Understanding the Depop Algorithm 2026: How to Get Your Items Seen

If you're selling on Depop, understanding how the platform's algorithm works can make a real difference in how many people actually see your listings, which directly impacts how many sales you make. While the inner workings of Depop's algorithm aren't public, it isn't a complete mystery either. The platform has shared quite a bit about how it operates through various guides for sellers, but piecing it all together and applying it to their own listings is where a lot of sellers get stuck. In this guide, we'll demystify the Depop algorithm and break down exactly how it analyzes, ranks, and recommends listings, and debunk some commonly cited advice that can actually hurt your listings in the long run. Keep reading for a full seller's guide to Depop's algorithm in 2026, and get better visibility for your Depop listings today.

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Key Takeaways

• Relevance is the single biggest factor in how Depop ranks your listings – getting your titles, descriptions, brand tags, and categories right matters more than anything else.
• Listing age plays a role, but it's a minor one. Depop slightly favors newer listings, but relevance and popularity carry far more weight in determining where your items show up.
• Popular listings get more visibility. Likes, views, and "add to bag" actions tell Depop's algorithm that buyers are interested, which pushes those items higher in search.
• Depop personalizes each user's feed based on their shopping habits and preferences – meaning your listing needs to accurately reflect what you're selling to reach the right buyers.

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How the Depop Algorithm Actually Works

Depop's algorithm analyzes listings to determine which ones show up when a buyer searches for something, and in what order. While Depop doesn't make the details of its algorithm public, it has been fairly transparent about the main variables it examines when analyzing listings. Below, we'll take a look at how a listing's age and popularity affect its visibility, and understand how Depop's algorithm creates a personalized feed for every user.

Does Listing Age Really Matter?

This is one of the most debated topics among Depop sellers, and the answer is: a little, but not as much as you might think. According to Depop's own documentation, newer listings are "slightly favored" over older ones in search rankings, but this factor has "significantly less influence" than relevance and other signals. So while posting a fresh listing will give you a small initial bump, it won't override a poorly written title or an incorrect brand tag.

That said, listing age does matter enough that sellers often choose to delist and relist items that have been sitting for a while without any traction. When you completely remove a listing and create a new one, it registers as a brand new item in Depop's system – which is different from simply editing or refreshing an existing listing.

Popular Listings Get Seen More

Beyond relevance and listing age, Depop also looks at how much interest a listing is generating from buyers. Views, likes, and "add to bag" actions all signal to the algorithm that buyers find a particular product listing appealing, making listings with stronger engagement rank higher in search results. This in turn exposes them to even more buyers, creating a positive feedback loop where popular items keep getting more visibility over time.

This doesn't mean you need thousands of likes to get your item seen; it just means that any engagement your listing receives will work in your favor. Even a handful of likes or follows in the early days after posting can give your listing an edge over similar items that haven't had any interaction.

How Depop Personalizes Your Feed

When a buyer opens Depop, the items they see aren't random – they're chosen by Depop's algorithm based on a variety of variables. Some of these come from the buyer directly; during signup, Depop asks about your preferred styles, brands, and sizes, and new users will initially see recommendations based on those choices, as well as their geographical location. But as they spend more time on the platform, Depop's system learns from their behavior. The brands they search for, the items they like, the things they add to their bag – all of this helps determine what listings Depop chooses to display.

This personalization doesn't just result in different feeds; it also means that the same search query will return different results for different buyers. Two people searching for "vintage denim jacket" might see completely different listings at the top, depending on their individual histories, style preferences, and location. For sellers, the takeaway is straightforward: your listing needs to accurately reflect what you're selling in order to be visible to high-intent shoppers who are most likely to buy.

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Make it Easy for Depop's Algorithm to Find Your Listings

Depop's algorithm can only work with the information you give it, so if your listing doesn't clearly communicate what you're selling – the brand, the type of item, the style – Depop simply won't be able to match it with the right buyers. Fortunately, making your listings algorithm-friendly isn't complicated. It comes down to two things: using hashtags well, and filling in Depop's structured listing fields correctly.

Know How to Use Hashtags Effectively

Hashtags on Depop work much like they do on Instagram – buyers can search by hashtag to find items that match a particular style or aesthetic. This makes them a useful tool for getting your listings in front of shoppers who might not have found you through a more typical keyword search. The key to effective hashtags is relevance: use only hashtags that actually describe your item or its style, and avoid those that don't. This way, your listing will show up in front of buyers who are actually interested, so you can not only get more views, but actually increase your sales.

The hashtags that perform best on Depop are typically aesthetic-based ones rather than generic item descriptors. Buyers on Depop are more likely to search for #fairycore or #Y2K than for #longsleeves. Hashtags like these help capture a relatively wide range of interested buyers who might not know exactly what they want to buy, but have a clear aesthetic in mind when shopping. This approach to shopping has become increasingly popular with younger shoppers, making strategic hashtag use a smart and effective way to capture their attention.

Select Brand, Category, and Specifications

One of the easiest ways to improve your listings' visibility on Depop is also one of the most commonly overlooked: selecting the right brand and product category, as well as all other item specifications like size, gender, condition, and color(s). When you create a listing on Depop, the platform provides dropdown menus to select these parameters. But they function as far more than just organizational labels – they feed information directly into the algorithm in a structured way, enabling it to more effectively analyze and categorize your listing.

When a buyer searches for, say, "Zara black bag," Depop's algorithm looks for listings that have Zara selected as the brand, "bag" as the category, and black as the color. If you've skipped the brand tag or picked the wrong category, your listing simply won't show up in those searches, no matter how good your title or description is. It only takes a moment to make these selections correctly, and it's one of the most straightforward listing optimization strategies that increases views and conversions.

