Etsy vs Shopify Fees (2026): One $50 Order, Two Receipts, and Where They Cross

On the same $50 order, Etsy's fees come to $5.20 and Shopify's to $1.75 plus a share of the $29 monthly plan. Etsy charges a $0.20 listing fee, 6.5% of the order including shipping, and 3% + $0.25 for payment processing; Shopify Basic charges 2.9% + $0.30 through Shopify Payments and a fixed plan fee. At a $50 average order, Shopify becomes the cheaper set of fees once a shop sells more than about $420 a month.

That is the fee answer, not the whole answer. Etsy's 6.5% buys a marketplace with buyers already searching it; a Shopify store starts with no traffic, and whatever you spend to bring buyers in belongs on its receipt. Etsy suits new sellers who need demand, Shopify suits sellers who already have customers or an audience, and many growing shops run both. Etsy's fees here come from its US help centre and Shopify's from shopify.com/pricing, read on 9 and 10 October 2026.

The verdict: who pays less, at what volume

Strip both platforms to their fee schedules and the comparison is a fixed fee against a percentage. Etsy's take on our $50 order is 10.4% ($5.20), and a month with no sales costs nothing beyond listing fees. Shopify's is 3.5% ($1.75) plus $29 every month on yearly billing, or $39 month to month. The two lines cross at $420.29 of monthly sales on yearly billing and $565.22 on monthly billing.

Below those figures Etsy is cheaper, before you even count traffic. Above them Shopify's fees are lower, and the gap widens with every sale: at $2,000 a month, Etsy's fees come to $208.00 and Shopify's to $99.00.

Every Etsy fee on a $50 order

Our order is one item at $42 with $8 shipping, bought by a US buyer from a US seller, with no gift wrap and no sales tax. Both receipts are below, line by line, from Etsy's help centre and Shopify's pricing page.

The transaction fee is the big line, and it is charged on shipping as well as the item: 6.5% of the full $50, not of the $42. Processing is a separate line, also calculated on shipping and on sales tax where tax applies, so the same order with tax added costs slightly more to process. The listing fee is paid when you list, whether or not the item sells, and again every four months if the listing auto-renews. Sell three units of one listing in a single order and you pay $0.20 for each extra unit.

Offsite Ads: the fee that can more than double the receipt

Etsy advertises listings on Google, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Bing and partner sites, and charges a fee only when a buyer clicks one of those ads and orders from your shop within 30 days. Shops that have never made $10,000 in any 365-day period pay 15% of the order and may opt out. Shops that have reached $10,000 pay 12% and must stay in for the life of the shop. The fee is capped at $100 per order.

On our $50 order, an attributed sale adds $7.50 at 15% or $6.00 at 12%, taking Etsy's total to $12.70 or $11.20: 25.4% or 22.4% of the order. You cannot choose which listings Etsy advertises, so the share of orders that pick up the fee is outside your control, and one ad click can lead to several attributed orders inside the 30 days.

Fees that depend on where you sell from

Etsy charges a one-time, non-refundable set-up fee when you open a shop in some locations; the amount varies and is shown during set-up, so we have not priced it. Listing in a currency other than your bank account's costs 2.5% on conversion. Sellers in the UK, France, Italy, India, Spain, Türkiye, Vietnam and Canada also pay a regulatory operating fee. None of these apply to our US-to-US example.

The same $50 order on a $29 plan

Shopify Basic is billed at $29 a month on a yearly plan, or $39 if you pay monthly (US prices, 9 October 2026). Through Shopify Payments a standard US online card costs 2.9% + 30¢, so the $50 order pays $1.75 in processing and nothing else per sale: no listing fee, no transaction fee, no ad fee unless you buy ads yourself. Use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments and Basic adds 2% to each order, $1.00 on this one.

The plan fee is fixed, so its weight per order depends on volume. At 10 orders a month it adds $2.90 to each; at 40 it adds $0.725; at 100 it adds $0.29. New stores get three days free and then pay $1 a month for the first three months, which makes the first quarter close to processing-only.

Where the lines cross: break-even by monthly revenue

The chart plots a month's fees against monthly sales at a $50 average order. Etsy's line starts at zero and rises at 10.4%; Shopify's starts at $29 and rises at 3.5%. They meet at $420.29. A third line shows Etsy when one order in five arrives through an Offsite Ad at 15%, an illustrative share rather than an Etsy figure: its slope becomes 13.4%, and the crossing moves down to $292.93.

Order size barely moves the crossing, because both platforms' fixed amounts are small next to the gap between Etsy's 9.5% in percentage fees and Shopify's 2.9%. At a $20 average order the lines meet at $394.56 a month; at $100 they meet at $429.63. Monthly billing on Shopify lifts every one of those figures by about a third.

What fee tables leave out: paying for traffic

Etsy's 6.5% is not only a fee; it buys a place in a marketplace where buyers are already searching. A Shopify store has to find its own buyers through search, social, email or ads, and that work costs money or time. A fee comparison that ignores it flatters Shopify.

So put it on the receipt. At $2,000 a month (40 orders of $50), Etsy's fees are $208.00 and Shopify's are $99.00, a gap of $109.00. If you spend more than $109 a month, about $2.73 an order, to bring in those 40 orders, Shopify becomes the more expensive way to make the same sales. The chart shows Shopify's total at four levels of monthly marketing spend; the spend is your input, not a measured acquisition cost.

The test for your shop is what those 40 orders would cost to attract without Etsy. A seller with a mailing list, a social following or repeat buyers can reach them for little, and belongs on Shopify. A seller starting from nothing has no such channel yet, which is the case Etsy's fee is built for. If Offsite Ads tag some of your Etsy orders, add those fees to the Etsy bar: at 15% on one order in five, the $208.00 becomes $268.00.

Selling on both: what changes in the receipt

Running both is common, and the fees simply add up by channel: each Etsy order pays Etsy's lines, each Shopify order pays Shopify's processing, and the $29 plan is paid once whatever either channel sells. Listings you keep live on Etsy still cost $0.20 per four months. Keeping stock in step across the two needs a sync app or manual updates; we have not priced the apps, and their fees would sit on the Shopify side.

The economics favour moving repeat business to the cheaper channel: a returning buyer's $50 order costs $1.75 in fees on Shopify against $5.20 on Etsy. Check Etsy's seller policies before marketing to Etsy buyers off the platform. Etsy also sells its own middle path, Pattern: its help centre lists it at $15 a month after a 30-day trial, with no transaction fee and no extra listing fee on Pattern sales, only payment processing. That is about half of Shopify Basic's plan fee, and the traffic problem is the same.

Etsy, Shopify or both: the decision

Start on Etsy if you have no audience yet and sell under about $420 a month: its fees are lower at that volume and it brings the buyers. Add or move to Shopify once your own channels bring enough orders that the $29 plan costs less than the extra fees Etsy would take on them (about $420 a month at a $50 order), and remember that once a shop passes $10,000 a year on Etsy, Offsite Ads become compulsory at 12%. Model your own order size in the fees calculator, compare Shopify with other builders in our transaction fees comparison, or see the full ranking of ecommerce website builders.