Outbidly pricing, explained
One rule, stated precisely: $5 to enter, pay-the-difference to climb, nothing recurring, nothing hidden. Here's exactly how the numbers work.
The $5 minimum for a brand-new listing
A listing's very first-ever successful payment must be at least $5. That's the floor to enter the board at all — not a promise of any particular rank, just the minimum stake to have a listing exist with a real total behind it. Submitting a URL or @handle that's never been paid toward before always triggers this $5 floor, regardless of category or which board (Today or All-Time) you're aiming for.
Pay-the-difference for every top-up after that
Once a listing has a succeeded payment on it, raising it further never means paying a fresh full amount — you're always topping up a running total. The charge is exactly the gap between the listing's current total and the new target you're paying toward, with a $1 minimum on that difference. Resubmitting the same URL or handle doesn't create a duplicate listing or reset anything — it adds to the same total.
A concrete example
A listing sits at $12. You want to push it to $20. You're charged exactly $8 — the difference — not $20 again. If you instead wanted to raise it by just $0.50, the $1 minimum top-up would apply, so the smallest possible top-up is $1, not any smaller fraction of a dollar.No subscriptions, no hidden fees
There's no recurring charge anywhere in the mechanic — every payment is a single, one-time Stripe Checkout transaction for a specific amount you see before you pay. Nothing renews automatically, nothing bills you later, and the price shown at checkout matches exactly what's described on the page beforehand. Stripe processes every payment; Outbidly never sees or stores your card details directly.
No refunds — but nothing is wasted either
Every payment is final. That's a deliberate design choice, not an oversight: a refund would imply the money "failed" to do something, and it didn't — it held a listing's rank for exactly as long as nobody else paid more, and it keeps counting toward that listing's permanent All-Time total either way. Being passed by another listing only lowers your rank; it never erases, reduces, or refunds money already paid in.
What pricing doesn't include
Outbidly's pricing is deliberately narrow: it buys a rank on a public leaderboard and outbound click-through traffic from people browsing it. It does not buy search-ranking credit — every listing's outbound link is marked sponsored nofollow, so a payment on Outbidly is never an SEO backlink, on purpose. See the FAQ for the full reasoning on why that's a deliberate choice, not a limitation to work around.
Related reading
Or read the exact mechanic on the Rules & FAQ page.