A fixed price you can pay immediately. No bidding, no clock, no waiting to see whether somebody outbids you.
You see it on ordinary listings and on items in a show that the seller has priced rather than auctioned.
How it differs from an auction
The price is set by the seller, not found by the room.
It is first come. No winning, no second place — whoever pays, gets it.
No strike is possible, because nothing is promised in advance. You either buy it or you do not. What is a strike?
You can sometimes make an offer, where the seller has turned that on for the item. That is only ever a buy-now thing; auctions never take offers. Can I negotiate with a seller?
When buy now is the better deal
When you know what the thing is worth and the price is at or below it. An auction can run past that; a fixed price cannot.
When you want it rather than want to win it. Those are different feelings and only one of them is about the object.
When it is one of many. Competing for something with thirty equivalents available is a waste of an evening.
When you are buying several from one store, because combining is simpler without clocks. Can I combine several orders?
When an auction is better
When the thing is genuinely one of a kind and nobody knows what it is worth, including the seller. Sometimes that runs in your favour.
When the start price is low and the room is quiet.
In a live show
A seller can put buy-now items in a show alongside auctions. They go to whoever taps first, which is a different kind of urgency from a clock — and it is real urgency rather than theatre, because there is genuinely one.
Pay quickly for those. Nothing is reserved while you think.
What is the same either way
The money is held until the item reaches you.
Your return rights. Damaged, faulty, wrong or not as described comes back for 7 days whatever the store's policy says.
Delivery is shown before you pay.
Buy now is a different way of agreeing a price. It is not a different kind of purchase. How buyer protection works
More: auction versus fixed price, can I negotiate with a seller, how bidding works.