The cheapest platform to sell online in 2026 (real numbers)
Selling through your own Shopify store is the cheapest way to sell online in 2026, and the gap is bigger than most sellers assume. Take one identical order — a $40 item with $8 of buyer-paid shipping, costing you $12 in product and $6 to ship — and price it on every major channel. Shopify leaves you $28.31 after $1.69 in fees. PayPal invoicing keeps $28.07, TikTok Shop $27.12, Etsy $24.99, Amazon and Walmart $24.00 each, eBay $23.24, and Poshmark the least at $20.40 after taking $9.60. That is a $7.91 spread on a single $48 order, or about $949.20 a year at ten orders a month. But the cheapest fee is not automatically the most profitable channel, because a marketplace's cut is buying you demand you would otherwise have to purchase from Meta or Google.
The cheapest platform to sell online, ranked by what you keep
Here is the full ranking on that order — $40 item, $8 shipping charged, $12 product cost, $6 shipping cost, so $48 gross revenue and $18 of costs before any platform takes its share.
| Rank | Platform | 2026 US rate | Fees | You keep | Margin on gross |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shopify (own store) | 2.9% + $0.30 | $1.69 | $28.31 | 58.98% |
| 2 | PayPal invoice | 2.99% + $0.49 | $1.93 | $28.07 | 58.48% |
| 3 | TikTok Shop | 6% referral | $2.88 | $27.12 | 56.50% |
| 4 | Etsy | 6.5% + 3% + $0.45 | $5.01 | $24.99 | 52.06% |
| 5 | Amazon | 15% of item price | $6.00 | $24.00 | 50.00% |
| 6 | Walmart | 15% of item price | $6.00 | $24.00 | 50.00% |
| 7 | eBay | 13.25% + $0.40 | $6.76 | $23.24 | 48.42% |
| 8 | Poshmark | 20% of order value | $9.60 | $20.40 | 42.50% |
These are 2026 US rates for the most common categories on a standard seller account, with no promoted listings or ads running. Confirm your own numbers against each platform's current published fee schedule before you make a decision on them — marketplaces change referral rates without much warning, and category-specific rates vary. You can rerun this exact table with your own price and costs in the Marketplace Fee Comparison calculator.
One result in that table is worth pausing on. eBay's headline final value fee is 13.25%, which is lower than Amazon's 15% referral fee, and yet eBay costs $0.76 more on this order. The reason is the fee base. eBay charges its percentage on the item price plus the shipping the buyer paid, then adds $0.40 per order: 13.25% of $48 is $6.36, plus $0.40, equals $6.76. Amazon charges its 15% on the item price only: 15% of $40 is $6.00, and shipping is excluded from the referral base. A lower headline percentage on a bigger base loses.
That is the single most common mistake in fee comparisons, and it is why "which marketplace has the lowest fees" cannot be answered by reading rate cards side by side. You have to run an actual order through them.
Why Shopify comes out cheapest, and what the 2.9% leaves out
Shopify takes no commission on sales through your own store when you use Shopify Payments. The $1.69 above is card processing — 2.9% of the $48 order plus a $0.30 per-transaction fee — not a platform commission. That is the whole reason it wins the table.
What the table does not include is the subscription. The comparison calculator prices per-order fees only, which is the right way to compare a marketplace against a store, but a Shopify plan is a real fixed cost and at low volume it dominates everything else. At the widely published $39/month Basic rate, here is what an order actually costs you once the subscription is spread across your monthly volume.
| Orders per month | Subscription per order | Processing fee | Effective fee per order | vs Amazon's $6.00 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | $3.90 | $1.69 | $5.59 | saves $0.41 |
| 25 | $1.56 | $1.69 | $3.25 | saves $2.75 |
| 50 | $0.78 | $1.69 | $2.47 | saves $3.53 |
| 100 | $0.39 | $1.69 | $2.08 | saves $3.92 |
| 250 | $0.16 | $1.69 | $1.85 | saves $4.15 |
At ten orders a month, Shopify's apparent $4.31 advantage over Amazon collapses to $0.41 per order — about $49 a year, which is not a reason to build a store. At fifty orders a month the same advantage is $3.53 per order, roughly $2,118 a year, which is. Own-store economics are a volume game, and below roughly 20 orders a month the subscription eats the entire fee saving. The Shopify Fee Calculator prices individual orders, and the true cost of selling on Shopify walks through apps, themes and the other recurring costs that sit on top of the plan.
