Marketplace Comparison Calculator
Enter your product once. This ranks every selling channel by what you would actually keep — because the platform with the lowest headline fee is frequently not the one that pays you most.
Result
$0.00
Where the money goes
Saving keeps your figures on this device only — nothing is sent anywhere.
Why this tool exists
Every large calculator on this topic is owned by a company with a stake in the answer. Shopify's calculator will not tell you that Etsy nets you more on a $12 handmade item. Amazon's tool models Amazon. Etsy-focused tools model Etsy. Each is accurate and each is answering a narrower question than the one most sellers actually have, which is simply: of the places I could list this, which one pays me most?
This tool has no stake in the answer. It applies each channel's fee structure to the same product and ranks the outcomes.
The fee structures being compared
The important differences are structural, not just percentage-level:
- Etsy and eBay charge their percentage on shipping too. Etsy's documentation states the 6.5% applies to the total cost of the item along with shipping and gift wrap when you charge the customer for those. A tool that fees only the item price will overstate what these channels pay you.
- eBay's final value fee is tiered, not flat. The headline rate (13.25% in most categories) applies only to the portion of the order up to $7,500; above that threshold the rate drops to about 2.35%. Almost every simple calculator applies the headline rate to the whole amount, which overstates the fee on any high-value order. Both the threshold and the upper rate are editable above. eBay also gives qualifying Top Rated Sellers a 10% discount off that fee — enter it if you have it, because nothing else in the comparison moves the number as cheaply.
- Etsy's Offsite Ads is a separate levy, and it only fires sometimes. When a sale is attributed to Etsy's offsite advertising, Etsy takes an additional 15% of the order — reduced to 12% for shops over $10,000 a year, where the programme is also mandatory rather than optional. It is left at 0 above because it does not apply to a normal organic sale, but a shop whose traffic leans on Offsite Ads should model it: it is large enough to reverse the entire ranking.
- Amazon FBA replaces your postage cost with a fulfilment fee. That is why the FBA row can win on a heavy item and lose badly on a cheap light one: the fee is set by size and weight tier, not by your price, so it does not shrink as your margin thins.
- Your own store has near-zero per-sale commission but a fixed monthly cost. Its true per-order fee therefore depends entirely on volume — the subscription divided across however many orders you actually get. At 10 orders a month a $39 plan costs $3.90 per order; at 400 orders it costs about 10¢. This is the single most misunderstood number in the comparison, so it is an input above rather than an assumption.
How to read the result
The table ranks channels by net profit on one order. Two things are worth more attention than the winner itself:
The size of the gap. If the top three are within a few cents, fees are not your deciding factor — reach, competition and how much work each channel costs you are. Pick on those instead. If the gap is a dollar or more per order, it compounds into real money: 50¢ per order over 300 orders a year is $150 of pure margin decided by nothing but where you listed.
Which rows go negative. A channel showing a loss on your product is not a channel to fix with volume. It is telling you the product's price does not survive that fee structure, and selling more of it there loses more money.
The multi-channel answer
Most established sellers do not pick one. They list where reach is highest and steer repeat buyers to the channel with the best margin, which is usually their own store — the one whose per-order cost falls as volume rises rather than staying fixed forever. The comparison above is how you find out which of your channels is worth steering people to.
Questions
Which marketplace has the lowest fees?
It depends on the product, and that is not a dodge — it is the actual finding. Percentage-based channels like Etsy and eBay treat a cheap item relatively kindly and take a large absolute cut of an expensive one. Amazon FBA's flat fulfilment fee does the reverse: it is punishing on a low-priced item and can be excellent on a heavier, higher-priced one. Your own store has the lowest commission but a fixed monthly cost that only becomes cheap at volume. Enter your real numbers above rather than trusting any general ranking.
Does this include advertising costs?
No, and deliberately so — ad spend varies far too much between sellers to model as a channel property. If you know your realistic advertising cost per sale on a channel, add it to the product cost field to see the effect. Amazon and Etsy sellers who rely on internal ads should do exactly that, because it often changes the ranking.
Why is my own store not always the winner?
Because the monthly subscription has to be paid out of the orders you actually get. Below roughly 20 orders a month, a $39 plan usually costs more per order than a marketplace commission would, and marketplaces bring their own traffic while your store does not. Volume is what makes an owned store the cheapest channel — not the fee schedule alone.
Is this affiliated with any of these platforms?
No. It is an independent tool with no relationship to Etsy, eBay, Amazon or Shopify, and no affiliate arrangement with any of them. That independence is the entire reason it can rank them against each other.
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