Should I move off marketplaces to my own store?
Almost every fee comparison on this page ends the same way: your own store charges the least. That is true on arithmetic and it is not, by itself, a reason to move. Here is a $60 item worked through at two different order volumes, so you can see when the fee advantage is real money and when it is a subscription you have not paid for yet.
Five orders a month
A $60 home-goods item, $28 of landed cost, sold five times a month. Every channel's net profit after fees:
| Channel | Net profit |
|---|---|
| TikTok Shop | $28.40 |
| Mercari | $26.00 |
| Etsy | $25.85 |
| eBay | $23.44 |
| Walmart | $23.00 |
| Your own Shopify store | $22.16 |
| Amazon | $15.00 |
At five orders a month, your own store nets less than five of the six marketplaces — not because its 2.9% payment-processing rate is high, but because the $39 Shopify subscription spread over five orders is $7.80 an order, and that dwarfs the rate advantage. Amazon has the same problem at a smaller scale: its $39.99 plan is $8.00 an order here, which is most of why it finishes last despite a referral rate no higher than Walmart's.
Sixty orders a month
Same item, same channels, same fee rates — only the volume changes:
| Channel | Net profit |
|---|---|
| Your own Shopify store | $29.31 |
| TikTok Shop | $28.40 |
| Mercari | $26.00 |
| Etsy | $25.85 |
| eBay | $23.44 |
| Walmart | $23.00 |
| Amazon | $22.33 |
At sixty orders a month the $39 subscription is 65¢ an order, small enough that the 2.9% processing rate can do its job, and your own store moves from sixth place to first — $0.91 ahead of TikTok Shop, the next best, and $7.15 ahead of where it stood at five orders. The rate never changed. The volume did.
The number this table cannot see
Every marketplace row assumes a buyer who was already looking. TikTok Shop, Etsy, eBay, Mercari, Walmart, and Amazon all send you shoppers who arrived on their own. Your own store sends you nobody — the sixty orders in the second table had to come from somewhere, and whatever you spent finding them (ads, an email list, a following built elsewhere) is not in either table above. A store that nets $29.31 on paper and spends $10 in ads to generate that order nets $19.31, which may no longer be the best row.
That is why the comparison tool marks every own-store result with a note rather than simply ranking it first: the fee arithmetic is honest, and it is only half the decision. The other half — do you already have buyers, or are you about to go find them — is not a number this page or the tool can supply. If you do not know the answer yet, the safer read of both tables is "keep listing on the marketplace that already sends you buyers, and treat your own store as a lower-fee option for the customers who already know your name."
What moves the crossover point
Fifty-nine orders is not a rule; it is where these particular numbers happened to cross. Three things move it:
- A higher-referral category moves it lower. On jewelry (20% at Amazon and Walmart) or clothing (17% at Amazon), the marketplace rows carry a heavier fee and your own store's 2.9% pulls ahead at a lower order count.
- A cheaper Shopify plan moves it lower. This page prices the $39 Basic plan; a seller already committed to Shopify at a higher tier for other reasons has already paid the fixed cost, so the marginal decision looks better sooner.
- Payment-processing surcharges push the other way. A store off Shopify's own checkout, or one paying a gateway a point above 2.9%, gives back part of the advantage this page assumes.
Run your own item and your own order count through the comparison rather than trusting the crossover point above — it moves with every input on this page.
Run the comparison on your item →
Fee rates quoted here were current when this page was written and are starting points, not a live fee schedule. Confirm against your own statement before pricing a catalogue against them.
No warranty. This page and the calculator it describes are provided free and as-is, without warranty of any kind, express or implied. This is an arithmetic comparison, not tax, financial, or business advice, and it does not replace a qualified professional. You are responsible for reviewing and verifying its output before relying on it. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the authors accept no liability for any loss or damage arising from its use.