Live selling glossary / Platforms
Whatnot
Definition
Whatnot is a US-based live shopping marketplace built around real-time auctions, best known for sports cards, trading card games, sneakers, toys and vintage fashion. Sellers run scheduled shows, buyers bid in chat-adjacent auctions, and Whatnot handles payment and shipping labels.
Whatnot's auction mechanics are the template most other live platforms copy: short timed auctions, sudden death extensions when a bid lands late, buy-it-now items, giveaways to hold the room, and a seller-set shipping structure. Commission is tiered by the seller's trailing 28-day sales and charged on the item price, with payment processing on top.
For sellers the platform's own analytics report sales per show after the fact. What they do not show is what other rooms in the category are doing, which is the gap third-party tools fill.
The number
Whatnot is the largest sample in the Live Selling Index: thousands of shows a month, with median length, peak viewers and sales per hour refreshed weekly. See this week's figures.
Related terms
Watch these numbers move in your own room
Ghost Agentreads chat velocity, auction pacing and room turnover on your shows and your competitors' shows while they run, on Whatnot, TikTok Live, eBay Live and Fanatics Live. Seven days free.
Start your free trialPart of the live selling glossary (43 terms). Cite as: “Ghost Agent, Live Selling Glossary, https://www.ghostagent.ai/glossary/whatnot”.