Facebook Marketplace Statistics 2026: Listings, Scams and Seller Rules

Facebook Marketplace carries 430 million items and 44 million vehicles listed every month globally, according to Meta’s July 2026 disclosure. The Facebook Marketplace statistics Meta publishes now count listings rather than users. More than 3.5 million listings go up every single day in the US and Canada. One in three young adults on Facebook in the US uses Facebook Marketplace daily.

That scale has a second face. US consumers reported $2.1 billion lost in 2025 to scams that started on social media, and people reported more money lost to scams that started on Facebook than on any other social media platform. The figures below trace to Meta’s newsroom posts and filed quarterly results, the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network, Pew Research Center, and the Facebook Help Center.

Key Takeaways

• Facebook Marketplace holds over 200 million fashion items listed in the US, making it the second largest category after home decor.
• Facebook itself reaches 71% of US adults, per Pew Research Center’s 2025 survey.
• Social media accounted for 28% of US fraud loss reports in 2025, behind websites or apps at 31%.
• About half of people who reported a rental scam in the 12 months ending in June 2025 said it started with a fake ad on Facebook.
• Meta reported $60.80 billion in revenue for the second quarter of 2026, an increase of 28% year over year.
• Meta’s operating margin came in at 31%, down from 43% a year earlier.

Editor’s Choice

• One out of four Facebook young adult daily active users in the US and Canada came to Marketplace every day as of November 2025.
• Meta’s family of daily active people reached 3.60 billion on average for June 2026.
• People have reported nearly 65,000 rental scams to the FTC with about $65 million in losses since 2020.
• $1.1 billion, more than half the money reported lost to social media scams in 2025, went to investment scammers.
• More than 40% of people who lost money to a scam on social media said it started when they ordered something they had seen in an ad.
• Marketplace sellers get 7 calendar days to ship an order and mark it shipped before the system cancels it.

How Many Items Are Listed on Facebook Marketplace

• Facebook Marketplace turns ten years old in 2026, having grown out of buying and selling inside Facebook Groups.
• Vehicles account for roughly 10% of everything listed on Marketplace in a given month.
• More than 450 million people were visiting Facebook buy and sell groups each month when Marketplace launched in October 2016.
• One in three young adults on Facebook in the US uses Marketplace daily, on a Facebook base Pew Research Center puts at 71% of US adults.
• Fashion sits second by US listing volume behind home decor, at over 200 million items.

Source: Meta Newsroom, 2025-2026

About This Data

Every figure here is compiled from 11 sources: 10 Tier 1 (Meta Newsroom posts, Meta’s filed second-quarter 2026 results, FTC Consumer Sentinel Network spotlights and the Facebook Help Center) and 1 Tier 2 (Pew Research Center). Publication dates span October 2016 to July 2026. Only primary and named-survey data qualified. Figures are reviewed on a rolling basis and updated when these sources publish new editions.

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How many people use Facebook Marketplace?

Meta’s current Marketplace disclosures count listings rather than users, so a single monthly user total is not available from the company. The usage figure it does publish is behavioral: daily reach among young adults, measured against the Facebook base underneath it.

Facebook’s Reach Among US Adults

• Facebook reach among US adults has moved within a narrow 68% to 71% band across Pew’s 2023 to 2025 readings.
• Pew’s 2025 reading was taken from a survey of 5,022 US adults fielded February 5 to June 18, 2025, which used address-based sampling and a multimode protocol that included web, mail, and phone.

Recent Developments

• July 2026: Meta launched Seller, a dedicated Facebook Marketplace selling app, on the App Store for people 18 and older in the United States.
• July 2026: Meta launched Facebook Verified, a free badge for profiles that complete a selfie verification and meet its trust and safety standards, positioned for Marketplace buyers.
• July 2026: Meta reported ad impressions across its Family of Apps up 14% year over year and average price per ad up 12%.
• April 2026: The FTC reported that nearly 30% of people who lost money to a scam in 2025 said it started on social media.
• March 2026: Meta added one-click AI listing creation, AI replies to buyer inquiries, and AI-generated seller profile summaries to Marketplace.
• December 2025: The FTC published rental-scam findings covering the 12 months ending in June 2025.

Social Platform Reach in the United States

• YouTube and Facebook are the most widely used social media platforms in the United States.
• Half of US adults say they use Instagram, which our Instagram follower data tracks in more detail.
• TikTok reach rose to 37% of US adults in 2025 from 33% in 2024.
• A selling surface inside the second most used platform in the country starts with an audience no standalone app can buy.

Facebook Marketplace Use Among Young Adults

• Vehicles rank among the top five searches for young adults on Marketplace, and Meta names home decor, fashion, and vehicles as the categories young adults shop for most.
• Meta describes young adults who are moving or decluttering, furnishing a new apartment, or finding an outfit as Marketplace’s core audience.
• The behavior lines up with what our Gen Z social media data shows about where younger users concentrate their platform time.

By the numbers: Meta’s two published young-adult readings differ in scope, not only in size. November 2025 gave one out of four Facebook young adult daily active users in the US and Canada. July 2026 gave one in three young adults on Facebook in the US. Narrowing the geography and changing the base explains part of the gap.

Source: Meta Newsroom, 2025-2026

What is the most sold item on Facebook Marketplace?

Meta does not publish sales counts by item, so no verified answer exists for units sold. What it does publish is listing volume by category: home decor is the largest category on Facebook Marketplace in the US, with fashion second at over 200 million items listed. Vehicles run separately at 44 million listed each month globally.

