The same product at the same price pays a different fee on every platform, and the gap is usually larger than sellers expect — often several hundred dollars a month at modest volume.
$1,104Per month, for the same product at the same price.
Cost breakdown
Estimated cost of each component, with low, typical, and high values.
Component
Low
Typical
High
Best monthly profit — Your own site or in person
$2,239.50
$2,239.50
$2,239.50
The rows above are the figures the best monthly profit — your own site or in person is worked out from, not parts that add up to it.
For reference — already included above
Your own site or in person — fees per unit$1.61
Shopify (Basic) — fees per unit$1.86
TikTok Shop — fees per unit$2.70
Etsy — fees per unit$4.73
eBay — fees per unit$6.52
Amazon — fees per unit$12.65
What moved your estimate
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Your own site or in person keeps you the most — decreases the estimate
At $45.00 and 100 units a month, Your own site or in person leaves about $2,240 against $1,135 on Amazon — a spread of $1,104 a month for selling exactly the same product.
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These are estimates, not guaranteed payouts
Every figure here is what the published rates work out to, not what a platform will actually pay you. Category rates, seller tiers, store subscriptions, promotional periods, and regional variations all change the answer, and the schedules themselves change with little notice. Check your platform’s current terms before pricing on this.
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Where a subscription beats a commission
Shopify keeps $1.09 more per unit than TikTok Shop, so its $25.00 monthly fee pays for itself at about 23 units a month. You are at 100. Above the crossover. This ignores the real difference, which is that marketplaces bring buyers and your own site does not.
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You are absorbing shipping — increases the estimate
$6.00 a unit comes straight out of your margin. Charging it instead would not escape the fees — Etsy and eBay both apply their percentage to shipping you collect — but it would still leave you ahead by most of it.
How this number was produced+
Gross per sale$45.00 price + $0.00 shipping charged$45.00
Direct cost$15.00 product + $6.00 shipping$21.00
Your own site or in person fees2.9% + $0.30 card processing only. No platform fee, and no audience either.$1.60
Your own site or in person net per unit$45.00 − $21.00 − $1.60$22.39
Monthly profit$22.39 × 100$2,240
Adjustments applied
Amount fees are charged on×1.00
$45.00 — price plus shipping you collect. Most marketplaces charge their percentage on the whole amount.
Direct cost share×0.47
$21.00 of product and shipping cost per unit.
Notes and sources7 notes, 1 source
Worth knowing
These are estimated payouts based on each platform’s published fee schedule, not guaranteed amounts. No platform has verified these figures and none of them are affiliated with this site.
Every fee model is versioned and dated independently. As recorded here: Etsy 2026.07.1 verified 2026-07-31; eBay 2026.07.1 verified 2026-07-31; Amazon 2026.07.1 verified 2026-07-31; Shopify 2026.07.1 verified 2026-07-31; TikTok Shop 2026.07.1 verified 2026-07-31.
eBay's fee page blocks automated retrieval, so its rate comes from eBay's own published help content rather than a direct read, and category rates range from about 2.5% to 15.3%. The default here is the commonly published figure for most categories without a store subscription — set it to your own category's rate.
Shopify Payments card rates were not published on the page retrieved, so the processing rate defaults to a typical online card rate and is yours to replace. The same default is used for selling direct.
Amazon fulfilment fees depend on product dimensions and weight and cannot be derived from price, so they are a field you fill in from Amazon’s own calculator. Media items also carry an additional closing fee not included here.
The largest difference between these platforms is not the fee. Marketplaces bring you buyers; your own store does not, and the cost of acquiring traffic is real, highly variable, and not something any calculator can estimate for you. A lower fee on a channel with no customers is not a better deal.
Sales tax is not modeled. Most marketplaces collect and remit it as a marketplace facilitator, which changes both the amount you handle and your own filing obligations. Your responsibilities depend on where you and your buyers are, and are worth confirming properly rather than assuming.
