Etsy vs Shopify vs Amazon: real fees, compared
Every comparison article gives you a static table of percentages. This one gives you the same, verified against the actual calculators behind each platform — then sends you to run your own product through all three before deciding anything.
The real question isn't which platform is best
"Which platform is best for selling online" has no single answer, because the honest answer depends entirely on the specific product, its price point, and whether the seller already has an audience or needs the marketplace to supply one. A comparison table of percentages is a starting point, not a verdict — the same fee structure produces very different real margins on a $15 product versus a $150 one, even before any difference in traffic or conversion rate between the platforms is factored in at all.
This page exists to show the actual mechanics side by side, using the same formulas that power the dedicated calculator for each platform — not a simplified or rounded version built just for comparison purposes.
Every number quoted here traces back to a real, working calculator elsewhere on this site — the Amazon FBA, Etsy fee, and Shopify order profit calculators each compute their platform's figures independently, using the platform's actual published fee schedule rather than a rounded estimate built just for this page. This page synthesizes those three tools into one comparison rather than introducing a fourth, separate set of assumptions on top of what already exists.
Who reaches for this
Wants a real sense of the fee gap between platforms before committing to one.
Wants to know what a second channel actually costs before expanding into it.
Wants to understand what the higher fee percentage would buy in exchange — mainly, traffic.
Wants to see the real margin gap before investing time in building a Shopify presence.
Wants to know how the platform decision itself changes what price point actually makes the product profitable.
The fee stack, side by side
Each platform charges fees in a genuinely different shape, not just a different number — comparing them fairly means comparing the full stack, not a single headline percentage pulled from a marketing page.
Shopify has no marketplace commission at all — its fee is purely a payment processing charge. Etsy and Amazon both charge a real commission on top of payment processing, because both are supplying something Shopify doesn't: built-in buyer traffic actively searching the marketplace for products like this one.
Amazon's referral fee also varies more than the other two platforms' fees by category — the commonly cited 15% figure is a general starting point, but rates range roughly 8-17% depending on category, with some categories carrying sharp price-based jumps at specific thresholds. Etsy's and Shopify's percentage fees, by contrast, stay flat regardless of what's being sold, which makes the Amazon side of any comparison the one most worth double-checking against the actual category before trusting a general number rather than the specific published rate for that category.
Why the percentages don't tell the whole story
A lower fee percentage looks like an obvious win until the cost of generating a sale is added back in. Etsy and Amazon charge more per sale specifically because part of that fee buys access to shoppers already searching the platform — a Shopify store keeps more of each sale but has to generate every visitor itself, usually through paid ads or SEO that cost real money.
This is exactly why break-even ROAS matters more than the raw fee percentage once advertising enters the picture: a product with a thinner margin after fees has a higher break-even ROAS ceiling, meaning it can absorb less ad spend before losing money on the sale. The break-even ROAS calculator and the platform-specific calculators linked throughout this page compute that ceiling directly, using each platform's real fee stack rather than a rough estimate.
Applying the 1-divided-by-margin formula to the worked example's three margins makes the gap concrete: Etsy's 55.3% margin gives a break-even ROAS of about 1.81×, Shopify's 62.2% margin gives about 1.61×, and Amazon's thinner 35.0% margin after fees gives a meaningfully higher 2.86× ceiling. The same ad campaign, run at the same ROAS, can be comfortably profitable on Shopify and already losing money on Amazon for the identical product — the fee stack difference doesn't just change profit, it changes how much advertising risk the same identical product can actually safely absorb before an otherwise well-performing campaign turns unprofitable on that specific platform.
The same order, three platforms
A $35 item with $6 charged for shipping — a $41 total buyer payment — with $14 in cost of goods, run through each platform's actual fee structure.
