How to find the best deals on Facebook Marketplace

Search like the seller wrote it

Most missed deals were never in your results. Sellers write titles fast, on a phone, in their own words. Someone selling a dresser might call it a chest of drawers, a tallboy, “IKEA Hemnes” or “dreser”. Marketplace’s search doesn’t reliably connect all of those, so the buyer who tries three words sees listings the others don’t.

How to search:

1. Start broad, with the plain name and a category. Look at how sellers describe what you want.
2. Add the other names from the lists below, one search each.
3. Add brand and model names, which sellers often use instead of the item (“Kallax”, “Aeron”, “Tripp Trapp”).
4. Try the misspellings. A listing titled “sectionel” gets fewer messages, and the seller may take less.
5. Browse the category without a keyword now and then. Some of the best listings have useless titles like “Moving sale” or “Must go”.

Be first

The underpriced listing goes in hours. Being among the first to message matters more than any trick.

• Sort by newest. Marketplace’s default order is “suggested”, which mixes old and new. Switch the sort to newest first on every search; on a computer you can also bookmark a search link that already carries the sort. Full steps for each device are in how to sort Marketplace by newest.
• Save alerts. Facebook can notify you about new listings for saved searches, but many buyers find those notices slow or patchy. The options, from Facebook’s own to faster tools, are in how to get alerts for new listings.
• Have the message ready. A specific question, a pickup time and your offer, typed before you need it. See how to negotiate on Facebook Marketplace.

Spot the underpriced listings

A deal is a price below what the thing usually sells for. You only know that if you know the usual price.

• Know the going rate. Three to five recent eBay sold prices for the same model, plus a look at local listings. The five-minute price check walks through it.
• Watch the price drops. A listing with an old price crossed out has a seller who is already moving. Marketplace only shows the last cut; how to see a listing’s price history covers the rest.
• Look at the stale ones. A fairly priced listing that has been up three weeks, or has been deleted and reposted, belongs to a seller who has had no luck. They are often the best place for an offer.
• Bundle. Sellers with several things listed, moving sales especially, will often take less for everything at once.

Timing

We know of no reliable public study of the best day or hour to buy on Marketplace, and Facebook publishes none, so treat specific claims (“Sunday evenings”) with care. What we can say from experience:

• End of the month brings listings from people who are moving and need things gone by a date. In Quebec, the July 1 moving day makes late June especially busy.
• End of the school year (late April and May) brings student furniture near universities and colleges.
• January brings decluttering after the holidays.
• Out of season is cheaper. Bikes and patio sets in late fall, snowblowers and winter tires in spring, air conditioners in October.
• Weather. On a rainy Saturday fewer buyers are out, and a seller with a pickup arranged is happy to have one.

Free stuff, without the bait

Marketplace has a Free category, and in any search you can set the maximum price to 0. Both fill up with listings that aren’t free at all: “message for price”, “best offer” or a CA$0 price on something worth hundreds, posted at zero to show up in more searches. There are also placeholder prices such as CA$1 or CA$123 that mean the same thing.

Skip those quickly and message the real giveaways right away. Free things go fastest of all, often within hours, and the first person who can collect today usually gets them.

Deal or scam? Three checks

Before you get excited about a low price:

1. Is it below every comparable, by a lot? Meta warns buyers about listings that are “significantly underpriced compared to market value”. A real deal is usually a bit under the going rate, not a third of it.
2. Will they meet, and let you see it before you pay? Meta’s advice is never to pay for an item in advance. A seller who is away, wants to ship, or asks for a deposit to hold it fits the pattern behind many Marketplace scams.
3. Does the seller look real? Look at their profile and other listings, and search a listing photo with Google Lens. Photos lifted from another listing or a shop are a giveaway.

Our Facebook Marketplace scams guide covers the patterns in detail.

How Sift helps

Sift is a free browser extension for Facebook Marketplace and Kijiji. It runs on a computer, in Chrome, Edge and Brave, and does several of the habits above for you as each page loads:

• Newest first on every search, without re-sorting by hand, plus a NEW badge on listings that appeared since your last visit.
• Price drops and fair prices on the photo. A ↓ 25% badge with a dated history, a Reposted badge with the first price, and a Below typical, Typical or Above typical verdict against the rest of the page.
• Alerts for up to 10 searches, checked as often as every 15 minutes, with only the listings that pass your filters.
• Block words and starter packs to clear out broken and for-parts items, wanted posts and “message for price” listings, plus a mode that shows only genuine giveaways.
• Hides what you have already seen, so each visit shows only what is new to you.

It can’t widen your search for you: the word lists above are still your job. And it doesn’t run in the Facebook app.