Sources
Published seller fee schedules from each platform: Etsy Fees & Payments Policy and Help Center, eBay Selling Fees help pages, Amazon Selling on Amazon fee schedule, Shopify pricing page, TikTok Shop US Seller UniversitysecondaryJuly 2026retrieved 2026-07-31
Best monthly profit — Your own site or in person$2,239.50exact
This puts each platform’s published rates side by side. Every fee model carries its own version and the date it was last verified, because these schedules change and a stale number here would be worse than no number at all.
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Methodology
How this calculator works
Where the rates come from, and how they are dated
Each platform’s figures are taken from its own published seller fee schedule and stored as a separate, versioned model with the date it was last verified and a link to the source. The result panel shows those dates, and so do the notes, because a marketplace fee is only as good as the day it was checked.
Confidence is recorded honestly per platform. Etsy and Amazon were confirmed directly against their published pages. eBay blocks automated retrieval, so its rate comes from eBay’s own help content rather than a direct read, and it is flagged as such. Shopify’s card processing rate was not on the page retrieved, so a typical online rate stands in and is labelled as a figure you should replace.
Nothing here is endorsed by or affiliated with any platform, and none of it is a guaranteed payout — it is arithmetic on published rates.
Fees apply to shipping
Etsy charges its 6.5% transaction fee on the shipping price you set. eBay’s final value fee applies to the total amount of the sale including shipping and sales tax. This surprises sellers who move cost into shipping expecting to avoid the commission.
The practical consequence is that free shipping is not a marketing cost you can offset by charging for postage instead — either way the platform takes its percentage of the whole amount. What actually changes is whether the buyer sees the cost.
Subscription against commission
Shopify charges a monthly fee and no commission; marketplaces charge a commission and no monthly fee. There is always a crossover volume where one overtakes the other, and the calculator works it out for your numbers.
That crossover is not the decision, though. A marketplace brings buyers who are already looking; your own store brings none, and the cost of getting them there is real, variable, and not something any calculator can predict. Sellers who move to their own site for the fee saving and lose the traffic usually end up worse off.
Location and data
Where the numbers come from
This calculator does not ask where you live, because the answer is the same in every state: it is arithmetic on the figures you enter and the published figures listed below. That is also why the result reports high confidence — there is no regional estimate in it to be uncertain about.
Nothing you enter is transmitted or stored. The calculation runs entirely in your browser, and the only place your inputs appear is in the page URL, so you can bookmark or share a result if you choose to.
secondaryJuly 2026v2026.07.1
Published seller fee schedules from each platform: Etsy Fees & Payments Policy and Help Center, eBay Selling Fees help pages, Amazon Selling on Amazon fee schedule, Shopify pricing page, TikTok Shop US Seller University
Every platform's fee model is versioned separately and carries its own last-verified date and source link, because they change independently and often. Marketplace fees are the most volatile data on this site — a rate can change with a month's notice — so any result built on them is an estimate of what a payout would be under the rates recorded here, never a guarantee of what a platform will actually pay. Each rate is editable in the calculator. Where a figure could not be confirmed by directly retrieving the platform's page, that is recorded on the platform entry rather than glossed over.
These are the figures we chose rather than measured. For each one we record the range of values found across references, what we selected, and why — because an estimate you cannot interrogate is not much better than a guess. The 1 marked high risk are the ones most likely to be wrong and most consequential when they are.
Published marketplace seller fee rateshigh riskmedium confidence+
Observed range
0.06 — 0.45 (typical 0.115)percent of sale and flat fees, varying by platform
Why this value
Each platform's rates are taken from its own published seller fee schedule and stored as a separately versioned model with its own last-verified date and source link. The typical value here is roughly the all-in load on a mid-priced item across the marketplaces; the range spans TikTok's 6% referral fee at one end and Amazon's 45% device-accessory category at the other.