Etsy
$0.20 listing fee + 6.5% transaction fee + 3% + $0.25 payment processing fee
Net profit
$22.66
55.3% margin
Shopify (Basic)
2.9% + $0.30 processing fee only, no listing or transaction fee
Net profit
$25.51
62.2% margin
Amazon FBA
15% referral + FBA fulfillment + other costs
Net profit
$14.35
35.0% margin
On the identical order, Shopify nets the most in raw dollars and the highest margin, Etsy sits in the middle, and Amazon FBA nets the least — a direct reflection of how much of the selling process each platform handles versus how much the seller handles independently. This is one price point and one cost structure; a different item price or a different Amazon category's referral rate would shift the exact numbers without changing the underlying order.
How price point changes the comparison
The $41 order above is one point on a curve — the fee gap between platforms shifts meaningfully at different price points, and not in the same direction for every platform.
Amazon's fee percentage is the most sensitive to price point of the three, and it moves the most sharply on cheap items — a $16 order loses 40% to fees, almost 10 points worse than the $41 example, because the flat FBA fulfillment fee stays roughly constant in dollars while the order total shrinks around it. Etsy shows the same pattern for the same reason (its $0.20 flat listing fee), just less dramatically. Shopify barely moves at all across this range, since its fee is almost entirely percentage-based with only a small $0.30 flat component. Low-priced products are structurally the worst fit for Amazon FBA and the best relative fit for Shopify, independent of any other factor in the comparison.
When each platform actually wins
The product is handmade, vintage, or craft-adjacent, the seller has no existing audience, and marketplace search traffic matters more than maximizing margin on each individual sale sold through the platform.
The seller already has traffic — an existing audience, an email list, or a working ad channel — or is building a brand where owning the full customer relationship matters more than marketplace convenience alone.
The product benefits from Amazon’s scale and Prime-eligible fast shipping, the category has real search volume on Amazon specifically, and the margin can comfortably absorb the higher combined fee stack across referral and fulfillment costs together.
Many sellers eventually run more than one of these simultaneously — using a marketplace for discovery while building a Shopify store for the higher-margin, repeat-customer relationship over time. The decision isn't always exclusive; it's about which platform to prioritize first, and which to add once the product and audience justify the added operational complexity.
A few dimensions beyond fees matter enough to weigh directly, not just infer from the margin comparison alone.
No single row settles the decision on its own — a seller prioritizing brand ownership above everything else may accept Shopify's lack of built-in traffic as a worthwhile trade, while a seller who values speed to first sale above brand control may reasonably prioritize Etsy or Amazon's existing audience instead, even at a lower margin per sale on every single order sold through that channel.
Running your own numbers
The worked example above uses one price point and one cost structure — the real answer for a specific product comes from running its actual numbers through each platform's dedicated calculator, not from reading a general comparison.
Computes referral fee, FBA fulfillment fee, net profit, and the break-even ACOS ceiling for ad spend on that specific product.
Computes listing, transaction, and processing fees, plus what happens to margin once the mandatory Offsite Ads fee applies past $10,000 in sales.
Computes real per-order margin after Shopify Payments fees, plus the break-even ROAS that same order can survive.
For an existing Shopify store, computes the sales volume where upgrading to a higher plan tier actually starts saving money.
The real cost of running more than one platform
Adding a second sales channel isn't free, even when the fee math looks favorable on paper — the operational cost of running two platforms at once is a real, separate line item most fee comparisons leave out entirely.
Selling the same product on two platforms without real-time inventory sync risks overselling — a sale on one channel needs to reduce available stock on the other immediately, which usually means paying for a sync tool or app subscription.
Each platform has its own messaging system and support expectations — running Etsy, Amazon, and Shopify simultaneously means monitoring three separate inboxes, not one consolidated one, unless a help-desk tool is added to unify them.
Product photos, descriptions, and pricing have to be maintained separately on each platform, or synced through a tool — a real time cost that scales with catalog size.
A product’s review history and seller reputation typically don’t transfer between platforms — a five-year-old Etsy shop with strong reviews starts from zero credibility on a new Amazon listing.
None of this means multi-channel selling is a mistake — many successful sellers run exactly this setup deliberately. It means the decision to add a second platform should weigh the incremental margin against this real operational cost, not just the fee percentage gap between platforms in isolation.
