Etsy vs Shopify fees: where the crossover actually is

Updated September 14, 2026 · 8 min read · Sources checked on publication

These two platforms charge in opposite shapes. Etsy takes a percentage of every sale and nothing when you don’t sell. Shopify charges a fixed monthly fee and then takes a much smaller percentage. That means there is a specific order volume where the cheaper one flips — and it is lower than most sellers expect. It also means the fee comparison answers a narrower question than the one people are usually asking.

What Etsy takes

For a US shop with no Offsite Ads attribution, it is a $0.20 listing fee, 6.5% of the item price and shipping, and 3% + $0.25 payment processing on the order total. That works out to roughly 9.5% plus $0.45 per order.

What Shopify costs

A monthly plan fee, plus card processing through Shopify Payments. No listing fees, and a domain from about $9 a year. US pricing, retrieved 13 September 2026:

On that same $38 order, Shopify Basic’s cut is 2.9% + 30¢, or $1.40 — against Etsy’s $4.06. Per order Shopify is dramatically cheaper. The monthly fee is what you are buying that discount with.

Four details that comparison articles routinely get wrong

• $29 is not the monthly price. Basic is $39 billed monthly and $29 billed annually. A great many comparisons quote $29 as the headline, understating Shopify by about 25% for anyone not paying a year upfront.
• 2.9% is the standard-card rate, not the only one. Shopify publishes three online rates: standard cards at 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic, premium cards at 3.5% + 30¢, and international cards at an additional 1%. That matters for this comparison more than it first appears — against Etsy’s flat 3% + 25¢, Shopify Basic is cheaper on a standard card and dearer on a premium one. A shop with a lot of rewards-card or overseas buyers should not assume the headline rate.
• The last column is a real cost. Use any payment gateway other than Shopify Payments and Shopify adds its own fee — 2% on Basic — on top of whatever that gateway charges. Worse, if you run Shopify Payments alongside another provider, the Shopify Payments transactions carry a 1.25% premium. The advertised rate assumes Shopify Payments is your only processor.
• The cheap entry tier is gone. Shopify’s old Starter plan is closed to new stores. There is now a $0/month “Agentic” plan with card rates from 2.9% + 30¢, but it exists for selling through AI shopping channels: you can build an online store on it, and publishing that store requires moving to a paid plan. It is not the budget storefront the old Starter plan was.

Where the crossover actually is

Shopify saves you about 6.6% of each order plus 15¢, so the break-even is simply the monthly fee divided by that saving. At a $38 average order, Basic pays for itself at roughly fifteen orders a month:

Above those counts, Shopify costs less in fees, and the gap widens with every order. A shop doing 100 orders a month at $38 pays Etsy around $406 and Shopify around $179 including the plan. On fees alone it is not close.

That table assumes standard cards. If a meaningful share of your buyers pay with premium cards at 3.5% + 30¢, or from overseas at an extra 1%, the saving per order shrinks and the break-even volume rises — so treat these counts as the most favourable case for Shopify rather than the expected one.

Which is exactly why fees are the wrong thing to decide this on.

The comparison that actually matters

Etsy’s 9.5% is not only a payment fee. It buys a marketplace of people already searching for what you make, a search ranking you can compete in, and a checkout buyers already trust. Shopify’s $39 buys software. It brings no one to your door.

So the real question is not “which is cheaper per order” but what fraction of your sales come from Etsy’s own search. If most of your buyers found you by searching Etsy, the fee is a commission on customers you would not otherwise have had, and moving to your own store does not save you 6.6% — it costs you those buyers. If most of your traffic already comes from Instagram, a mailing list, or people returning to order again, you are paying a marketplace commission on customers you brought yourself, and that is the case where the crossover math above is real money.

This is why so many established sellers run both: Etsy for discovery, their own store for the repeat customers who no longer need discovering. The fee difference funds the second one.

Costs that land on the Shopify side of the ledger

Before treating the saving as banked, note what the plan fee does not cover: apps, which genuinely add up; a theme, if you outgrow the free ones; email marketing; and the traffic itself, which is either your time or an ad budget. A shop that moves off Etsy to save $200 a month in fees and then spends $300 a month on ads to replace the traffic has not saved anything.

The monthly fee is also charged in the months you sell nothing, which is the structural risk of the model. Etsy’s percentage is brutal on a good month and costs you nothing on a bad one.

How to answer this for your own shop

Two numbers settle it, and neither is on a pricing page. First, your true fee rate on Etsy — not 9.5%, but what your completed orders actually paid once Offsite Ads is counted, which for many shops pushes the effective rate several points higher. Second, how much of your order volume Etsy search is actually sending you, which is in your shop stats.

MakerMargin gives you the first one from the order file Etsy already exports: real fees on real orders, per product and per month, with your materials included. You can also check a single sale with the free fee calculator, or read the full breakdown of Etsy’s fees.

Shopify figures from shopify.com/pricing and Shopify’s help centre, US/USD view, re-verified 14 September 2026; Shopify localises pricing, so figures differ outside the US. Card rates quoted are the published standard online rates — premium cards and international cards are charged more, as noted above. Etsy figures from Etsy’s Fees & Payments Policy and Etsy Payments Policy, read the same day. MakerMargin is not affiliated with either company.