Head to head
Etsy vs Shopify costs
This is not really a fee comparison — it is a comparison between renting an audience and owning a store. The per-sale maths flatters Shopify enormously, and the total cost can still be worse.
| Per 50 units | Etsy | Shopify |
|---|---|---|
| Gross revenue | $2,550.00 | $2,550.00 |
| Platform fees | −$264.75 | −$88.95 |
| Effective fee rate | 10.4% | 3.5% |
| Item cost | −$600.00 | −$600.00 |
| Shipping cost | −$260.00 | −$260.00 |
| You keep | $1,425.25 | $1,601.05 |
| Margin | 55.9% | 62.8% |
On these numbers, Shopify leaves you $175.80 better off across 50 sales — about $3.52 per unit, or 7.8% of the sale price. On a product with a thin margin, that percentage is the profit.
What the table cannot tell you
Every comparison like this flatters the cheaper platform, because it holds demand constant. Etsy and Shopify do not have the same buyers, the same conversion rate or the same return rate. A platform that takes 3% more but converts twice as well is not the expensive one.
The number to plug in yourself: what does one sale cost you in time and advertising on each? If you cannot answer that, you are not comparing fees — you are comparing guesses.
On a per-sale basis Shopify looks unbeatable: card processing only, no commission. But the subscription is fixed, and the customers do not exist until you buy them. At low volume the platform fee you saved is smaller than the ad spend you now need.
Etsy's commission is effectively a customer acquisition fee bundled into the sale. At 10% on a $45 item that is $4.50 per customer — cheaper than almost any paid channel, which is why the fee feels high and still works.
The honest rule: stay on the marketplace until your repeat-customer rate is high enough that paying for traffic is cheaper than paying commission. Then move, and keep the marketplace as a discovery channel.