Marketplace Fee Comparison Calculator

A $50 item with $8 of buyer-paid shipping — $58 collected, $15 of product cost, a $6 shipping label — clears $35.02 on your own Shopify store and $25.40 on Poshmark. Same product, same buyer, same box, same week. The difference is $9.62 per order, which at ten orders a month is $1,154.40 a year that you either keep or hand to a platform for the privilege of listing.

That spread is the entire argument for pricing a channel before you commit to it. Sellers compare headline percentages — "Etsy is 6.5%, eBay is 13.25%" — and those numbers are close to meaningless, because they measure different things, apply to different bases, and leave out the fees that arrive alongside them. This guide runs one order across all eight major channels, shows where the published rates lie to you, and covers the cases where the expensive platform is still the correct choice.

The same order, priced on all eight platforms

Every number below comes from one set of inputs: item price $50.00, shipping charged to the buyer $8.00, product cost $15.00, shipping label cost $6.00. Order value is $58.00 and your own costs are $21.00 on every channel, so the only variable is the fee.

Rank	Platform	Published rate	Fee on the order	Effective rate	Net profit	Margin
1	Shopify	2.9% + $0.30	$1.98	3.41%	$35.02	60.38%
2	PayPal invoice	2.99% + $0.49	$2.22	3.83%	$34.78	59.97%
3	TikTok Shop	6% referral	$3.48	6.00%	$33.52	57.79%
4	Etsy	6.5% + 3% + $0.45	$5.96	10.28%	$31.04	53.52%
5	Amazon	15% of item price	$7.50	12.93%	$29.50	50.86%
6	Walmart	15% of item price	$7.50	12.93%	$29.50	50.86%
7	eBay	13.25% + $0.40	$8.09	13.95%	$28.91	49.84%
8	Poshmark	20%	$11.60	20.00%	$25.40	43.79%

Three things in that table surprise most sellers.

The effective rate never matches the published one. Etsy advertises 6.5% and charges 10.28%. Amazon advertises 15% and charges 12.93% of what the buyer paid. Only TikTok Shop and Poshmark bill exactly what their marketing says, and Poshmark's honesty is not much comfort at 20%.

The middle of the table is crowded. Etsy, Amazon, Walmart and eBay all land between $5.96 and $8.09 on this order — a $2.13 range across four platforms that sellers argue about endlessly. The decisions that actually move money are at the ends: run your own checkout, or accept a 20% channel because it brings the buyer.

Your own store wins on fees and only on fees. Shopify is cheapest here because it is not a marketplace. Nobody browses it. That distinction runs through the rest of this guide.

Why headline rates mislead

A fee percentage is only comparable if you know three things: what else gets charged on the same order, what number the percentage multiplies, and whether payment processing is bundled in. Almost no platform states all three together.

Etsy: 6.5% that costs 10.28%

Etsy's 6.5% transaction fee is real, and it is not the bill. Four charges land on this $58 order:

Etsy charge	Basis	Amount
Transaction fee	6.5% of $58	$3.77
Payment processing	3% of $58	$1.74
Payment fixed fee	per order	$0.25
Listing fee	per listing	$0.20
Total		$5.96

That is 10.28% of the order — 58% more than the advertised rate. The listing fee is charged when you list and again every time the listing renews after a sale, so on a shop that sells through its inventory it behaves like a per-order cost, which is how the calculator treats it. Run your own shop's real numbers in the Etsy Fee Calculator if you want the charges itemized separately.

eBay: expensive, but it tells you the truth

eBay's 13.25% final value fee already includes payment processing, so the only thing to add is the $0.40 per-order fixed fee. On $58 that is $7.685 plus $0.40, rounding to $8.09, or 13.95% effective. The gap between advertised and actual is 0.7 points, the smallest of any percentage-based channel here.

This is why "etsy vs ebay seller fees" comparisons so often reach the wrong conclusion. Compared on headline rates, Etsy looks half the price of eBay. Compared on this order, Etsy costs $5.96 and eBay $8.09 — a real advantage of $2.13, not the $3.92 the headline implies. Check the category first: eBay's 13.25% is the general rate, and some categories run lower. The eBay Fee Calculator handles the category variations.

