eBay recently updated its user agreement to ban certain AI agents from making purchases on the platform. It announced the update to users via email and stated that any AI-based entity or service that wants to operate on eBay needs to get prior permission from eBay in order to do so. However, the company also left the door open to agentic AI in the future.
eBay Not Allowing Unauthorized AI Agents on the Platform
According to an email sent to eBay users, eBay is changing its anti-scraping rules and is specifically prohibiting the use of “buy for me” agents and other agentic commerce bots from operating on the platform. It adds that if any AI-based entities want to exist on eBay, they need to obtain prior permission from the company.
This change is slated to begin on February 20th, 2026, and follows the recent changes to eBay’s robots.txt file, which began to block and restrict how bots and AI technologies interact with the platform back in December.
Potential Reasons for the Move
There are a few possible reasons that eBay made this change to the user agreement. First, there’s the fear of unfair competition, which could drive real human users away. For example, if people know they’re bidding against AI agents that can make instant bids and win auctions at the last second, it may make people less willing to try compete for auctions on the platform.
On the fixed-price side of things, AI may be able to identify underpriced deals on eBay much quicker than any human user, which may prompt people to stop using the platform if all the good deals are taken by AI. Also, AI agents may lead to more purchase disputes and refund requests from users if AI makes mistakes and autonomously purchases things that people don’t want.
This move may also be so that eBay can pump the brakes and evaluate agentic commerce before deciding on how to move forward. Agentic commerce is still new, but has grown rapidly in recent months and years.
eBay may just be putting a stop to it for now so the company can evaluate a strategy that benefits the platform and/or the users as much as possible, rather than making a rash decision without considering the various factors at play.
eBay Leaves the Door Open for Agentic Commerce
While the company has prohibited it for now, it has also left the door open for agentic commerce in the future. eBay is still exploring the best use cases, both on and off platform, for agentic commerce. Not only that, but the company also indicated that it could eventually participate in the recently-launched Instant Checkout program from OpenAI.
The company is also experimenting with its own agentic shopping experiences. So eBay may be more open to agentic AI than it seems, but just wants to be able to control and measure it, and trust either the company’s own solutions, or approved programs/partners, as opposed to uncontrolled and unauthorized third-party bots and systems.
