Mercari US Listing Photos, Done Right

Mercari US Photo Spec, Translated for Resellers

Mercari US diverges from Mercari Japan on photo spec, and confusing the two is the fastest way to get a soft-rendering feed thumbnail. Mercari US renders feed thumbnails as 4:5 portrait at roughly 1200x1500, and the in-app editor defaults first-photo crop to portrait — square uploads either get padded with whitespace or cropped. Listings support up to 12 photos, one of the highest caps among US resale apps. Mercari does not require a white background and explicitly permits lifestyle shots, but its own seller guides recommend a plain backdrop on the cover to avoid distraction. What Mercari does require is that photos show the actual item in hand. Stock photos, catalog shots, and web-sourced images are prohibited and can trigger listing removal. Misleading edits that hide flaws are also banned — condition close-ups should stay raw.

Upload up to 12 shots straight from your phone. The first image becomes the cover candidate and gets the clean-background treatment if you want it, sized to 1200x1500 portrait so it fills the feed thumbnail without padding or crop. The remaining 11 slots stay flexible: Mercari buyers reward detailed close-ups of tags, hardware, stitching, and any wear, plus a shipping-label reference shot that confirms where the item ships from. Crossposters from Poshmark's historical 1:1 square layout get a one-pass reshape to 4:5 portrait without shooting new photos. Download all 12 as JPEGs under Mercari's practical 10MB file cap, upload them in the app or web listing form, and the listing goes live with a cover that actually competes in feed.

Why Mercari's Feed Favors Portrait Photos

Mercari's feed is a vertical scroll optimized for phones, and 4:5 portrait thumbnails take more pixel real estate than square ones — which means more time in the buyer's eye before they swipe past. Cover shots that fill that portrait slot cleanly outperform padded squares. Combined with the 12-photo cap filled with tag, condition, and shipping references, listings converge on the format that Mercari's algorithm already rewards, and the 'one-click white background' request from JP resellers stops being a bottleneck for US sellers too.