Marketplace fees compared
The headline percentage is the least useful number in this comparison. What decides your outcome is what the fee is charged on, and which of your costs the platform absorbs.
The structures side by side
| Channel | Commission | Charged on | Per-order fixed | Who pays postage | Fixed monthly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Etsy | Transaction fee | Item + shipping | Listing fee + processing fixed | You | None (optional plan) |
| eBay | Final value fee | Item + shipping | Per-order fee | You | None (optional Store) |
| Amazon FBM | Referral fee | Item + shipping | None | You | Selling plan |
| Amazon FBA | Referral fee + fulfilment fee | Item | Fulfilment by size/weight | Amazon | Selling plan + storage |
| Your own store | Payment fee only | Item + shipping | Payment fixed fee | You | Subscription |
The three differences that actually decide it
1. Whether the commission touches your postage. Etsy's documentation states its transaction fee applies to the total cost of the item along with shipping and gift wrap when you charge the customer for those. If you charge $9 postage, you do not get $9 towards the label — you get $9 minus the commission on it. Any calculator applying the percentage to the item price alone overstates what these channels pay you on every order with postage on it.
2. Whether the fee scales with your price. Percentage fees are proportional: they take the same share of a $10 sale and a $200 one. Amazon's FBA fulfilment fee is set by size and weight tier, so it is fixed in dollars regardless of price. The consequence is decisive — a flat fee is punishing on cheap items and can be excellent on expensive ones. A bulky $12 product can be structurally unprofitable on FBA no matter how well it sells.
3. Whether the cost is per-order or per-month. A marketplace charges only when you sell; your own store charges every month whether you sell or not. This makes the comparison volume-dependent rather than absolute: a $39 monthly plan costs $3.90 per order at 10 orders a month and about 10¢ at 400. Below roughly 20 orders a month, marketplace commission usually beats a subscription — and the marketplace supplies buyers, which your own store does not.
Why the highest fee can be the best outcome
A worked comparison from the case study — one $47 order, a product costing $15.70 with $10.75 of postage, packaging and handling:
| Channel | Fees | Net profit |
|---|---|---|
| Own store (45 orders/mo) | $2.53 | $18.02 |
| Amazon FBA | $13.45 | $17.85 |
| Etsy | $4.92 | $15.64 |
| eBay | $6.53 | $14.02 |
| Amazon FBM | $7.05 | $13.50 |
FBA charges 2.7 times what Etsy charges and nets more. It absorbs the $10.75 of fulfilment the seller would otherwise pay themselves, and that is worth more than the fee difference. Ranking channels by fee percentage would have produced exactly the wrong answer here.
This is the case for comparing net profit rather than fees, which is what the marketplace comparison calculator does with your own figures.
What the fees do not tell you
Fees are the measurable part of the decision and rarely the largest. Also worth weighing: how much traffic the channel brings you (a marketplace's whole value), how much of the customer relationship you keep, how much work each channel costs you in listing and support, and how exposed you are if a single platform suspends your account. Sellers who optimise purely on fees frequently move to the cheapest channel and sell less.