The short version
- Typical range: £600 – £4,000 — see the full quad bike value guide
- What decides your price: condition, and how well you evidence it in photographs
- Cost to sell here: nothing, at any price
- Category: Vehicles
Before you photograph it
Ten minutes here is worth more than anything else you will do. Buyers are deciding between your listing and someone else’s, and preparation is what visibly separates the two.
- Gather the registration document if it is road registered, plus the original purchase receipt and any service history.
- Record the frame and engine numbers and check they match the paperwork and have not been tampered with.
- Start it, run it, check the brakes, and inspect the tyres, chain or shaft drive and the CV boots.
The photographs that sell a quad bike
Four photographs do almost all the work. Shoot in daylight, near a window, with the item against something plain — and do not use the flash, which flattens texture and hides exactly what buyers are trying to see.
- The whole machine side on, clean, whole
- The frame and engine numbers, legible
- The engine, exhaust and drive components
- The tyres and controls, plus any crack, weld, bent frame section or damage
Photograph the flaws too. It feels counterproductive, but a listing that shows the worst of an item gets fewer questions, fewer withdrawn offers and fewer arguments at handover. Buyers who can see the damage stop imagining something worse.
Writing the title and description
Make, model, engine size, year and road status: “[Make] 350cc Quad Bike, 2018, Road Registered, V5C Present”. Engine size is the search and road legality is the filter. Say plainly if it is farm or off-road use only, because it changes who can buy it and what for.
Then state these in the description, because a buyer who has to ask is a buyer who might not bother:
- Make, model, engine capacity and year
- Whether road registered, with the registration document present
- Two-wheel or four-wheel drive, and manual or automatic
- Frame and engine numbers, and the ownership paperwork you can supply
What buyers will actually ask
You will receive the same three messages about a quad bike. Answering them in the listing itself removes the back-and-forth, and answering them well when they do arrive is what turns an enquiry into a sale.
Show what you have — registration document, original receipt, service records. Quads are stolen often enough that buyers treat missing paperwork as a serious warning.
Answer precisely. Road registration requires specific equipment and documentation, and an off-road machine described loosely as road legal creates a real problem for the buyer.
Inspect it and disclose any repair. A welded frame is a structural matter on a machine that gets used hard, and it must not be a discovery.
Pricing it so it actually sells
Start from the honest condition grade rather than the price you hope for. WishThrift listings use five grades — New with Tags, Like New, Good, Fair and For Parts — and what each grade means is worth reading before you choose, because grading up is the most expensive mistake sellers make. It does not raise the price; it produces a buyer who arrives expecting something else.
The quad bike value guide prices all five grades for this item. Pick your grade, take the figure, and if you sit between two grades price toward the lower one. Items priced honestly sell faster than items priced hopefully, and on a free platform there is no fee eating the difference anyway.
What you keep, compared
On a £2,300 sale — roughly the middle of the range for a quad bike — here is what the commission-charging platforms would take, and what you would keep on each:
| Where you sell it | Fee | You keep |
|---|---|---|
| WishThrift | £0 | £2,300 |
| Poshmark | −£460 | £1,840 |
| eBay | −£313 | £1,987 |
| Mercari | −£230 | £2,070 |
| Etsy | −£150 | £2,150 |
Seller-side rates verified 26 Jul 2026 — Poshmark: 20% commission on sales of $15 and above; eBay: 13.6% final value fee, plus a per-order fee; Mercari: flat 10% selling fee; Etsy: 6.5% transaction fee, plus a listing fee and payment processing. Percentages are applied to the sterling figure above; the fixed per-order and processing charges those platforms add are quoted in their own currency and are not included here, so the real deductions are slightly larger. Full breakdown: marketplace selling fees compared.
Timing and getting it to the buyer
Lifts in spring and early autumn, with agricultural buyers active year round. Road-registered machines with complete paperwork sell within days.
Cleared funds before the machine or documents move. Write a dated receipt naming both parties, the frame number and the price, and complete any registration transfer promptly so liability passes properly.
WishThrift does not process payments or arrange delivery — you and the buyer agree both directly — so confirm payment has cleared before the item leaves your hands, and keep the conversation on the site so there is a record of what was agreed.
Ready to list it? It takes about two minutes, costs nothing, and there is no commission when it sells — create a free account or see how selling works.
Frequently asked questions
What is a used quad bike worth?
Typically £600 to £4,000 depending on engine size, age, condition and road registration. See the quad bike value guide for the bands.
Can I sell a quad without a V5C?
You can sell an off-road machine that was never registered, but you should provide the original purchase receipt and the frame number instead. For a machine that is registered, selling without the document will cost you a large share of the value and will worry every serious buyer.
Do quad bikes need an MOT?
It depends on the machine’s classification and where you are. Say clearly whether yours is registered for road use and what its current status is, rather than making a general claim.
See also: what a used quad bike is worth · browse live vehicles listings · condition grades explained.