A practical starting point for most sellers is adding channels one at a time, with enough gap between each addition to see whether the operational overhead is genuinely manageable before layering on another platform on top of it. Adding all three simultaneously from a standing start is a common way the operational cost quietly outpaces the margin benefit that looked clear on paper before any of it was actually running day to day.
Revisiting the channel mix periodically, rather than treating the initial decision as permanent, is worth building into a regular business review — a channel that made sense at launch can become a net drag once volume, margin, and available time have all shifted meaningfully from where they started.
Common mistakes
Shopify’s lower fee assumes the seller already has a way to reach buyers — a brand-new store with no traffic faces a real customer-acquisition cost the percentage comparison doesn’t include.
The fee gap shifts with price point, category, and shipping cost — a comparison run on one product doesn’t automatically apply to a different one.
The commonly cited 15% is a general figure, not universal — some categories run meaningfully higher or lower, and the actual rate for a specific product should be checked before assuming 15%.
Many successful sellers run multiple channels at once, using each platform for what it’s actually good at rather than picking a single permanent home for every product.
A generic table (including this page’s own worked example) illustrates the pattern — the actual number for a specific product needs the dedicated calculator, not an extrapolation from someone else’s example.
A low-priced item loses proportionally more to Amazon’s flat FBA fulfillment fee than a higher-priced one — the same product line at different price tiers can face meaningfully different real fee percentages.
Amazon and Etsy generally handle marketplace facilitator tax automatically; a self-hosted Shopify store usually doesn’t, shifting real compliance work onto the seller that a pure fee comparison never accounts for.
A higher break-even ROAS ceiling on one platform isn’t automatically better or worse — it directly reflects that platform’s thinner margin, and needs to be read alongside the margin figure, not in isolation.
What this page can't tell you
This is a general comparison built from one worked example, not a specific recommendation for any individual product. It doesn't know a specific Amazon category's actual referral rate, which ranges roughly 8-17% and meaningfully changes the Amazon side of the comparison for a specific item. It also doesn't know a specific Shopify plan tier or Etsy Offsite Ads status, both of which shift the real numbers away from the defaults used in the worked example above.
It also can't predict how much traffic or conversion rate a specific product would actually get on each platform — a strong product with weak Amazon search visibility might sell far better on Etsy despite the lower fee gap suggesting Shopify should win, and the reverse is equally possible. Fee comparison is one real input to the platform decision, not a substitute for understanding where a specific product's actual buyers are already searching for something like it right now.
It doesn't model tax collection and remittance differences between platforms — Amazon and Etsy both handle marketplace facilitator tax collection in most US states automatically, while a Shopify store owner is generally responsible for configuring and remitting sales tax independently, an administrative burden with real compliance risk that doesn't show up anywhere in a fee percentage comparison. It also doesn't account for currency conversion costs on international sales, which differ by platform and add a further layer this comparison assumes away.
It also can't tell a specific seller how much their own time is worth, which matters more than the fee gap in many real decisions. A platform with a meaningfully higher fee but a much simpler, faster listing and fulfillment workflow can still be the better choice for a seller whose limited time is the actual constraint, not the fee percentage — a trade-off no purely financial comparison can settle on its own, and one that varies enormously from one seller's actual situation to the next.
Frequently asked questions
Shopify, by a wide margin, on the percentage-fee comparison alone — roughly 3.6% versus Etsy's 10.6% and Amazon's 30.9% on the same order in the worked example on this page. But Shopify's lower fee doesn't include the cost of generating traffic, which Etsy and Amazon supply as part of the marketplace — the real comparison has to include that trade-off, not just the fee percentage.
Amazon's referral fee (commonly 15%, category-dependent) applies before any fulfillment cost is added, and FBA fulfillment fees stack on top of that as a separate charge covering pick, pack, and ship. Etsy's transaction and processing fees are lower individually, and Shopify has no marketplace commission at all — only a payment processing fee. The gap reflects how much of the selling process each platform actually handles on the seller's behalf versus how much the seller handles independently.