Amazon and Walmart: 15% of a smaller number

Both charge a 15% referral fee in most categories, and both charge it on the item price only. Shipping the buyer paid is excluded. On this order 15% of $50 is $7.50 — 12.93% of the $58 that actually arrived, which quietly makes the highest published percentage in the table cheaper than eBay's 13.25%.

The catch is that neither number is the whole cost. Amazon adds FBA fulfillment, storage, and often advertising before you see a payout; a referral fee alone is not an Amazon P&L. Model the full thing with the Amazon FBA Profit Calculator and check the return on inventory with the Amazon ROI Calculator. Walmart's 15% is closer to complete, since third-party sellers there often ship themselves, and there is no monthly seller fee — see the Walmart Fee Calculator.

Item price or item plus shipping: the fee base nobody checks

Six of these eight platforms take a percentage of order value — item plus whatever the buyer paid for shipping. Amazon and Walmart take a percentage of the item price only. Sellers almost never account for this, and it changes the answer.

Hold the order at $58 and move the split between item price and shipping charged:

Item price	Shipping charged	Amazon fee	eBay fee	Etsy fee	Amazon net	eBay net
$58.00	$0.00	$8.70	$8.09	$5.96	$28.30	$28.91
$50.00	$8.00	$7.50	$8.09	$5.96	$29.50	$28.91
$45.00	$13.00	$6.75	$8.09	$5.96	$31.25	$28.91

eBay and Etsy do not move at all — they charge on the total either way. Amazon's fee falls by $1.95 as more of the same $58 shifts into shipping, and your net rises from $28.30 to $31.25. Selling the identical item at $45 plus $13 shipping instead of $58 with free shipping is worth $2.95 an order on Amazon and nothing anywhere else.

Two honest caveats. Amazon controls shipping credits in many categories and will not let you shift arbitrary amounts into shipping, and buyers convert better on free shipping than on an itemized charge, which can cost more than the fee saves. But if you are choosing between charging shipping and burying it in the price, the fee base is a real input, not a rounding error.

Fixed fees and the low-ticket penalty

Per-order fixed fees — Shopify's $0.30, PayPal's $0.49, eBay's $0.40, Etsy's $0.45 — vanish on a $200 order and dominate a $12 one. Poshmark replaces its percentage with a flat $2.95 below $15, which turns the most expensive platform on large orders into a mid-table option on small ones.

Here is a $12 item, no shipping charged, $4 product cost, $3 label:

Platform	Fee	Effective rate	Net profit
Shopify	$0.65	5.42%	$4.35
TikTok Shop	$0.72	6.00%	$4.28
PayPal invoice	$0.85	7.08%	$4.15
Etsy	$1.59	13.25%	$3.41
Amazon	$1.80	15.00%	$3.20
Walmart	$1.80	15.00%	$3.20
Poshmark	$2.95	24.58%	$2.05
eBay	$1.99	16.58%	$2.01

The ranking rearranges. PayPal was second on the $58 order and is third here, because $0.49 is 4.1% of $12. TikTok Shop's clean 6% with no fixed fee makes it the best percentage-only option at low ticket. Etsy's all-in cost on a $12 sale is exactly 13.25% — the number eBay puts on its marketing page. And eBay, thanks to the $0.40 rider, becomes the worst platform in the table, one cent behind Poshmark's flat fee.

The general rule: fixed fees make low-ticket selling a different business. Shopify's effective rate climbs from 3.41% to 5.42% between these two orders, PayPal's from 3.83% to 7.08%. If your average order is under $20, bundle, raise prices, or set a minimum — the arithmetic is against you otherwise, and no channel choice fixes it. Work out where your own threshold sits with the Profit Margin Calculator and the Break-Even Calculator.

