How to Bulk Upload Listings to Whatnot (CSV Import, Step by Step)

Here's the short version: Whatnot lets you create a whole pile of listings at once by uploading a CSV file. You make a copy of Whatnot's spreadsheet template, fill in a row for each item (title, price, category, condition, shipping weight, photos), download it as a CSV, and upload it on the Whatnot website — either as drafts in your Inventory or as temporary listings for a specific show. That's the entire idea. The rest of this is the careful version, including the handful of things that quietly make uploads fail.

I do this constantly for my own shows, so this is the walkthrough I wish someone had handed me the first time instead of letting me find every pothole myself.

First, what bulk CSV upload actually does

A CSV ("comma-separated values") is just a plain spreadsheet. Whatnot reads it row by row and turns each row into a listing. When you upload one, you get to choose between two outcomes: draft listings that land in your Inventory so you can polish them and sell them in or out of a show, or temporary listings attached to one specific show. Drafts are what most people want, because you can fix anything before it goes live. One thing to know up front — this is a desktop job. The upload happens on whatnot.com in a browser, not inside the phone app.

Step 1: Grab the right CSV template

Don't build your own spreadsheet from scratch — Whatnot gives you a template, and the columns have to match what their importer expects. Which template depends on where you sell and what you sell: there's one for US, Australia, and Netherlands sellers (non-coins), and separate ones for coins sellers, UK sellers, German sellers, French and Belgian sellers, and Japanese TCG sellers. You'll find all of them linked in Whatnot's bulk-import help article.

Open the right one, then click File > Make a copy so you've got your own editable version. Whatnot specifically says to fill it out in Google Sheets — not Excel — because Excel can mangle the formatting in ways that break the upload. That single tip saves a lot of grief.

Step 2: Fill in your item details

Each row is one product. The fields you'll fill in are the title and description, the quantity in stock (minimum of 1), the listing type (Auction or Buy It Now), and the price — which for auctions is your starting bid. Then there are the four fields that have to match Whatnot's exact options: Category, Sub Category, Condition, and Shipping Profile.

This matching part is where most uploads go sideways, so it's worth slowing down on. The allowed values for those fields live in the Values tab of the template (or in the dropdown menus once you've made your copy). You can't freestyle them — "Vtg" instead of the listed category, or your own guessed weight instead of one of Whatnot's shipping options, and that row gets rejected. For Shipping Profile specifically, either pick one of the weight options listed in the template or type the name of a custom shipping profile you already set up in Whatnot. Don't invent your own weight numbers.

A couple of fields are optional: Offerable (set it to TRUE on Buy It Now items if you want to accept offers, assuming you have that feature), and Condition is only required for categories that ask for it.

Step 3: Deal with your photos (the annoying part)

This is the step that turns a quick job into an afternoon. Each row has columns for Image URL 1 through Image URL 8 — up to eight photos per item — and they have to be publicly accessible links. Not files on your computer. Not something in a shared folder that asks for a login. Actual public https URLs. So the normal flow is: photograph your items, get them onto a computer, upload them to an image host like ImgBB, Imgur, or WeTransfer, copy each link, and paste it into the right cell.

Quick way to check a link works: open it in a private or incognito browser window. If the photo loads there with no login, Whatnot can read it too. And you don't strictly need photos in the CSV at all — you can upload without them and add images later while the listings are drafts. But you do need at least one image per product before you can publish it.

Step 4: Upload your CSV — drafts or straight to a show

When the sheet's done, click File > Download > CSV. Then pick your upload path on whatnot.com.

For drafts (most people): sign in to whatnot.com, open Seller Hub > Inventory, click the Upload CSV button (the little cloud-with-an-arrow icon), select your file, and hit Import. Your products show up as drafts you can edit — add images, tweak the format, then publish, add to a show, or duplicate.

For temporary listings dropped straight into one show: this is the one a lot of sellers don't know exists, and it's a gem. Still on desktop, open the show you're prepping, hit Add, choose Create Temporary Listing, then scroll down and import your CSV right there. Your whole batch lands directly in that show — no Inventory step, no publishing, no adding items in one at a time. If you build a fresh lineup for each show, this is the fast lane.

That's the whole process. None of it is hard, exactly — it's just fiddly, and the fiddliness scales with how many items you're listing. Twelve items is a coffee's worth of work. A hundred-item haul on a spreadsheet, hand-hosting photos, is how a Saturday disappears.

(Which, full honesty, is the entire reason I built Shelf-Snap — so I could prep a big batch from my phone in minutes and spend that saved hour actually running a good show instead. It's free on iPhone. That's all I'll say about it.)