Guide
Most repricing tools do one thing: match or beat the lowest price. That sounds smart until you realize the lowest price is often set by a seller who miscalculated their fees, ships slowly, or simply doesn't care about profit. AI aggressiveness tuning changes the game entirely. Instead of chasing every price drop blindly, it measures how much competitive pressure actually exists in your listing — and nudges price only as far as necessary to win the sale, while your hard floor keeps every transaction profitable.
A basic repricer has one instruction: be the cheapest. Feed it a competitive category and it triggers a race to the bottom that compresses margins across your entire catalog. Two weeks in, you are selling the same volume at 8% lower average prices — with no net gain in units moved, because the other sellers repriced right back. Dumb undercutting also ignores context: a competitor with 94% feedback, 3-day handling, and no returns is not the same threat as one with 78% feedback and two negatives in the last month. AI aggressiveness tuning reads that context and prices accordingly.
Undercut's AI aggressiveness tuning (available on the Pro and Scale plans) lets you set a posture — conservative, moderate, or aggressive — on each listing. That posture controls one thing: how fast and how far the listing moves toward the hard floor you already set as it undercuts the lowest comparable competitor. A conservative posture undercuts by a fraction and holds well above the floor; an aggressive posture moves more decisively toward it. You decide the posture per listing, and the AI applies it strictly within the floor you set. The result is a price that is competitive enough to win — not the lowest price in the room.
The floor is the number below which no algorithm — however aggressive — can reprice your listing. Here is how to calculate one for a typical electronics accessory. Suppose your landed cost is $8.00, you charge $4.00 shipping (or absorb it in free shipping), eBay's final value fee is 13.25% of total sale price, and your minimum acceptable net margin is 15% of sale price. Working backwards: if sale price = X, then X minus 0.1325X minus $8 minus $4 must equal at least 0.15X. Solving: 0.7175X = $12, so X = $16.73. Round up to $17.00 and that is your floor. Enter $17.00 in Undercut and the repricer will never go below it regardless of what competitors do. On Pro and Scale plans, repricing checks happen every 15 minutes, so your floor is enforced on every cycle.
Pro and Scale plans both reprice every 15 minutes; Free and Starter run on a slower cadence. For most categories — clothing, books, collectibles — 15 minutes is ample. A vintage jacket is not going to be undercut and sell in under a quarter hour. Electronics and high-velocity commodity items are different. A popular phone case or cable can see three or four price changes in an hour during peak shopping windows (evenings, weekends, major sale events). On an hourly or daily cadence you may miss a window entirely; at 15 minutes you catch it. The practical rule: if your average time-to-sale is under 48 hours and your category has more than 10 active competitive sellers, the 15-minute cadence on Pro or Scale will meaningfully outperform a slower plan in win rate. The choice between Pro and Scale is about catalog size (1,000 vs 10,000 listings) and priority support, not cycle speed.
Different catalog segments need different postures. For high-competition commodity listings (cables, cases, generic accessories), set aggressive posture with a tight floor calculated on thin margin targets — the goal is velocity. For branded or unique items where you have limited direct competition, set conservative posture with a wider margin target baked into the floor — you do not need to race anyone. For collectibles and vintage, AI tuning has less utility because competitors are sparse and prices are idiosyncratic; moderate posture with a manually set floor based on acquisition cost is the right call. Mixing postures across your catalog is where sellers see the biggest real-world gain: high-velocity SKUs move faster, premium SKUs hold price, and nothing ever sells below cost.
Start your 14-day free trial and set hard floors on every listing from day one. No credit card required. Upgrade only when you need AI tuning or faster cadence.
Start freeDoes AI aggressiveness tuning override my hard floor?
No. The hard floor is an absolute constraint, not a preference. No posture setting — not even aggressive — can instruct Undercut to price below your floor. The AI layer decides how quickly and how steeply to move within the space above your floor. The floor itself is inviolable.
How does the AI decide a competitor is 'weak' and not worth matching?
Undercut scores competitors on feedback percentage, feedback volume, handling time listed, and return policy. A seller with 78% feedback, 5-day handling, and no returns accepted scores significantly lower than one with 99.2% feedback and same-day dispatch. Conservative and moderate postures weight this score heavily — you will not be instructed to match a weak competitor's price just because it is technically lower.
I sell in multiple categories with very different margins. Can I set different floors per category?
Yes. Floors are set at the listing level, but you can apply a category default and then override individual SKUs. For example, set a 20% margin floor as the default for your electronics category, then override specific high-competition SKUs to 12% where you need more price flexibility to compete.
Will 15-minute repricing cause prices to swing wildly?
No. Repricing frequency controls how often the engine checks, not how often it changes price. If nothing meaningful has changed in the competitive landscape, the engine holds price. Rapid oscillation only happens when competitors are themselves repricing frequently — and in that case, checking every 15 minutes means you spend less time underpriced between checks than you would on an hourly or daily cadence. Your hard floor still bounds every move regardless of how often the engine runs.
I am on the Free plan. Can I still set hard floors?
Yes. Floor-setting is available on every plan including Free (up to 25 listings). AI aggressiveness tuning is a Pro and Scale feature, but the floor protection is universal — no seller on any plan can have a listing repriced below their set floor.
Related: How to Avoid Selling Below Cost on eBay · Repricing Without Losing Margin · What Is a Price Floor? · eBay Pricing Strategy Guide · Electronics Repricing on eBay