Refreshing listings on Depop is the grind nobody warned you about. Every item in your shop needs to be refreshed to stay visible, and with a closet of 100+ items, that routine eats 30-45 minutes twice a day. Every day. It's the same problem Poshmark sellers face with sharing — mindless, repetitive work that has to happen or your sales drop.
Automation exists for Depop, but it's a different landscape than Poshmark. Fewer tools, less mature ecosystem, and a platform that's arguably more aggressive about detecting automated behavior. This isn't a "set it and forget it" situation. Depop automation requires understanding exactly where the lines are and staying well inside them.
Why Refreshing Is the Core of Depop Selling
Depop's algorithm heavily favors fresh listings. When you refresh an item — essentially touching it so the algorithm sees activity — it gets a small visibility bump in search results. When you relist it entirely (delete and recreate), it gets a larger bump because the algorithm treats it as new inventory.
Without regular refreshing, listings sink. An item listed two weeks ago with no updates has been pushed down by every newer listing in the same category. It's not that Depop is punishing old listings. It's that newer ones keep jumping the line.
For a 200-item shop, manually refreshing everything twice a day would take over an hour. That's 7+ hours a week of tapping the same screens. This is where automation becomes not just convenient but practically necessary for anyone selling at volume.
What You Can Automate (and What You Shouldn't)
Auto-Refresh: The Safest Bet
Auto-refreshing tools edit your listings in small ways — touching the description or nudging a field — so the algorithm registers activity. This is the safest form of Depop automation because it mimics what a seller would do manually, just faster.
Most tools let you set a refresh schedule. Morning and evening cycles with randomized delays between items. A shop of 150 listings might take 20-30 minutes to refresh automatically, running in the background while you do something else.
The key safety factor: spacing. Refreshing 150 items in 2 minutes doesn't look human. Refreshing them over 25 minutes with 8-12 second gaps between each does. Good tools build this randomization in. Cheap tools don't.
Auto-Relist: More Powerful, More Risky
Full relisting — deleting an old listing and creating a new one — gets a bigger freshness boost than simple refreshing. Some tools automate this process, copying all your listing data, deleting the original, and reposting it.
The trade-off: you lose all engagement on the original listing (likes, comments, saves). And if the tool creates dozens of "new" listings in rapid succession, Depop's spam detection notices. Sellers have reported visibility drops and temporary restrictions after bulk relisting too aggressively.
Depop explicitly discourages posting the same item multiple times per day. Automated bulk relisting that appears mechanical can trigger spam detection. If you use auto-relist, keep it to once every 1-2 weeks per item, stagger the timing, and never relist your entire shop at once.
Auto-Follow: Proceed With Caution
Following other sellers and buyers is a growth tactic on Depop. People see the notification, check your profile, and sometimes follow back or buy something. Automating this speeds up the process dramatically.
It's also the automation most likely to get you flagged. One seller reported getting restricted within 8 hours of running a follow bot. Depop monitors follow/unfollow patterns closely — rapid following of hundreds of accounts, followed by mass unfollowing days later, is a classic bot signature.
If you automate following at all, keep it under 50-80 follows per day with long, randomized gaps between each. And don't do follow/unfollow cycles. Follow people you genuinely want to follow. The algorithm tracks patterns.
Auto-Like: Low Risk, Low Impact
Liking other sellers' items generates notifications that drive profile visits. Some tools automate this. The risk is lower than follow automation because liking is a less monitored behavior, but the impact is also lower. A few extra profile views per day from automated likes won't transform your business.
Use it as a supplement, not a strategy. If your tool includes it, fine. Don't go looking for a separate liking bot.
What's Available in 2026
The Depop automation market is smaller and less polished than Poshmark's. Fewer options, more inconsistency, and tools that break more often when Depop updates their platform. That said, several legitimate options exist.
Browser Extensions
The most common approach. Install in Chrome, open Depop's website, and the extension adds automation controls. You can watch what's happening, which is reassuring.
Pricing ranges from free (with limited refreshes per day) to $15-80/month depending on features. Free tiers typically cap you at 100 refreshes per day, which works for small shops but isn't enough for serious sellers.
What to Look For
- Randomized delays between actions (non-negotiable for safety)
- Scheduling so automation runs during your normal active hours
- Daily limits you can control, not just the tool's defaults
- The ability to exclude specific listings from automation
- Active development — check when the tool was last updated. Depop changes break old tools.
Red Flags
- Tools promising "undetectable" automation. Nothing is undetectable.
- Tools that require your Depop password. Browser extensions should work within your existing browser session.
- Tools with no recent updates. Depop's platform evolves, and unmaintained tools stop working or start acting unpredictably.
- Extremely aggressive defaults. If a tool's standard settings refresh 500 items in 10 minutes, it's designed to get you caught.
Safe Automation Patterns
The sellers who use Depop automation successfully long-term share similar habits. None of them max out every setting on day one.
Start Conservative
Begin with refresh-only automation at half the speed you think is reasonable. If you plan to refresh 200 items daily, start with 100. Use longer delays (12-20 seconds between items). Run it for a week and watch for any signs of trouble: visibility drops, unusual CAPTCHA prompts, or warning messages.
If the first week is clean, gradually increase volume. Reach full speed over 2-3 weeks. Your account has a behavioral baseline. Radical overnight changes in activity patterns attract attention.
Match Your Normal Hours
Only run automation during hours when you'd plausibly be on the platform. If you've never used Depop at 3 AM and suddenly your listings are refreshing at 3 AM every night, that pattern tells the system exactly what's happening.
Morning and evening sessions during your time zone's peak hours look natural because that's when real sellers are active.
Keep Doing Some Things Manually
Mix automated refreshes with manual activity. Answer messages yourself. Manually list new items. Like and comment on other sellers' posts by hand. A profile that shows nothing but perfectly timed automated refreshes and zero human interaction looks exactly like what it is.
The manual activity creates noise that makes automated activity less distinguishable. Think of it as camouflage.
Warning Signs to Watch
- Sudden drop in impressions or views with no change in your behavior
- CAPTCHA challenges appearing during normal browsing
- Temporary restrictions on following or messaging
- Any email from Depop about "unusual activity"
- Your listings not appearing in search results for terms they previously ranked for
If any of these happen: stop all automation immediately. Wait 48-72 hours. Resume at lower intensity. Depop's detection systems seem to have a memory — accounts that get flagged once appear to be watched more closely afterward.
Automation Isn't a Substitute for Good Product
Refreshing keeps your listings visible. It doesn't make people buy them. A mediocre listing refreshed 500 times is still a mediocre listing that nobody wants.
The sellers who grow fastest on Depop combine automation (for the repetitive visibility work) with genuine effort on the things automation can't touch: great photos, accurate descriptions, fast shipping, and products that match what buyers actually want.
Use automation to save time. Invest that saved time into the parts of your shop that actually make people click "Buy." That's the combination that works.