Which marketplace has the lowest fees?
The short answer is that there isn't one. The cheapest channel changes with what you sell, and on two of the biggest marketplaces it changes by a factor of two and a half. Here is the arithmetic.
The flat-rate channels
Three of the six charge the same percentage whatever you sell:
- TikTok Shop — about 6% US referral on most categories.
- Etsy — 6.5% transaction plus about 3% payment processing, so roughly 9.5%, plus a $0.20 listing fee and $0.25 per payment.
- eBay — about 13.6% final value fee plus $0.40 per order.
If those were the only three, the ranking would never move and this page would not need to exist.
The category channels are where it flips
Amazon and Walmart charge a referral fee set by category. On the same $40 item, with the same $18 of landed cost:
| Channel | Total fees, electronics | Total fees, jewelry |
|---|---|---|
| TikTok Shop (6%) | $2.40 | $2.40 |
| Walmart (8% / 20%) | $3.20 | $8.00 |
| Amazon (8% / 20%) | $4.00 | $8.80 |
| Etsy (9.5%) | $4.25 | $4.25 |
| eBay (13.6%) | $5.84 | $5.84 |
Totals, not just the percentage: eBay's $0.40 per order and Etsy's $0.20 listing plus $0.25 payment fee are included, and Amazon's $39.99 monthly plan is spread over 50 orders a month at $0.80 each. Change the volume and the Amazon row moves.
On electronics, Amazon costs $1.84 an order less than eBay. On jewelry, it costs $2.96 more than eBay for the identical sale — and $4.55 more than Etsy, which was the more expensive of the two on electronics. A seller who learned "Amazon is cheaper" from an electronics listing and carried that to a jewelry listing has it backwards.
Three things that quietly move the answer
The fee is charged on shipping too. On every marketplace here, the percentage applies to the whole order — the item price plus any shipping the buyer paid. Folding postage into the price to advertise free shipping does not dodge it. A $35 item with $5 shipping and a $40 item with free shipping pay exactly the same fee.
Subscriptions are real money at low volume. Amazon's Professional plan is $39.99 a month and a Shopify Basic store is $39. At 100 orders a month that is 40 cents an order and barely matters. At 4 orders a month it is $10 an order and dominates every percentage on this page. The comparison asks for your order volume for exactly this reason.
The cheapest channel may send you nobody. Your own store pays payment processing of roughly 2.9% plus 30 cents and no referral fee at all, so on arithmetic it wins almost every comparison. But a marketplace fee is not a tax — it is what you pay for buyers who are already there. Your own store's higher net profit only exists on a sale you brought yourself, and the advertising that brings it is a cost no fee calculator can see.
What a headline rate cannot tell you
Each channel has a second layer this comparison deliberately leaves out, because it depends on the listing rather than the fee schedule:
- Amazon FBA fulfilment and storage, which turn on size tier and weight.
- Etsy Offsite Ads, which take another 12–15% on the orders they fire on.
- eBay Promoted Listings, where the rate is whatever you bid.
- TikTok creator commission, and the announced October 2026 move to 8% plus 1.5% facilitation.
- Shopify plan tiers, where a higher monthly fee buys a lower transaction rate.
- Walmart WFS fulfilment and storage.
Selling wholesale rather than retail is a different question again — see the Faire wholesale calculator.
Livestream auction fees are a different question again — commission on the hammer and processing on the checkout total, with category caps — see the Whatnot seller payout calculator.
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.