What the wrong channel costs over a year

Fee differences look trivial per order and are not. Measured against Shopify on the $58 order:

Platform	Gap per order	Cost per year (120 orders)
PayPal invoice	$0.24	$28.80
TikTok Shop	$1.50	$180.00
Etsy	$3.98	$477.60
Amazon	$5.52	$662.40
Walmart	$5.52	$662.40
eBay	$6.11	$733.20
Poshmark	$9.62	$1,154.40

And the same $9.62 best-to-worst spread, scaled by volume:

Orders per month	Annual spread
10	$1,154.40
25	$2,886.00
50	$5,772.00
100	$11,544.00

At a hundred orders a month, the channel decision on a single $58 product is worth more than most sellers' entire software budget. It is also the least effortful lever available: no new creative, no new supplier, no new listings.

Subscriptions change the ranking at low volume

The table above prices transactions, not memberships. Shopify Basic is $39 a month and Amazon's Professional plan is $39.99 — costs that are invisible per order at volume and brutal at ten sales a month.

Orders per month	Shopify subscription per order	Shopify net per order	Poshmark net per order
3	$13.00	$22.02	$25.40
5	$7.80	$27.22	$25.40
10	$3.90	$31.12	$25.40
25	$1.56	$33.46	$25.40
50	$0.78	$34.24	$25.40

Below roughly four orders a month, the 20% marketplace beats the 3.41% store, because $39 spread over three sales costs $13.00 each. The crossover is at 39 ÷ 9.62 ≈ 4.05 orders. Amazon's $39.99 does the same thing to its $29.50: at ten orders a month that is $4.00 per order, leaving $25.50 — a nickel ahead of Poshmark.

This is the single most common error in channel selection. A seller doing four sales a week reads a fee comparison, opens a Shopify store, pays $468 a year in subscription plus a domain and an app or two, and ends up behind where they started. Fee rate is the right question only after you have volume; before that, fixed cost is the question. Etsy, eBay, Walmart and Poshmark charge nothing monthly, which is why they are the correct starting point for almost every new seller.

When the expensive platform is still the right answer

Fees are what a channel costs. They say nothing about what it delivers. Poshmark takes 20% and hands you a buyer; Shopify takes 3.41% and hands you an empty room you have to fill with paid traffic, SEO, or an audience you already own.

The honest way to compare is to ask how much extra volume the expensive channel needs to win. Earning $350.20 a month — what ten Shopify orders produce — requires:

Platform	Net per order	Orders needed for $350.20
Shopify	$35.02	10.0
PayPal invoice	$34.78	10.1
TikTok Shop	$33.52	10.4
Etsy	$31.04	11.3
Amazon	$29.50	11.9
eBay	$28.91	12.1
Poshmark	$25.40	13.8

Poshmark has to sell 38% more units than your own store to put the same money in your pocket. Etsy needs 13% more, Amazon 19%. Those are not big hurdles for a platform with millions of buyers browsing daily and a seller with none. If listing on Amazon doubles your unit volume, the 15% referral fee is the cheapest customer acquisition you will ever buy.

The comparison that matters is fees versus cost per acquisition, not fees versus zero. If your Shopify store needs $6 of ad spend to land the order that Etsy hands you for $3.98 more in fees, Etsy is the cheaper channel and the fee table is pointing you the wrong way. Work out what you can actually afford to pay for a customer with the Breakeven ROAS Calculator before treating "lowest fees" as "most profit".

Category fit belongs in the same judgment. Secondhand apparel moves on Poshmark and dies on Walmart. Handmade and personalized goods carry a price premium on Etsy that more than covers the extra 6.87 points over Shopify. Impulse-priced products under $30 with video appeal do things on TikTok Shop that no other channel replicates. The right question is never "which marketplace has the lowest fees" — it is which one sells your specific item at a price you could not get elsewhere.

Poshmark's shipping label, and what it is really worth

Poshmark's flat-rate label is the usual defence of its 20%, and it deserves a real number rather than a slogan. The buyer pays the label directly, so a Poshmark seller charges no shipping and pays no shipping.

Model that properly — item price $50, shipping charged $0, product cost $15, shipping cost $0 — and Poshmark nets $25.00. Against the $25.40 in the blended comparison, the label is worth roughly nothing on this order. You avoid the $6 label and the $1.60 of fee on shipping revenue, but you also give up the $8 the buyer would have paid.

