How to Sell on Pinterest: Product Pins, Catalogs and Shopping (2026)

To sell on Pinterest, set up a free business account, claim your website, and get your products onto Pinterest as product Pins, either by uploading a catalog or by adding product markup to your product pages. Shoppers click a product Pin and buy on your site, and Pinterest says it does not charge to add products or take a commission on what you sell. This guide covers each step, the catalog and merchant rules, the shopping features you can use, and how to make organic Pins that sell. All requirements were checked on Pinterest's help center and business site on October 29, 2026.

Can you sell on Pinterest for free?

Yes. Pinterest's shopping page for businesses says "it's free to put your products on Pinterest," that Pinterest "doesn't charge to add products to the platform, or take a commission from anything that you sell," and that you only pay if you decide to run ad campaigns. The checkout happens on your own website, where your normal payment fees apply. If you want to promote products, our guides to Pinterest ads and what Pinterest ads cost cover the paid side.

How selling on Pinterest works

• Product Pins are rich Pins that show your product's current price and availability, plus its title and description. Pinterest says some can also get a "Best seller" or "Popular" badge.
• The sale happens on your site. Pinterest's shopper help says product Pins "direct you to the merchant's website." Pinterest does not sell the item itself.
• Organic and paid. Product Pins can rank in search and feeds for free. Only product Pins created from a catalog can be promoted as shopping ads.
• Product tagging. Pinterest says anyone with a business account can tag products and create product Pins, including tagging products in organic Pins.

Step 1: Use a Pinterest business account

Catalogs, product tagging and Pinterest Trends all need a business account. It is free, and you can convert a personal account without losing your Pins. Our Pinterest business account guide walks through it.

Step 2: Claim your website

Claiming proves you own the store's domain. It is required for catalogs, and Pinterest says it is what unlocks website analytics. Per Pinterest's claim help, you can claim a top-level domain, subdomain or subpath that you own and whose source code you can edit, using one of three methods:

• HTML tag added to the head section of your home page.
• HTML file uploaded to your web server's root folder (not a subfolder).
• DNS TXT record added at your domain host; Pinterest says changes can take up to 72 hours.

A website can only be claimed by one Pinterest account. Pinterest also says you are "unable to claim most social accounts and online stores hosted on marketplaces like Etsy, eBay and Amazon." If you sell on Etsy, follow how to connect Etsy to Pinterest instead. Once claimed, confirm it with the free website claim checker.

Step 3: Choose how your products reach Pinterest

Check rich Pin markup on any product page with the free rich Pin validator, and read our rich Pins guide for the markup.

Catalog requirements (checked October 29, 2026)

From Pinterest's catalog setup help and data source help:

• Before you start: a business account, a claimed website, and a site that meets the merchant guidelines, "with easy-to-find contact details, shipping policy, and refund policy."
• Formats: TSV, CSV, XML (RSS 2.0 or ATOM 1.0) or Google Sheets.
• Required fields: id, title, description, link, image_link, price, availability, plus item_group_id for products with variants. Pinterest warns that if they are missing or formatted incorrectly, "your entire retail catalog will fail ingestion."
• Claimed domains only: every destination URL in the feed must be on a domain claimed in your account.
• Updates: a hosted feed is ingested once every 24 hours. A manually uploaded file must be updated every 30 days, or its products are not distributed organically.
• Size: up to 20 million products per catalog.
• Availability: Catalogs is not offered in every country; Pinterest shows a notice when you view the page from a region where it is not available yet.

To add a feed: log in on desktop, click the menu icon, choose Catalogs and product groups under Manage business, click Add data source, then either provide a URL or upload a file. Pinterest asks for a name, the feed URL, file format, country or region, language, default currency and default availability, and then you click Create Pins. You get an email about the ingestion status.

Merchant guidelines: what gets products rejected

Pinterest's Merchant Guidelines apply to product Pins and catalogs. Key points as of October 29, 2026:

• "The Pin must display a specific item, excluding services, that is available for purchase."
• Pinterest "must have current (within seven days) and accurate information about the price and in-stock status of the product."
• Your return policy must be easy to find and clear.
• No broken links or incomplete pages, no forcing people to register to view products, and nothing unsafe or deceptive.
• Some categories are prohibited, for example gambling products, prescription medicines, financial products such as credit, tobacco, and weapons; alcohol and pre-owned products are allowed in shopping ads with restrictions.

Pinterest says it is updating these guidelines, effective November 12, 2026, and links a preview from the policy page. Read the updated version before you build a new catalog.

Shopping features worth knowing

• Merchant review. Pinterest says ads and enhanced distribution need your business to go through a merchant review.
• Shopping ads. Built from catalog product Pins only. Treat them as an amplifier for products that already earn clicks organically.
• Verified Merchant Program. Verified merchants get a blue checkmark on their profile and Pins and access to extra merchant features. Pinterest's program page lists the requirements: a business account at least three months old with a profile picture and About section, a claimed website at least nine months old that meets the merchant guidelines, a catalog with 75% of products ingested successfully, and a conversion source that has sent page visit, add to cart and checkout events at least once every 7 days in the last 30 days. Pinterest says you are verified automatically once you meet them all, and the program is not available in every region.

How to make organic Pins that sell

A catalog puts your products on Pinterest. Fresh, search-led Pins are what get them seen.

• Vertical images. Pinterest recommends a 2:3 ratio, such as 1000 x 1500 pixels; check sizes in our Pin size guide.
• Show the product in use: the lamp lit in a room, the dress on a person, the planner filled in. Lifestyle shots give people a reason to stop.
• Write for search. Put the words shoppers type in the title, description and board name; see Pin descriptions that rank.
• Match the landing page. The product in the Pin should be the product on the page, at the price shown.
• Several fresh designs per product, spread over weeks, rather than one image saved again and again.
• Plan seasons early. Use Pinterest Trends to see when searches for your products start rising, and publish before the peak.

Turn product pages into Pins you approve. PinBoostr works from your product page URLs on any store platform: it reads the page, writes a keyword-led title and description, and designs vertical Pins. You approve each Pin before it publishes through the official Pinterest API, paced across the week. On any product page you are viewing, the PinBoostr Chrome extension drafts a Pin in one click. See the AI Pin generator.

Selling on Pinterest by business type

How to measure sales from Pinterest

• Outbound clicks in Pinterest Analytics show how many people left a Pin for your site. Our Pinterest analytics guide explains which numbers matter.
• Your store's analytics show what those visitors bought. Add UTM tags to Pin links with the free Pinterest UTM builder to separate Pinterest traffic by campaign.
• Conversion events (page visit, add to cart, checkout) sent to Pinterest are what its shopping ads optimize on, and they are a Verified Merchant requirement.

Start selling with Pins you approve

The setup above takes an afternoon. Keeping fresh product Pins going out every week is the part most stores drop. PinBoostr prepares Pins from your product and collection pages with AI-written copy and designs, you approve each Pin, and it publishes through the official Pinterest API at a steady pace. Start free for a month with no card; Starter is $19.99 a month (pricing). For the bigger picture, see how to make money on Pinterest.

FAQ