trading cards	5% Steam Transaction Fee (minimum $0.01)	about 95% of what the buyer pays
Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, Artifact	5% Steam fee plus a 10% game fee set by the publisher	about 87% of what the buyer pays

The percentages come from the FAQ, which says fees "may be increased or decreased". The "you keep" column is our own arithmetic (1 ÷ 1.05 and 1 ÷ 1.15), and rounding makes cheap items worse. Steam's confirmation page has the real figure.

After you list

Pending or held. Without 7 days of the Mobile Authenticator, the listing can wait up to 15 days before buyers see it (Holds FAQ). With it, you confirm in the app and the listing goes live.
Active. Your listings appear on the Community Market page while you're signed in. You can remove one there before it sells, and the item goes back to your inventory.
Sold. The money is added to your Steam Wallet. The Market FAQ says your history shows at the top of the Market and on your Account Details page, and Steam emails a receipt.
Final. All Market purchases are final, so double-check prices before you confirm, especially in a long Multisell batch.

Limits to plan around

Wallet cap. Your Steam Wallet can hold up to $2000. You can't create a listing if your balance plus its price would go over that, and the biggest single listing is about $1800 (Market FAQ). Spend down between big batches.
Recently bought items. Items bought in-game or on the Market can't be traded or sold until the date shown in your inventory (Restrictions FAQ).
CS2 items from a trade. They're Trade Protected for 7 days and can't be transferred in that time (Trade Protected Items FAQ).
Cash. Market proceeds "cannot be withdrawn or transferred". See can you sell Steam items for real money?.

Quick checklist

The account meets the purchase and Steam Guard rules.
The Mobile Authenticator has been on for at least 7 days.
Wallet balance plus planned sales stays under $2000.
Valuable items are priced one at a time, with cheap commodities batched.
Prices are checked against buy orders, and the "you receive" amount is checked before confirming.

Got a stack of cases, crates or cosmetics? Pick your game on Steam Bulk Sell and list them on one Multisell page.