Mercado Libre fees from 1 September 2026: what changes in Argentina
I sell on Mercado Libre from Argentina, bring goods in from China and run my own warehouse in Buenos Aires. Everything written here has been tested on my own shipments, not retold from someone else’s guides.
Mercado Libre has emailed sellers in Argentina. From 1 September 2026 the fees change. There are two changes, and both are about money. The fixed fee on cheap products, the cargo fijo, is being restructured, and free shipping on products from 33,000 pesos gets more expensive. Let us go through what changed, who it squeezes hardest and what to recalculate before Monday.
The main change. The fee now depends on weight too
Before September it was simple. A product under 33,000 ARS meant a fixed fee on every sale according to one of three price steps: 1,255, 2,500 or 3,030 pesos. Weight played no part.
From 1 September the fee becomes a price-by-weight grid. There are still three price tiers, but within each one the fee grows with the weight of the shipment.
| Product price | Before (flat) | Now: light goods (up to 0.3 kg) | Now: ceiling (extra heavy) |
|---|---|---|---|
| up to 14,999 ARS | 1 255 | 1 330 | 1 920 |
| 15 000–23 999 ARS | 2 500 | 2 740 | 3 700 |
| 24 000–32 999 ARS | 3 030 | 3 320 | 4 550 |
| from 33,000 ARS | 0 | 0 — but free shipping gets more expensive | |
The weight grid applies to shipments through Mercado Envíos; check the exact step for your weight in the seller dashboard. For Flex, pickup and agreed delivery the fee stays flat: 1,330, 2,740 and 3,320 pesos by price tier. On top, as before, comes 21% IVA.
Who it squeezes hardest. The 15,000–15,999 trap
At first glance the increase is modest. The lowest step went up by 6%, the rest by 8–10%. But some sellers will wake up on 1 September with different economics, and here is why. The first tier’s boundary has moved from 16,000 to 15,000 pesos.
A product at 15,500 pesos paid the first-tier fee in August, 1,255. From September it falls into the second tier and pays from 2,740. That is 118% more more fee out of nowhere. The rate was not raised, the boundary was simply moved. If your price sits between 15,000 and 15,999, you are in the hottest zone.
The solution is simple. Either drop below the new boundary, to 14,999 or less. Or go higher and recover the fee through price. Sitting inside the 15,000–15,999 range is now the most expensive option.
The second change. Free shipping gets more expensive
For products from 33,000 pesos there is still no fixed fee. Instead the seller pays for the shipping that is free for the buyer, and those rates also went up on 1 September. Check the exact amount in the dashboard; it depends on the weight step and the seller level.
The familiar Argentine paradox has not gone anywhere, it has simply grown more expensive on both sides. Below 33,000 the buyer pays for shipping, but the fixed fee throttles the seller. Above 33,000 there is no fee, but the shipping is yours. The point of maximum margin still lives in tickets of 35 to 80 thousand pesos. Everyone would do well to recalculate it against the new numbers.
What to do before 1 September
1. Redo your unit economics. In our free calculator the September grid is already built in. Enter your price and weight and see how much the fee takes from Monday on. The new grid is in the PRO tables too.
2. Check any prices between 15,000 and 15,999. This is the main damage zone, where the fee more than doubles. Move below 15,000 or go higher with room to spare.
3. Bundle cheap products into sets. The old advice has become even more useful. The fee is charged per unit, and on an 8,000-peso product it eats a noticeable percentage. A set of three pays one fee instead of three and may also clear the 33,000 threshold, where there is no fee at all.
4. For heavy, cheap products, do the maths for Flex. Weight now affects the fee on Mercado Envíos, but not on Flex. For a bulky, inexpensive product that difference can decide everything.
This is a purely Argentine story. In Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Uruguay nothing changes on 1 September. Brazil went through its big change back on 2 March, when the fixed fee on products up to R$79 was replaced by a variable one based on weight and size. Argentina is going the same way: the platform is tying fees to the real cost of logistics.
Where the numbers come from
The grid is taken from Mercado Libre’s official announcement “Costos por vender desde el 1 de septiembre de 2026” in the seller centre. The intermediate weight steps between 0.3 and 180 kg are shown by the platform only in the dashboard, which is why the table above gives the lowest step and the ceiling of each tier. For the light goods most of our readers ship, the working figure is the lowest step.