Listing categories are used to group similar listings together and separate different kinds of listings from each other. In a nutshell, categories can help organize your marketplace better. Users can find relevant listings by selecting the category they are interested in.

Listing categories provide a structured way to organize listings on your marketplace. They group similar listings together and distinguish between different types of listings. These categories form a hierarchical structure, with broader categories branching into more specific subcategories. This streamlines navigation and search, enabling users to explore the marketplace intuitively and find what they are looking for.

In Sharetribe, you can create three levels of categories: main categories and two levels of subcategories. Each main category can contain a group of subcategories, and those subcategories can further contain their own set of subcategories.

For example, if your marketplace specializes in clothing and apparel, your main categories might include shirts, jackets, trousers, accessories, and more. Within the Accessories category, you could have subcategories like gloves, socks and bags. Continuing the example, the bags subcategory can then have its own set of subcategories, such as Tote bags, Duffel bags, and Bum bags.
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A listing can be assigned to only one category or subcategory at a time. However, you can use listing fields to further categorize your listings by using specific attributes and information.

Listing categories are broad classifications that group listings based on shared characteristics without detailing specific information about each listing. Listing fields, on the other hand, are detailed attributes that provide specific information about each listing.

Learn more about Listing fields.

As mentioned above, Listing categories are broad classifications to organize listings within a marketplace based on their general shared characteristics. Listing types, on the other hand, refer to the different kinds of transactions or interactions that can occur with listings between the customer and provider.

Learn more about Listing types.
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You can create up to 100 categories. Within each category, you can have up to 100 subcategories, and each of those subcategories can have up to 100 further subcategories.

However, in practice, you will encounter limitations if you fully utilize this structure by creating 100 categories, each with many subcategories and further subcategories. If your marketplace requires support for thousands of categories, consider customizing with code and hosting your category data on your infrastructure.

Listing categories can be added, edited and removed from your Console > Listings > Listing categories.

Learn how to add and edit listing categories.