Amazon has the mirror-image problem: the Professional selling plan is $39.99/month, which behaves exactly like Shopify's subscription and is similarly irrelevant once you clear a few dozen orders. eBay, Etsy, Poshmark, TikTok Shop and Walmart have no equivalent mandatory monthly charge for a standard account, so their per-order fee is much closer to the whole story.
Which marketplace has the lowest fees?
Exclude your own store and PayPal invoicing — neither is a marketplace, and neither brings you a buyer — and the answer is TikTok Shop at a flat 6% referral fee, costing $2.88 on that $48 order. Etsy is next at $5.01, then Amazon and Walmart at $6.00, eBay at $6.76, and Poshmark last at $9.60.
Two caveats on TikTok Shop. The 6% is the referral rate, and most sellers who actually move volume there are also paying affiliate commissions to creators, typically another 5% to 20% of the order, which is optional in theory and close to mandatory in practice if you want reach. And the fee schedule on TikTok Shop has moved more than any other platform on this list since it launched in the US. Price it yourself in the TikTok Shop Fee Calculator rather than trusting a number you read anywhere, including here.
Etsy's $5.01 is also worth unpacking, because Etsy advertises a 6.5% transaction fee and sellers reasonably expect to pay about $3.12 on a $48 order. The real cost stacks three charges: 6.5% transaction, roughly 3% plus $0.25 payment processing, and a $0.20 listing fee. Combined, that is 9.5% plus $0.45, which is $5.01 — about 10.4% of gross, not 6.5%. The Etsy Fee Calculator breaks each layer out separately.
Fixed fees quietly punish anything under $20
Per-order fixed charges — Shopify's $0.30, eBay's $0.40, Etsy's $0.45, PayPal's $0.49 — barely register on a $200 sale and are brutal on a $12 one. Here is a small order: an $8 item with $4 shipping charged, costing $3 in product and $3 to ship.
| Platform | Fees | % of the $12 gross | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | $0.65 | 5.42% | $5.35 |
| TikTok Shop | $0.72 | 6.00% | $5.28 |
| PayPal invoice | $0.85 | 7.08% | $5.15 |
| Amazon | $1.20 | 10.00% | $4.80 |
| Walmart | $1.20 | 10.00% | $4.80 |
| Etsy | $1.59 | 13.25% | $4.41 |
| eBay | $1.99 | 16.58% | $4.01 |
| Poshmark | $2.95 | 24.58% | $3.05 |
The ranking has reshuffled. TikTok Shop passes PayPal invoicing, and Amazon and Walmart both pass Etsy, because a flat percentage on the item price beats a percentage-plus-fixed structure when the order is tiny. Poshmark's flat $2.95 fee on orders under $15 takes almost a quarter of the gross, and eBay's $1.99 is 16.58% — well above its own 13.25% headline rate.
The practical lesson is not "avoid these platforms". It is that low-ticket single-item orders are where marketplace economics break, and the fix is order value rather than platform choice. Bundle two items, raise your free-shipping threshold, or set a minimum order. Moving that same buyer from a $12 order to a $30 order roughly halves your fee percentage on every platform in the table.
