Cheapest Estate Agent Fees in the UK: What the Four Fee Models Really Cost

The cheapest way to sell through an agent is a fixed fee you pay upfront, and advertised prices start at £129. The most expensive is a percentage of whatever your home sells for. On a £300,000 sale, the average percentage fee of 1.42% including VAT costs you £4,260, where a £999 fixed fee costs you £999.

The headline is not the outcome, though. What you hand over depends on when the fee falls due, what you owe if you never sell, and whether your sale is taxable. For the typical market rate rather than the cheap end, start with how much estate agents charge to sell a house.

What is the cheapest way to sell a house through an agent?

A fixed fee paid upfront, and the lowest advertised prices start at £129. That comes from MoneySavingExpert's guide to selling a house, updated 1 July 2026, which lists Visum at £129, Emoov at £395, and Yopa and Purplebricks from £999. The high street average is 1.42% including VAT, published by the HomeOwners Alliance in its 2026 estate agent fees guide. So on a £300,000 house that percentage costs you around £4,260. On a £450,000 house it costs you around £6,390.

Which? puts the average nearer 1.3% including VAT using Rightmove data, and in its separate guide to online agents puts the flat-fee band at £300 to £1,500. Both were updated on 8 June 2026. The sources differ by a few hundred pounds and agree on direction: on any normal house price, a fixed fee costs you less in cash.

Here is what you are choosing between.

• Cheapest advertised fixed fee: from £129, if you run your own viewings and pay before you sell.
• Average percentage fee: 1.42% including VAT, about £4,260 on a £300,000 sale.
• Percentage range: 0.75% to 3% plus VAT, or £2,700 to £10,800 on a £300,000 sale, driven by whether you sign with one agent or several and by how hard you push back.
• Pay on completion instead: £150 upfront then £2,099 at completion, plus the same £80 identity check, with only the £2,099 depending on a sale.
• Where the fixed fee starts winning: any sale price above about £76,000, on a £1,079 fee against the 1.42% average.
• After tax on a taxable sale: on the online fixed-fee route, saving £3,181 of commission is worth £2,418 to you, not £3,181.

The four fee models, side by side

Every quote is one of four shapes, and the shape matters more than the number: it decides what you pay when the sale goes wrong.

Fee model	What it costs you on a £300,000 sale	What you pay if you never sell
Percentage commission, no sale no fee	£4,260 at the 1.42% average including VAT	Nothing, on a genuine no sale, no fee contract
Fixed fee paid at completion	£2,329, being £150 upfront, £2,099 on completion and an £80 identity check	£230, the £150 plus the £80 identity check
Fixed fee paid upfront	£1,079, being £999 plus an £80 identity check	The whole £1,079
Deferred or pay-later fixed fee	Priced case by case, so ask for the amount in pounds and the date it falls due before you sign	Depends on the contract, so ask
Cheapest of the four	£1,079, the upfront fixed fee	Nothing, the percentage

The fixed-fee prices are Purplebricks' own published package prices, taken from its entry price tier, and the percentage is the HomeOwners Alliance average. Purplebricks prices by property value, and MoneySavingExpert lists its range as £999 to £1,599, so check the price shown for your own value band before you use these figures.

Are the cheap online agents any good? They use the same portals and answer to the same rules, so what you give up is local negotiating muscle and someone else running your viewings. Our page on online estate agents tests the model properly.

Percentage or fixed fee: where does the breakeven fall?

You can settle this in one line. Divide the fixed fee by the percentage rate as a decimal, and the answer is the sale price at which the two cost you the same. Above that price the fixed fee wins, and below it the percentage wins.

Take the £1,079 upfront fee against the 1.42% average: £1,079 divided by 0.0142 is about £76,000, so unless your home is worth less than that, the upfront fee is cheaper on cash. The pay-on-completion package at £2,329 crosses over at about £164,000.

Now redo the sum with your own two quotes. If one agent offers 1.2% including VAT and another offers £1,500 fixed, your crossover is £1,500 divided by 0.012, or £125,000.

Use the number to negotiate. Show the percentage agent what the fixed-fee rival costs in pounds and ask them to match it, and if they will not, aim for 1.2% including VAT on sole agency, which is £3,600 on a £300,000 sale. Say plainly that you hold a cheaper written quote, and remember that the tie-in period is usually easier to move than the rate.

What is the catch with paying upfront?

You pay whether or not you sell. That is the whole catch, and it is not hidden. Purplebricks says in its own package terms that upfront payments are non-refundable, and that the completion fee is payable only if your property sells. If your buyer walks, or you take the house off the market, your £999 has gone.

So price the risk first. If your home is sensibly priced in a street where things sell, the upfront fee is very likely your cheapest route. If you are testing a high price, the percentage agent is carrying a risk you would otherwise carry.

Ask two questions before you sign: what happens to the fee if you withdraw, and what happens if you sell to a buyer you found yourself. The second one is where cheap contracts turn expensive.

The contract clauses that turn a cheap fee into a double fee

Two clauses do most of the damage, and the wording of both is prescribed. The explanation has to sit in the contract you sign, not in a leaflet handed over afterwards. So "it was in the small print" is the wrong complaint here, and "it was never in the contract" is the right one.