Meta’s Revenue and Profit Behind Marketplace

• Meta’s income from operations came to $18,775 million in the second quarter of 2026, down from $20,441 million a year earlier.
• Total costs and expenses rose 55% year over year to $42,026 million.
• Meta’s effective tax rate was 16% in the quarter, against 11% a year earlier.
• Marketplace sits inside the Family of Apps segment rather than reporting separately, which is also where Meta’s employee count is concentrated.

Source: Meta Platforms Q2 2026 results, 2026

Meta’s Year-Over-Year Growth Rates

• Cost growth outran revenue growth in the quarter, at 55% against 28%.
• Family daily active people grew 3% year over year, the slowest-moving line in the set.
• Diluted earnings per share slipped to $6.18 from $7.14.

Why it matters: Meta grew ad impressions 14% and price per ad 12% in the second quarter of 2026 while daily active people rose only 3%. Growth is coming from monetization density rather than from new people, which is the commercial logic behind pushing a selling surface deeper into the app.

Money Lost to Social Media Scams in the United States

• Reported social media scam losses in 2025 were about eight times the 2020 figure.
• Losses reported to social media scams exceeded those reported for any other form of contact in 2025.
• These are reports, not a census. Most scams are never reported at all, so the direction of the series carries more weight than the level.

How Scams Reach People Who Lose Money

• Shopping scams were the most reported scam on social media in 2025, with more than 40% of people who lost money saying it started when they ordered something they had seen in an ad.
• Website or app leads by report volume while social media carries the larger dollar total. The two measure different things: where a scam is transacted, and where it is sourced.

Social Media Scam Exposure by Age Group

• Social media was the most costly fraud contact method in 2025 by aggregate reported losses.
• 29% of loss reports from people in their 60s, and 23% from those in their 70s, originated on social media.
• Exposure skews young in a way that matches broader social media attention data on where under-30s spend their sessions.

Rental Listing Fraud on Facebook

• Facebook is the most reported platform for rental scams, per the FTC’s December 2025 rental-scam analysis.
• People ages 18 to 29 were three times more likely than other adults to report losing money to a rental scam.
• Many young adults report being targeted in Facebook groups that college students use to look for sublets and housing near campus.
• Some scammers copy an ad for a property that was really for sale rather than for rent, while others create fake listings from scratch with attractive photos and below-market rent.

Worth noting: The FTC counts where a scam started, not where money changed hands. A fake rental ad on Facebook that moves to email and ends in a wire transfer still counts as a Facebook-originated report, which is why platform share here reads as a sourcing statistic rather than a payments one.

Source: FTC Consumer Sentinel Network, 2025

Facebook Marketplace Shipping, Tax and Seller Rules

• Marketplace shipping and checkout lets people buy and sell across the continental United States rather than only near their location.
• Eligible purchases made through checkout are covered by Purchase Protection.
• Sellers using their own label must enter a tracking number to get paid, while sellers using a prepaid label do not need to mark the item as shipped.
• Buyers now see total costs, including shipping and tax, upfront and receive notifications as order status changes.

Source: Facebook Help Center, 2026

What are the downsides of selling on Facebook Marketplace?

The documented friction is operational rather than hidden. Sellers have 7 calendar days to ship an order and mark it as shipped, and the system cancels automatically if they miss that window regardless of any agreement made with the buyer. Payouts also go on hold once sales reach a certain limit until a tax identification number is supplied.

Facebook Marketplace Statistics Since the 2016 Launch

• Marketplace launched in October 2016 as a destination to discover, buy, and sell items with people in your community.
• Meta began integrating eBay inventory into Marketplace in 2025, followed by Poshmark, across categories like fashion and electronics, and partner listings carry an icon on the listing image and appear throughout the Marketplace feed.
• The Seller app arrived on iOS, a channel our App Store distribution data covers in depth, and it reflects the wider shift toward purpose-built apps that the mobile app economy statistics track.

Is Facebook Marketplace safe to buy from?

Two published facts sit on either side of that question. Meta documents protections: eligible checkout purchases are covered by Purchase Protection, and Facebook Verified gives buyers a badge showing the person behind a profile completed a selfie verification. The FTC documents exposure: people reported more money lost to scams that started on Facebook in 2025 than on any other social media platform.

Neither figure settles it. Purchase Protection applies to shipped checkout orders, a narrower slice than the local cash-and-collect trades Marketplace is built around, and the FTC ranking partly reflects Facebook’s size. The same pattern runs through our cybersecurity threat data, where incident counts track platform scale before they track platform weakness.

Is there a better alternative to Facebook Marketplace?

The alternatives are partly inside Marketplace now. Meta integrated eBay inventory into Marketplace in 2025 and then Poshmark, giving people more options across categories like fashion and electronics.

On the rental side, the comparison is measurable. Craigslist accounted for 16% of reported rental scams in the 12 months ending in June 2025, against about half for Facebook. That gap runs in the same direction as audience size, so it reads as a volume signal rather than a verdict on either platform’s controls.

Conclusion

Facebook Marketplace is now measured in listings rather than users. Meta’s own count runs to 430 million items and 44 million vehicles each month globally, with more than 3.5 million new listings a day in the US and Canada, and the company has spent the past year adding AI listing tools, a dedicated Seller app, and a verification badge on top of that base.

The harm side has grown alongside it. With $2.1 billion in reported US losses to social media scams in 2025 and Facebook the most-reported platform for money lost, the practical read for buyers and sellers is that Marketplace’s documented protections cover shipped checkout orders far better than they cover the local trades that built the product. Anyone using it is best served by knowing which of those two they are in before money moves.