What the same order costs at three different price points
Fee percentage is not fixed. It moves with order size, and it moves in opposite directions depending on how the platform builds its fee.
| Platform | $12 order | $48 order | $215 order |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | 5.42% | 3.52% | 3.04% |
| PayPal invoice | 7.08% | 4.02% | 3.22% |
| TikTok Shop | 6.00% | 6.00% | 6.00% |
| Etsy | 13.25% | 10.44% | 9.71% |
| eBay | 16.58% | 14.08% | 13.44% |
| Amazon | 10.00% | 12.50% | 13.95% |
| Walmart | 10.00% | 12.50% | 13.95% |
| Poshmark | 24.58% | 20.00% | 20.00% |
Six platforms get cheaper as a percentage when the order grows, because their fixed fee shrinks relative to the total. Amazon and Walmart get more expensive, which surprises people. Their referral fee applies to the item price only, so their effective rate against gross revenue depends on how much of the order is shipping. In the $12 order, shipping is $4 of $12 — a third of gross that Amazon does not charge on. In the $215 order, shipping is $15 of $215, under 7%, so Amazon's 15% referral converges toward 15% of everything.
This has a real strategic consequence. If you sell on Amazon or Walmart, charging separately for shipping instead of building it into the price is genuinely cheaper, because shipping revenue is fee-free. On eBay, Etsy, Poshmark and TikTok Shop the opposite is true — those platforms charge on shipping too, so there is no advantage in splitting it out and free shipping costs you nothing extra in fees.
Where high-ticket orders change the ranking
Run a $200 item with $15 shipping, costing $70 in product and $12 in shipping, and the order changes again.
| Rank | Platform | Fees | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shopify | $6.53 | $126.47 |
| 2 | PayPal invoice | $6.92 | $126.08 |
| 3 | TikTok Shop | $12.90 | $120.10 |
| 4 | Etsy | $20.88 | $112.12 |
| 5 | eBay | $28.89 | $104.11 |
| 6 | Amazon | $30.00 | $103.00 |
| 7 | Walmart | $30.00 | $103.00 |
| 8 | Poshmark | $43.00 | $90.00 |
eBay and Amazon have swapped. On the $48 order Amazon was cheaper by $0.76; on the $215 order eBay is cheaper by $1.11, because shipping is now a small enough share of the total that eBay's lower percentage finally wins. The spread between best and worst on this order is $36.47, which is $4,376.40 a year at ten orders a month — four and a half times the annual gap on the $48 order.
High-ticket sellers should therefore care about channel choice far more than low-ticket sellers, in absolute dollars. A $36 difference per order justifies real effort: building a store, negotiating category rates, splitting inventory across channels. A $2.30 difference on a $12 order does not.
The fee you pay is a marketing budget you did not have to spend
This is where most "cheapest platform" comparisons stop and get the answer wrong. Shopify charges $1.69 on the $48 order and Amazon charges $6.00, so Shopify saves you $4.31. But Amazon also found the buyer. On Shopify you have to find that buyer yourself, and finding buyers costs money.
Reframe every marketplace fee as a customer acquisition cost you did not pay, and the question becomes concrete: can you acquire the same order through ads for less than the marketplace's extra fee?
| Platform | Fees on the $48 order | Extra vs Shopify | Max CPA to break even against it | ROAS your own ads must beat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PayPal invoice | $1.93 | $0.24 | $0.24 | 200.0 |
| TikTok Shop | $2.88 | $1.19 | $1.19 | 40.3 |
| Etsy | $5.01 | $3.32 | $3.32 | 14.5 |
| Amazon | $6.00 | $4.31 | $4.31 | 11.1 |
| Walmart | $6.00 | $4.31 | $4.31 | 11.1 |
| eBay | $6.76 | $5.07 | $5.07 | 9.5 |
| Poshmark | $9.60 | $7.91 | $7.91 | 6.1 |
Read the Amazon row this way: your own store beats Amazon on this order only if you can acquire the sale for under $4.31, which on a $48 order means a return on ad spend above 11.1x. Typical paid social ROAS for a small ecommerce brand runs somewhere between 2x and 4x. Against that benchmark, Amazon's 15% referral fee is not expensive — it is dramatically cheaper than buying the same order with ads, and it is why plenty of profitable sellers stay on Amazon while complaining about the fees.
