Marketplace fee calculator
Fee rates differ by category, country, seller level and plan, and every platform changes them. Take your real rates from your own account rather than the defaults here, and note that advertising is not included on any tab except the own-store one.
Net proceeds are everything the customer pays, less a percentage fee, a fixed fee and any listing or fulfilment charges, less your own costs. A 29.99 Amazon item at a 15% referral fee, 3.50 fulfilment, 0.40 of monthly seller fee spread over the unit and 8.00 of goods leaves about 13.59 per unit before advertising — 13.99 if you sell on a plan with no per-unit fee at all. The effective fee rate is always higher than the headline percentage.
How to compare platform fees
Every e-commerce platform charges in the same two parts, and the fixed half is what makes low-value sales uneconomic. The effective rate row exposes it: a 0.30 fixed fee is 0.6% of a 50 order and 6% of a 5 order, so a platform with a low percentage and a high fixed fee is expensive for small baskets and cheap for large ones. That single fact drives minimum order values, bundle pricing and free-shipping thresholds far more than the headline commission does. Beyond the fee table, each platform has a cost that is easy to leave out. On Amazon it is advertising: an ACoS of 20% on a 30 item is six pounds a unit, comfortably more than the referral fee, and long-term storage charges quietly turn slow-moving stock into a liability. On Etsy the cost most sellers under-count is their own labour, because a handmade item taking ninety minutes and returning twelve of margin is paying eight an hour before admin, photography and the listing renewal that lands every four months. That is the single most common reason a busy Etsy shop still loses money. Payment processing is the other Etsy line that goes missing: it sits on top of the 6.5% transaction fee at about 3% plus a fixed amount in the US, and it varies by country, so the tab here asks for one combined percentage rather than pretending the transaction fee is the whole story. On a Shopify store the commission disappears and customer acquisition appears in its place, usually larger than any marketplace fee would have been, which is why the honest comparison is marketplace commission against CAC plus platform costs, and why a direct store only really wins on the second order. The own-store tab is the one that counts acquisition, and the figure it reports is contribution: what one more order adds after everything that scales with it, before rent, salaries and software.
What people use it for
- Finding the price at which a sale breaks even
- Comparing two selling platforms on the same sale
- Setting a minimum order value
- Checking net proceeds before accepting an offer
- Deciding whether a product is worth sourcing for FBA
- Working out how much ad spend an FBA unit can carry
- Pricing a handmade item so the making time is paid for
- Deciding whether free shipping is affordable
- Setting prices for a direct-to-consumer Shopify store
- Allocating app and subscription cost across orders
- Checking whether a paid-traffic store is viable per order
- Presenting per-order unit economics to an investor
- Setting the floor price a repricer is allowed to go to
- Comparing FBA against fulfilling the orders yourself
- Modelling what a higher average order value does to the margin
- Working out how much you can afford to spend to win one order
Questions
Total fees divided by the total the customer paid. It is always higher than the headline percentage because of the fixed fee.
A 0.20 listing fee per item, a 6.5% transaction fee on the total including shipping, and payment processing on top of that: about 3% plus 0.25 in the US, and different in every other market. Sellers who quote "6.5%" are quoting a third of it.
Typically 15% of the sale price, though it ranges from 8% to 45% depending on the category.
Around 2.9% plus a fixed fee on standard plans, lower on higher tiers, and it varies by country and card type.
Almost always. Marketplace commissions are charged on the whole amount the buyer pays, and payment processors charge on the amount captured. Free shipping does not escape it either: Etsy favours free-shipping listings in search, but the postage still has to be built into the price, where the fee then applies to it.
It depends on size and weight tier, from around 2.50 for a small envelope to well over 10 for a large heavy item.
The fixed fee does not shrink. On a 5 order a 0.30 fee is 6%; on a 50 order it is 0.6%.
On listing, and again every four months if the listing renews, whether or not it sold.
Most handmade sellers are not. Add a realistic hourly rate to the cost figure and see whether the margin survives.
Yes. On a competitive listing it often exceeds the referral fee. Subtract your ACoS from the profit shown, or use the own-store tab where it is a field.
Most sellers target 25–35% net after all fees and advertising. Below 15% leaves no room for a price war or a fee rise.
Divide it across your expected monthly orders. At 50 orders a month a 29 plan is 0.58 an order, small but real.
On fees yes, on total cost usually not, once acquisition is counted. The advantage shows up on repeat orders.
Contribution is revenue less every cost that scales with an order. For a paid-traffic store acquisition belongs in it: it is variable and usually the biggest line. Contribution is not profit; rent, salaries and software still come out of it.
Thirty per cent or better gives room to grow. Under twenty leaves nothing for overheads and no margin for error. A negative one is the dangerous case, because a store can grow revenue rapidly on negative contribution and look healthy right up until the funding runs out.
Raise average order value or repeat rate. Both spread a fixed acquisition cost over more revenue, and both move faster than squeezing the cost of goods, which is where most people look first and find the least.
Up to the profit shown here if they buy once, and up to lifetime value if they come back. That gap is the real argument for a webshop over a marketplace: you keep the customer, so the second order carries no acquisition cost at all.
Stock aging past the threshold accrues charges per cubic foot per month. Slow movers can cost more to store than they earn.
If the fixed fee plus picking cost eats the margin on small baskets, yes. The break-even row shows where that line falls.
It depends on your average order value. Run the same sale through two tabs and compare the effective rate.