Applies to
US schedules only. Every platform charges differently in other markets.
Known limits
This is the most volatile data on the site and the highest-risk entry in this registry. Rates change with little notice, and category, seller tier, store subscription, promotional period, and region all alter what a seller is actually charged. Every rate is editable in the calculator, every result is labelled an estimate rather than a guaranteed payout, and no platform has verified or endorsed these figures. Quarterly review is the shortest cycle used anywhere on this site and is still not frequent enough to guarantee currency.
Sources
Etsy Fees & Payments Policy and Help Center — confirmed directly; Amazon Selling on Amazon fee schedule — confirmed directly; eBay Selling Fees help pages — page blocks automated retrieval; figures from eBay's own published help content; Shopify pricing page — plan costs confirmed; Shopify Payments card rates were not on the page retrieved; TikTok Shop US Seller University — 6% referral rate, set 1 April 2024
Last verified
2026-07-31 · reviewed quarterly
Online card processing ratemedium confidence+
Observed range
0.022 — 0.036 (typical 0.029)percent of transaction plus a flat fee
Why this value
2.9% plus 30 cents is the widely published online rate for small merchants across major processors. Used as the default wherever a platform's own processing rate is not published, notably for Shopify Payments and for selling direct.
Applies to
US card-present and card-not-present rates differ, as do rates for international cards. Only the domestic online rate is modeled.
Known limits
Negotiated rates, interchange-plus pricing, and volume tiers all beat this for larger merchants. The flat component matters far more than the percentage on low-value items, which is why it is exposed as its own field.
Sources
Commonly published small-merchant online rates across major processors; Not taken from any single provider's schedule, and explicitly presented in the calculator as a figure to replace with your own
Last verified
2026-07-31 · reviewed annual
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Cost factors
What changes the price most
Which platform
The whole point of the comparison. Fees on the same sale can differ by more than 10 percentage points.
Category
Amazon referral fees range from 8% to 45%; eBay from about 2.5% to 15.3%. Getting your own category right matters more than choosing the platform.
Price point
Flat per-order and per-listing fees dominate cheap items, so low-priced products are the most fee-sensitive.
Fulfilment
On Amazon this is often larger than the referral fee itself, and it depends on size and weight rather than price.
Volume
Decides whether a subscription model beats a commission one. Below the crossover, marketplaces win.
Traffic
Not modeled and frequently decisive. A lower fee on a channel with no buyers is not a saving.
Questions
Frequently asked
Which marketplace has the lowest fees?
+
On published rates alone, TikTok Shop’s 6% referral fee is the lowest of the marketplaces, ahead of Amazon at 8% to 15% by category, Etsy at about 9.5% all-in, and eBay in the low teens. But affiliate commission on TikTok and fulfilment fees on Amazon can reverse that entirely, which is why the calculator takes both as inputs.
How much does Etsy take per sale?
+
A $0.20 listing fee, a 6.5% transaction fee, and 3% plus $0.25 in payment processing — roughly $4.45 on a $45 sale, about 9.9%. The transaction fee also applies to any shipping you charge, which sellers routinely overlook.
What are eBay final value fees?
+
A percentage of the total sale including shipping and sales tax, plus a per-order fee of $0.30 on orders up to $10 and $0.40 above that. The percentage depends heavily on category, running from about 2.5% to 15.3%, so set the rate above to match yours.
Is Shopify cheaper than a marketplace?
+
Per sale, usually — there is no commission, only card processing. But there is a monthly subscription, so it only wins above a crossover volume, which this calculator works out for your figures. The bigger consideration is that marketplaces supply buyers and your own store does not.
Are these payout figures guaranteed?
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No. They are estimates from each platform’s published rates as of the verification dates shown. Category rates, seller tiers, store subscriptions, promotional periods, and regional differences all change what you are actually charged, and schedules change with little notice. Confirm against your platform’s current terms before pricing on this.