Sole selling rights. The prescribed explanation says you owe the fee if unconditional contracts are exchanged during the period, "even if the purchaser was not found by us but by another agent or by any other person, including yourself". Your neighbour's daughter buys your house and you still pay in full.

A ready, willing and able purchaser clause. The prescribed wording says a purchaser qualifies "if he is prepared and is able to exchange unconditional contracts for the purchase of your property". The fee "must be paid even if you subsequently withdraw and unconditional contracts for sale are not exchanged, irrespective of your reasons". You can owe a full fee on a sale that never happened.

Sole agency is the term to ask for instead. It catches a buyer that agent introduced, or one another agent introduced in the same period, and it leaves you free to sell to a buyer you found. If your contract says sole selling rights, ask for it to be changed, and read our page on estate agent contract tie-in periods for how long you are locked in.

Is a cheap agent regulated the same as an expensive one?

Yes, and the cheap end of the market rarely bothers to tell you so. Anyone doing estate agency work on your sale must belong to an approved redress scheme, whatever they charge. There are two for sales: The Property Ombudsman, and Property Redress, which gov.uk still lists under its former name of the Property Redress Scheme. Ask which one your agent belongs to and check it on that scheme's member search.

An agent trading without a scheme faces a penalty charge of £1,000. You may read on gov.uk that the fine is up to £5,000 and the licence can be revoked. Both halves of that are wrong: the £5,000 belongs to the lettings rules, and estate agents here have never held a licence.

The fee disclosure duty is identical at every price point. Before you are bound, the agent must tell you when the fee becomes payable, how much it is or how it is worked out, and what else you could be charged. If you were never told, the agent cannot enforce the contract against you without a court order, and the court can reduce what you owe or wipe it out.

Since 6 April 2025 the unfair trading rules have required an invitation to buy a service to state the total price. A headline fee that leaves out a compulsory add-on is what those rules exist to catch.

What extras are not in the headline price?

The identity and anti-money-laundering check is the clearest one. Purplebricks prices it at £80 and states it is not included in the advertised fee, on either package, which is why both fixed-fee rows above carry it.

Three others bite hardest. A for-sale board and premium portal placement are usually optional, so decline them and see whether the quote moves. An energy certificate is not optional if yours has expired. Accompanied viewings and a withdrawal charge only surface when you need them, so get both amounts in writing now. Then ask for one number: the total in pounds, including VAT and every item you cannot decline.

Conditions cost you money too. Purplebricks' pay-on-completion package requires you to use its conveyancing partner, so you cannot shop the legal work around, and a captive quote can eat what the cheap agent saved you.

One last trap: half the market quotes plus VAT and half quotes including it, so a 1.2% quote and a 1.2% plus VAT quote sit 20% apart. Restate every quote you hold on an including-VAT basis before you rank them.

Does the fee you save cost you in tax?

If your sale is fully covered by private residence relief, no. Most people selling their only home pay no capital gains tax, so there is no gain for the fee to reduce.

If the sale is taxable, the answer changes. On a second home or a former rental, the agent's commission is an incidental cost of selling, so it comes off your gain, and so does what you spent advertising for a buyer. A fee you do not pay is relief you do not get.

Back to the £300,000 sale. Choosing the £1,079 fixed fee over the £4,260 commission saves you £3,181 in cash, but it also costs you £763 of lost relief at the 24% higher residential rate, so your real saving is £2,418. At the 18% basic rate it is £2,608.

Two details matter here. If you are not VAT registered you cannot set the VAT off anywhere, so you deduct the fee including VAT. And the list of deductible selling costs is closed, so your removals, storage, cleaning and any mortgage early repayment charge are not on it. For the mechanics, read our guide to capital gains tax on property.

Which model is genuinely cheapest after tax?

The ranking holds but the gaps shrink. Here is the same £300,000 sale after tax relief, priced on the online fixed-fee route.

Fee model	Cash cost on a £300,000 sale	What it really costs you at 24%
Percentage commission at 1.42% including VAT	£4,260	£3,238
Fixed fee paid at completion	£2,329	£1,770
Fixed fee paid upfront	£1,079	£820
Your saving from choosing the cheapest	£3,181	£2,418

On a taxable sale, tax relief shrinks every fee saving by about a quarter.

Now look at what really decides this. If the cheaper route gets you £5,000 less on the price, you lose £5,000 of proceeds and save £1,200 of tax, leaving you £3,800 down. Set that against an after-tax fee saving of £2,418 and you are £1,382 worse off. The fee is the small number. The price is the big one.

So choose on cash where you are confident the cheaper agent will get the same price. Where you are not, ask each for the gap between their asking and sold prices this year.

Two routes change the sum. Most of the cheap fixed fees live with the online agents, and selling without an agent takes the fee to zero at the cost of your own time. If you are buying as well as selling, our guide to the cost of moving house has the rest of the bill.

Once your quotes are in, drop them into the cost of selling calculator. It gives you the total cost of your sale in pounds, covering the agent, the legal work, the moving costs and the tax where your sale is taxable, in under 60 seconds. To read the whole bill through first, our cost of selling a property guide sets out every line.