Buying at a fixed price

A fixed-price listing has a set price with a Buy button. There is no bidding and no waiting for an auction to close: when you are ready, you buy it. This guide walks the listing page and everything you decide at checkout.

The listing page

A fixed-price listing shows the animal's photos and profile, the price, the seller, and the ways to buy. It may also offer add-ons and, in some cases, require an application before you can buy.

• Price: the amount the seller is asking. With fixed price, that is what you pay for the animal (the buyer fee and any add-ons are added on top at checkout).
• Buy Now and Add to cart: Buy Now takes this one animal straight to checkout. Add to cart puts it in your cart instead, so you can buy it together with other animals or genetics in a single payment. See Using your cart.
• Make an offer: many fixed-price listings also let you propose a different price instead of paying the asking price. See Making an offer on a listing.
• Approval gate: if the seller requires buyer approval, the Buy button is locked until your application is approved. See Buyer applications. The page tells you when this applies.
• Alert me if price drops: a bell in the listing's action row lets you ask Creatures to email you if the seller lowers the price. It is separate from saving the listing to your watchlist: the bell is only the price-drop alert, so you can opt into that one email without following everything else. See Saving searches and using your watchlist.

Two things worth noticing before you buy

A couple of signals on a fixed-price listing help you buy well:

• A volume discount from the seller. Some sellers offer a discount when you buy more than one animal from them. When they do, the listing shows a short flag (for example "Save $500") and an explainer such as "Save $500 on each additional animal you buy from this seller. Applied automatically at checkout." You do not enter a code; if you add a second animal from that seller, the discount is applied for you. See Using your cart for where the saving appears.
• A freshness note. If a listing has been up a while and the seller has not confirmed it recently, you may see a gray line like "Listed {month}. The seller hasn't recently confirmed this is still available." It does not mean the animal is gone, only that it is worth messaging the seller to check before you commit. Listings a seller keeps current also rank higher in search, so a quick confirm from them is a good sign.

Add-ons: boarding and delivery

Before you check out, a listing may offer extras that you choose to include:

• Boarding: if the seller offers boarding, you can have them care for the animal for a chosen term before you collect it. You pick the boarding term, and its cost is added to your total. This is useful when you cannot take the animal home immediately. On some listings boarding is required, in which case it is included automatically.
• Delivery: if the seller offers delivery or Creatures transport is available, you can add it so the animal is brought to you. Its fee is added to your total. If you would rather collect the animal yourself, you leave delivery off and arrange pickup.

Checkout, and what is held

When you select Buy and complete checkout, your total is the price + the 5% buyer fee + any boarding or delivery you added, with any Wallet or Credit applied first. You pay with a card, a bank transfer (ACH), your Creatures Wallet, or Creatures Credit.

Your payment is then held safely by Creatures. It is not sent to the seller yet. The seller is paid only after you confirm the animal arrived, which releases the funds to them. See How buying works for the full funds flow and Receiving your animal and confirming delivery for the delivery step. What you pay becomes the animal's cost basis in your Creatures finances, the starting value you measure profit against later.

Keep the purchase private (optional)

At checkout you can tick "Keep this animal private." It is a one-tap choice for buyers who would rather not announce the purchase.

• What it does: when you turn it on, the animal is set private, so it is hidden from the public feed, from search, and from your public profile. No acquisition post is made to the community feed, and the people who were watching or had a saved search matching the listing are not alerted that it sold to you.
• What stays: the sale is still recorded as a real Creatures purchase, so you keep full access to the animal and its records, and the held-funds protection is exactly the same. You can change the animal back to public at any time from its profile.
• One thing to know: the sale still appears in the public recently-sold results as an anonymized comparison, showing only the category and the price, with no photo, name, seller, or location. There is a dedicated explainer, Keeping your purchase private.

Related information

• How buying works: payments, held funds, and protection
• Using your cart: buy multiple animals or genetics in one checkout
• Making an offer on a listing

Updated on: 07/07/2026