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Keep Your Shop Active and Fresh for Depop's Algorithm

Like many secondhand and reselling platforms, Depop rewards sellers who keep their shops active. A Depop shop where nothing has changed in weeks will gradually lose visibility compared to one that's being regularly updated, so it's important to keep your Depop store active. Below, we'll look at three of the most effective ways to stay active on Depop and keep your listings performing well over time.

Relisting vs Refreshing

You've probably heard that "refreshing" your Depop listings helps them get more visibility, and there is some truth to that. But there's an important distinction between refreshing a listing (opening it, making a small edit, and saving it) and fully relisting it (removing the old listing and creating a brand new one from scratch). A full relist tends to give a stronger boost than a simple refresh, because a brand new listing registers as a fresh item in Depop's system, while an edit to an existing one does not.

Relisting works best as a supplement to having well-written, accurately tagged listings in the first place – it shouldn't be your only strategy. Plus, if you have a large number of items in your shop, manually delisting and relisting everything becomes tedious and prone to mistakes. Tools like ExportYourStore can streamline this process significantly, with bulk delisting and relisting features that make it much more manageable for sellers working with a high volume of listings.

Get More Likes and Followers

As we covered earlier, likes and engagement are signals that Depop's algorithm uses to determine how much visibility to give a listing. But there's a circular challenge here: you need visibility to get likes, and you need likes to get visibility. The way most successful Depop sellers work around this is by actively engaging with other users on the platform.

Following other sellers and liking their listings are both low-effort actions that often generate reciprocal engagement. When you like someone's listing, there's a good chance they'll visit your profile in return – and if they follow you, they'll be notified every time you add something new to your shop. Over time, a growing follower base means your new listings get a built-in audience right from the start, which strengthens the listing's popularity in the eyes of the algorithm.

When to Boost Your Depop Listings

Depop's Boosted Listings feature lets you pay for extra visibility in search results with a simple commission model. If your item sells through a boosted tile, you'll be charged an additional fee on top of Depop's standard selling fees: 8% in the US and Australia, and 12% in the UK. But boosting is neither a replacement for proper listing optimization nor a fix for a listing that's poorly written or incorrectly tagged – it's an amplifier for listings that are already in good shape, not a substitute for getting the basics right.

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Common Mistakes That Hurt Your Depop Ranking

Understanding how Depop's algorithm works is one thing; knowing what commonly-dispensed advice to avoid is another.

One of the biggest mistakes new sellers make is keyword stuffing in titles and descriptions. Going by the logic that if some keywords are good, more keywords are better, some sellers load their listings with as many search terms as possible in the hopes of showing up in more searches. But Depop's algorithm is designed to find and display relevant items, and a title crammed with unrelated terms actually makes it harder for the system to figure out what you're selling. A focused, specific title like "Vintage Levi's 501 Denim Jacket, Size M" will almost always outperform something like "Denim Jacket Vintage Cool Retro Y2K 90s Streetwear Levi's Size M Unisex."

Another common mistake is skipping or incorrectly filling in structured fields like brand and category. As we discussed earlier, these are important inputs for the algorithm, and leaving them blank or selecting the wrong options means your listing won't appear in searches where it should. Putting irrelevant information in your description, like brand names or keywords that don't actually apply to your item, can confuse the algorithm and push your listing further from the buyers who'd actually want it.

Finally, many sellers underestimate how much their shop's overall activity matters. A shop with minimal activity will see its listings drift lower in search results over time. Staying active doesn't require a huge time commitment, but it does mean listing new items regularly, engaging with other users, and keeping your existing listings up to date.

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Selling Beyond Depop with Crosslisting

No matter how well you optimize for Depop's algorithm, you're still limited to the buyers who shop on Depop. Crosslisting, or listing your items on multiple marketplaces at once, is one of the most effective ways to grow your sales without having to source more inventory or put in significantly more work.

From our years of experience helping resellers across multiple platforms, sellers who expand their reselling business beyond a single platform not only increase their reach, but also safeguard their sales against the risks of a single platform. ExportYourStore makes crosslisting from Depop to additional channels simple and straightforward with its AI-powered crosslisting tools, customizable crosslisting rules, and automatic inventory sync. You'll be able to connect your Depop store to over 10 additional sales channels, including marketplaces like eBay, Poshmark, and Mercari, as well as social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, and manage your listings and multichannel orders from a single dashboard. Plus, you'll be able to designate Depop as your source store, and continue managing your entire multichannel reselling business directly through Depop – no learning your way around new platforms, and no complicated manual listing on every sales channel.

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FAQs

Q: Does refreshing your listings still work on Depop?

Yes, refreshing your listings does still work, but there are some caveats. Refreshing a listing (i.e. opening it, making a small change, and saving it) can give your item a minor visibility boost by signaling some recent activity. A full relist (removing the old listing and creating a brand new one) tends to have a stronger effect, since Depop treats it as an entirely new item. However, neither approach is a substitute for having a well-written, accurately tagged listing in the first place.

Q: Does Depop Top Seller status affect your search ranking?

No. According to Depop's own guidelines, a seller's Top Seller or verified status does not have an impact on the ranking of their listings in search results or in the recommendation-based sections of the homepage.

Q: What is the best time to post on Depop?

While there's no single "magic hour" for listing on Depop, posting during times when buyers are most active tends to give your listings a better shot at early engagement. Generally, afternoons and evenings see higher activity than mornings, and weekends typically see more activity than workdays.

Q: How often should you list new items on Depop?

Listing consistency matters more than volume on Depop. Aim to list one or two new items every day or two to keep your shop active and your listings visible in buyer feeds. If you can't list new inventory every day, relisting or refreshing older items that haven't sold can help fill the gap, as well as regular liking and following of other sellers.