Poshmark, the most expensive channel in the table, still only requires you to beat a 6.1x ROAS. That is the honest case for the highest-fee marketplace on the list: 20% is a lot of money, and it is still cheaper than most people's cold traffic.
The comparison flips completely for repeat customers. A marketplace fee is charged on every single order forever; an acquisition cost is paid once, and every reorder after that is nearly fee-free on your own store. If your product has a real repeat rate, the marketplace's fee compounds against you and the ad spend does not.
Run your own version of this in the Breakeven ROAS Calculator. On the $48 order with $12 product cost, $6 shipping and Shopify's 3.52% effective fee, your contribution margin is $28.31, your breakeven ROAS is 1.70x, and your maximum CPA before the order loses money is $28.31. Hold out for a 20% net margin after ads and the required ROAS rises to 2.57x. Those are the numbers that decide whether an ad channel is viable at all; the 11.1x figure above is the separate, much higher bar for beating Amazon specifically.
Cheapest by category, not cheapest overall
The 15% used for Amazon and Walmart above is the most common referral rate, not a universal one. Amazon referral fees run from about 8% on some categories to 20% on others, and Walmart's range is roughly 6% to 15%. eBay's final value fee also varies, with lower rates in a few categories and higher ones in others. A category-level check can move your answer by more than the platform choice does.
Category also decides where buyers actually look. Fee-optimal and demand-optimal are different questions:
- Handmade, craft, personalised — Etsy, despite an effective 10.4%. The buying intent there is not replicable elsewhere at any ad price.
- Used clothing and accessories — Poshmark and eBay, the two most expensive channels on the list, because that is where resale buyers are.
- Electronics, parts, collectibles — eBay, where search intent for specific model numbers is unmatched.
- Commodity consumables and replenishables — Amazon, where Prime shipping expectations decide the sale.
- Impulse, visual, demo-friendly products — TikTok Shop, where the 6% fee is the cheapest true marketplace rate available.
- Custom quotes and services — PayPal invoicing at $1.93 on this order, since there is no storefront to build. Compare it against Stripe in the Stripe Fee Calculator and the PayPal Fee Calculator.
Etsy vs eBay vs Amazon fees goes deeper on the three-way comparison, and best platform to sell online in 2026 weighs the non-fee factors.
What the fee tables leave out
Every number on this page is a selling fee. These are the costs that sit outside it and routinely exceed it:
- Fulfilment. Amazon FBA picking, packing and storage fees are separate from the referral fee and often larger. Price them in the Amazon FBA Profit Calculator and check the FBA vs FBM comparison.
- Advertising. Sponsored placements on Amazon, promoted listings on eBay and Etsy Ads are effectively optional fee increases that most competitive sellers pay.
- Returns and restocking. A 5% return rate on a 50% margin product costs more than the difference between the cheapest and most expensive platform above. The Restocking Fee Calculator prices what you recover.
- Landed cost. Duties, freight and per-unit import charges belong in your product cost before any of this math is meaningful — see the Landed Cost Calculator.
- Discounts and promotions. A 15% off code costs more than every fee in the top three rows combined. The Discount Margin Calculator shows the damage.
- Capital efficiency. Two products with identical margins are not equally good if one turns over four times as fast; the Amazon ROI Calculator covers that.
Hidden costs that eat ecommerce profit catalogues the rest.
The setup most profitable multi-channel sellers land on
The pattern that keeps recurring among sellers who make this work is not "pick the cheapest platform". It is using a marketplace for acquisition and an own store for retention.
New buyers arrive through Amazon, eBay or Etsy, where you pay the fee once as an acquisition cost. A card in the package points them at your own store for the reorder — where a repeat order on the $48 example costs $1.69 in fees instead of $6.76. Shift 30% of 120 annual orders off eBay and onto your own store and you save 36 × $5.07, or $182.52 a year. Shift all of them and it is $608.40, before counting the subscription.