Not directly in the headline numbers, but it matters enormously in practice. Amazon and Etsy sellers commonly need PPC or Offsite Ads spend to be found at all in a crowded marketplace; a Shopify store needs to generate its own traffic entirely, usually through paid ads or SEO. The break-even ROAS a product can survive differs by platform because the underlying margin differs — the Amazon FBA and Shopify order profit calculators both compute this directly.
Yes, and many sellers do — using Amazon and Etsy for marketplace discovery while building a Shopify store for owned-audience, higher-margin sales over time. The trade-off is real: each platform adds its own fee structure, inventory sync complexity, and customer-service overhead, so the decision to add a channel should weigh the incremental margin against the incremental operational cost, not just the fee percentage in isolation.
Often yes, especially for a new seller with no existing traffic or audience — Etsy's built-in buyer search traffic has real value that a brand-new Shopify store starts without. The fee difference matters more once a seller already has traffic, an audience, or a marketing channel that doesn't depend on Etsy's marketplace search to find customers, at which point the lower Shopify fee starts to matter more than the traffic Etsy supplies.
The percentages here are one worked example at one specific price point and cost structure — they illustrate the pattern, not a universal number for every product. Referral fees vary by Amazon category, Etsy's flat listing fee matters more on low-priced items, and Shopify's rate depends on the specific plan tier in use. Running your own numbers through each platform's dedicated calculator, linked throughout this page, gives the accurate figure for your specific product rather than an extrapolation from a general example.
Amazon Handmade waives the standard Professional selling plan fee and charges a flat referral fee (commonly cited around 15%) with no separate FBA requirement, which shifts the Amazon side of this comparison somewhat for approved handmade sellers specifically. The core trade-off against Etsy and Shopify — marketplace reach and built-in traffic versus lower fees and full brand control — still applies in the same shape.
This page focuses on the three platforms most commonly compared for physical-product sellers building a first online store, but the same fee-stack logic applies to any marketplace: a referral or transaction fee for access to marketplace traffic, versus a lower processing-only fee for a self-hosted store that has to generate its own traffic. The specific percentages differ by platform, but the underlying trade-off doesn't.
A commonly cited approach is starting on a marketplace (Etsy or Amazon) to validate demand with minimal upfront cost and existing traffic, then building a Shopify store once there's a proven product and some initial customer base to migrate or market to directly. Starting with a Shopify store and no existing audience means the full cost of customer acquisition falls on the seller from day one, with none of Shopify's fee advantage yet outweighing that traffic gap.
Etsy Plus is a $10/month optional subscription that doesn't change the core listing, transaction, or processing fees this comparison is built on — it adds a listing credit and store customization tools instead. A Shopify plan upgrade genuinely does change the numbers, lowering the processing rate from 2.9% on Basic to as low as 2.5% on Advanced, which is exactly what the dedicated Shopify plan break-even calculator checks against actual sales volume.
Marketplaces generally have the edge here, since they supply search traffic to a product with zero brand recognition — a new Shopify store has no equivalent built-in discovery mechanism. Once a product has proven demand, the calculation shifts toward whichever platform delivers the best real margin for that specific item, which the calculators linked throughout this page can check directly.
Substantially — digital products have no shipping cost and often no COGS beyond the initial creation cost, which changes the fee math meaningfully since two of the three platforms' fees (Etsy's processing fee, Shopify's processing fee) still apply to digital sales the same way, but Amazon FBA specifically doesn't fit digital products at all, since FBA is a physical fulfillment service built around pick, pack, and ship. Etsy explicitly supports digital downloads; Shopify supports them through apps or native digital product features depending on the specific plan in use.
Each platform handles refunded fees differently, and none of the three fully refunds every fee component on a returned order. Etsy generally returns the transaction and processing fee but not the listing fee; Shopify similarly returns the percentage-based fee but has historically varied on the flat $0.30 portion; Amazon charges a separate return processing fee on many refunded orders. A category with a high return rate should treat all three platforms' margins as somewhat optimistic until actual return data is factored in.
Run your own product through the Amazon FBA, Etsy, or Shopify calculator, free.
Glossary:Profit Margin,ROAS
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