Shopify vs Etsy Fees: A Side-by-Side Comparison
Etsy and Shopify are two of the most popular ways for small businesses and makers to sell online, but they charge in very different ways. Etsy is a marketplace: it has no monthly subscription for a standard shop, but takes a percentage of every sale. Shopify is a platform for your own online store: you pay a monthly plan and lower per-order fees, but you bring your own customers. This guide sets out the published US fees for each, works through the same order on both, and shows how the comparison changes with the number of orders you get. All figures were checked on the official pages listed at the end.
Etsy fees at a glance (US seller)
- Listing fee: USD 0.20 per listing, renewed every four months or when an item sells (each extra unit sold also costs 0.20).
- Transaction fee: 6.5% of the item price plus the shipping and gift-wrap charges you set.
- Payment processing: 3% + USD 0.25 per order for a US bank account, charged on the order total including tax. Rates differ by country.
- Offsite Ads: 15% of an order that Etsy attributes to its offsite advertising, or 12% for shops that have made USD 10,000 or more in the past 365 days, capped at USD 100 per order. Shops below USD 10,000 can opt out.
- Optional: on-site Etsy Ads with a budget you set, and the optional Etsy Plus subscription.
Shopify fees at a glance (US store)
| Plan | Monthly billing | Yearly billing (per month) | Online card rate with Shopify Payments | Extra fee with a third-party provider |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | USD 39 | USD 29 | 2.9% + 30¢ | 2% |
| Grow | USD 105 | USD 89 | 2.7% + 30¢ | 1% |
| Advanced | USD 399 | USD 359 | 2.5% + 30¢ | 0.6% |
International cards add 1% with Shopify Payments. If you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, you pay that provider's own rate plus Shopify's third-party transaction fee shown above. Themes, apps and a custom domain can add further costs, and those depend entirely on your choices.
Worked example: one USD 60 order
Take a USD 50 item with USD 10 shipping charged to the buyer, so the order total is USD 60, with no sales tax.
On Etsy
- Listing fee: 0.20
- Transaction fee: 6.5% × 60 = 3.90
- Processing: 3% × 60 + 0.25 = 2.05
- Total: USD 6.15 (about 10.3% of the order)
If that order came through Offsite Ads at 15%, another USD 9.00 is added, for a total of USD 15.15.
On Shopify Basic with Shopify Payments
- Card processing: 2.9% × 60 + 0.30 = 2.04
- Plus a share of the plan fee, which depends on how many orders you get each month.
How order volume changes the picture
Because Shopify's plan is a fixed monthly cost, the cost per order falls as you sell more. Here is the total fee for the same USD 60 order on Shopify Basic, with the monthly plan cost shared across all orders:
| Orders per month | Shopify Basic, monthly billing | Shopify Basic, yearly billing | Etsy (no Offsite Ads) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | USD 9.84 | USD 7.84 | USD 6.15 |
| 10 | USD 5.94 | USD 4.94 | USD 6.15 |
| 30 | USD 3.34 | USD 3.01 | USD 6.15 |
| 100 | USD 2.43 | USD 2.33 | USD 6.15 |
For this order size, the fees on Shopify Basic drop below Etsy's at around 10 orders a month on monthly billing, and a little earlier on yearly billing. With larger order values, Etsy's percentage fees grow while Shopify's subscription stays the same, so the crossover comes sooner. With smaller order values it comes later. Use our Shopify fee calculator and Etsy fee calculator with your own numbers.
Fees are not the whole cost
The table makes Shopify look cheaper for any shop with steady orders, but that leaves out the biggest difference between the two: where the buyers come from.
- Etsy brings shoppers who are already searching the marketplace. Part of what you pay in fees is effectively a cost of reaching them.
- Shopify gives you your own store, brand and customer relationships, but no built-in marketplace traffic. You need to bring visitors through search engines, social media, email, advertising or offline sales, and those all cost time or money.
Other differences worth weighing:
- Control: on your own store you set the design, policies and customer communication. On a marketplace you follow its rules.
- Competition on the page: Etsy listing pages show other shops' items. Your own store shows only yours.
- Set-up effort: an Etsy shop can be live quickly. A Shopify store needs a theme, pages, policies and payment set-up.
- Extra costs: paid themes and apps on Shopify, ad spend on either platform, and the time you spend on marketing.
Many sellers use both
A common approach is to use Etsy to reach new buyers and a Shopify store for repeat customers, wholesale enquiries and people who find you through social media. If you do this, keep your pricing consistent and remember that fees differ, so the same price leaves a different profit on each channel.
How to decide
- Work out your typical order value and how many orders you get, or expect, each month.
- Calculate the per-order fees on each platform with your own numbers.
- Estimate what it would cost you to bring the same number of buyers to your own store.
- Compare profit per order after all costs, not just fees.
- Review again every few months, as both your volume and the platforms' fees change.
Fees vary by country, plan and payment method, and both companies update them from time to time. The figures above are US rates as published on the official pages below on the date shown at the top of this guide.
Sources
- Etsy Fees & Payments Policy
- Etsy Payments Policy – processing fees by country
- Etsy Help – How Offsite Ads work
- Shopify Pricing (US)
- Shopify Help – Shopify Payments fees
- Shopify Help – Third-party transaction fees
This guide is general information for sellers and is not financial, tax or legal advice. Marketplace rules and fees change, so always confirm in your own seller account. DailyToolLab is not affiliated with Etsy Inc., Shopify Inc. or eBay Inc.