The failure mode is spreading across five channels at once. Each one adds listing work, inventory sync risk, a different returns policy and its own support queue. Two channels run properly beat five run badly, and the fee difference between your second and third channel is almost never worth the operational cost of the third. How to reduce seller fees covers the tactical levers within a channel — store subscriptions, category selection, shipping structure — that usually pay better than adding a platform.
The cheapest platform for each type of seller
| If you are | Start with | Fees on the $48 order | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand new with no audience | Amazon or eBay | $6.00 / $6.76 | The fee includes the buyer, and no ad budget clears an 11.1x bar |
| Selling handmade or vintage | Etsy | $5.01 | Intent you cannot buy elsewhere at 10.4% |
| Reselling used clothing | eBay or Poshmark | $6.76 / $9.60 | Expensive, still cheaper than acquiring resale buyers |
| Selling a repeat-purchase product | Shopify | $1.69 plus subscription | Fees are charged once per order forever; CAC is paid once |
| Built on short-form video | TikTok Shop | $2.88 | Lowest true marketplace rate, plus native distribution |
| Invoicing custom work | PayPal invoice | $1.93 | No storefront needed |
| Doing 100+ orders a month | Shopify plus one marketplace | $2.08 effective | Subscription is now $0.39 an order and the marketplace feeds it |
Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest platform to sell online in 2026?
Your own Shopify store, at 2.9% + $0.30 in payment processing and no commission — $1.69 on a $48 order, leaving $28.31 of a $40 item with $8 shipping and $18 of costs. Add the $39/month plan and at ten orders a month the effective cost is $5.59 per order, barely below Amazon's $6.00.
Which marketplace has the lowest fees?
TikTok Shop, at a flat 6% referral fee — $2.88 on a $48 order. Etsy is next at $5.01, then Amazon and Walmart at $6.00, eBay at $6.76 and Poshmark at $9.60. Rates change, so verify against each platform's current published schedule.
Is eBay cheaper than Amazon?
It depends on the order. On a $40 item with $8 shipping, eBay costs $6.76 and Amazon $6.00, because eBay charges 13.25% on item plus shipping plus $0.40 while Amazon charges 15% on the item only. On a $200 item with $15 shipping the ranking reverses: eBay $28.89, Amazon $30.00. Check yours in the eBay Fee Calculator.
How much do marketplace fees cost per year?
At ten orders a month on the $48 example, fees run from $202.80 a year on Shopify to $1,152.00 on Poshmark. The gap between the best and worst channel is $949.20 a year on that volume, and $4,376.40 a year if your average order is $215 instead.
Is it cheaper to sell on my own website than on a marketplace?
Only if you can acquire the customer for less than the marketplace's extra fee. Against Amazon on a $48 order that means a cost per acquisition under $4.31, which is a return on ad spend above 11.1x — well beyond typical paid social performance. Own stores win on repeat customers, where the acquisition cost is paid once and the marketplace fee would be charged on every order.
Do marketplace fees apply to shipping?
On eBay, Etsy, Poshmark and TikTok Shop, yes — the fee is charged on item price plus buyer-paid shipping. On Amazon and Walmart the referral fee applies to the item price only, which is why charging shipping separately is cheaper there and makes no difference on the others.
Run it on your own numbers
Every figure here comes from one order. Yours is different, and the ranking genuinely changes with price, shipping and category — Amazon beats eBay at $48 and loses to it at $215. Put your real item price, shipping charged, product cost and shipping cost into the Marketplace Fee Comparison calculator to get your own version of the first table, then take the fee difference between your top two channels into the Breakeven ROAS Calculator to see whether your own store can actually acquire that order for less.
If your margins are the real question rather than the platform, start with the Profit Margin Calculator and how to price products for profit. Full 2026 rate data for every platform on this page is in our marketplace seller fee statistics.
Rates cited are 2026 US rates for standard seller accounts in the most common categories. Marketplaces revise fee schedules regularly — confirm against the platform's current published schedule before acting on any number here.