The label earns its keep in two specific cases: heavy items where the flat rate is below your real postage, and sellers who would otherwise have offered free shipping and eaten the cost. On a $50 sweater in a poly mailer it is a wash. Price your own case in the Poshmark Fee Calculator rather than accepting the marketing.

Selling on more than one channel

Most established sellers do not pick one. They run a low-fee owned channel for the demand they generate themselves and a marketplace for the demand they cannot.

A structure that works: list on the marketplace that fits the category, put every insert card, email and social link into your own store, and let the fee difference accrue on repeat customers rather than first purchases. A customer acquired on Etsy at 10.28% who reorders twice on Shopify at 3.41% averages 5.7% across three orders. On our $58 order that is the difference between $31.04 and roughly $33.70 a sale.

Two costs to plan for. Inventory has to be synced or you will oversell, which on Amazon and Walmart damages account metrics that matter more than the fees. And price consistency is policed — Amazon's fair pricing policy and Walmart's price parity rules both react badly to finding your item cheaper elsewhere, so a channel-by-channel pricing strategy needs to be a net strategy, not a listed-price one.

Price for the channel, not once

If you list the same $50 everywhere, you are accepting a different margin on every platform — 60.38% on Shopify, 43.79% on Poshmark. Working backwards from a target instead keeps the margin steady and lets the price absorb the fee.

To keep $35.02 on Poshmark you would need to list at roughly $62.53: 20% of $62.53 is $12.51, leaving $50.02 against $15 of cost, so $35.02 net once the shipping side nets out. Whether the market bears a 25% higher price on Poshmark is an empirical question, and often it does not — which is itself useful information, because it tells you the channel is worth less than its fee.

Do the same exercise before running promotions. A 20% discount on a 20%-fee channel does not cost you 20% of profit; it costs you far more, because the fee is charged on the discounted price but your product cost is not discounted at all. The Discount Margin Calculator shows the real damage, and the Restocking Fee Calculator covers what returns do to the same order.

How to decide

1. Run the comparison on your actual best-seller, not an average. Averages hide the products where a channel is losing you money.
2. Add subscriptions at your real volume. Divide $39 or $39.99 by the orders you genuinely expect this month, not the ones you hope for.
3. Subtract fulfillment properly. Amazon FBA fees, Walmart's shipping, your own labels — a referral fee is not a landed cost. Get inventory cost right first with the Landed Cost Calculator.
4. Ask what the channel brings. If it delivers more than the extra-orders figure in the volume table above, the higher fee is an acquisition cost, and a cheap one.
5. Set price per channel so margin, not list price, is the constant.
6. Recheck when rates change. Every platform in this table has moved its rates in the last three years, and a change of one point on a 15% fee is $0.58 an order — $69.60 a year at ten orders a month.

Mistakes that cost sellers money

Comparing headline percentages. Etsy's 6.5% is 10.28% and Amazon's 15% is 12.93%. Neither number means what it says on the page.

Ignoring the fee base. Six of eight platforms charge on shipping revenue. Two do not. On a shipping-heavy order that is worth more than the rate difference between two mid-table channels.

Forgetting fixed fees on cheap items. eBay's $0.40 turns 13.25% into 16.58% on a $12 sale and drops it to last place.

Treating the subscription as overhead. At low volume it is the largest per-order cost you have, and it decides the ranking outright.

Choosing on fees alone. The cheapest channel is worthless without buyers. A 20% fee on sales you would not otherwise have made beats a 3% fee on nothing.

Never rechecking. Rates change, categories reclassify, and the channel that was cheapest when you started may not be now.

Related calculators

• Profit Margin Calculator — the margin every channel decision is really about
• Etsy Fee Calculator — itemized transaction, payment and listing fees
• eBay Fee Calculator — final value fees by category, including the fixed rider
• Amazon FBA Profit Calculator — referral plus fulfillment, storage and prep
• Shopify Fee Calculator — processing costs and plan economics on your own store
• Poshmark Fee Calculator — the flat-fee threshold and the 20% band
• Breakeven ROAS Calculator — what you can afford to pay for a customer off-marketplace