Shopify vs Etsy Fees (2026): Same Item Compared

Fee by fee, side by side

The crossover, at a $50 average order

The mechanics are simple: Etsy's ~10.4% scales with every dollar; Shopify's plan doesn't. With a $50 average order, the lines cross at about 8 orders (~$400) a month. Sell higher-priced items and the crossover arrives sooner, because the commission scales while the card rate's fixed 30¢ matters less. The calculator above runs your actual numbers — including plan amortization at your real volume.

The annual-billing wrinkle

One number in the table deserves a footnote: Shopify's plan drops from $27 to $20/month on annual billing, which pulls the crossover down to roughly 6 orders (~$300) a month — but you pay a year upfront while testing. Cash-flow-wise, monthly billing is the right price for a store still validating; annual is the right price once the crossover is safely behind you. Etsy has no equivalent lever: its percentage is the same whether you sell one item or a thousand, which is precisely the structural reason volume sellers leave.

What the fee math misses

Fees pick the cheaper channel, not the one with buyers. Etsy's percentage buys a marketplace audience searching for what you make; Shopify's subscription buys you a store nobody visits until you build traffic. The honest playbook most sellers converge on: Etsy for discovery and proof, Shopify for margin on repeat customers — and the crossover table tells you when the second half starts paying.

Which one for your stage

Pre-revenue or testing a product: Etsy, because zero fixed cost is the only right price when sales are zero. Consistent sales past a few hundred a month: add Shopify and start moving repeat customers to it — the fee gap compounds with volume. Established brand: Shopify becomes the home base and Etsy becomes one acquisition channel among several, valued honestly at its ~10–20% effective rate like any other paid channel. The mistake is picking one forever; the crossover math says the answer changes every few months in a growing shop.

One more Etsy-only cost to watch

Etsy's Offsite Ads add 15% (or 12% over $10K/year, mandatory) on attributed orders — a cost Shopify simply doesn't have. If a meaningful share of your Etsy sales arrive through ads, your effective rate is 20%+ on those orders and the crossover to Shopify arrives much earlier than the table suggests. Run your ad-attributed share honestly: many sellers find a third of their orders carry it, which moves the crossover to roughly $250/month.

And the answer changes with your mix over time: early shops are Etsy-only by default, growing shops split, and brands end up Shopify-first with Etsy as one acquisition channel. Revisit the table quarterly — the right answer at $500/month is wrong at $5,000.