Short answer: match the channel to where your buyers already look. Handmade, vintage, and craft goods fit Etsy; broad, used, and refurbished goods fit eBay; a brand you control fits your own Shopify store. Fees matter — but the wrong audience costs more than any fee gap. If you already sell on a marketplace, the order volume where your own store becomes cheaper on fees is in the When to move section below.
Buyers come to Etsy specifically for these. Per-order fee at $48: $5.01 (US) / C$5.25 (Canada). The audience is the advantage; the fee is the price of reaching it.
eBay's buyers search for almost anything, including used and refurbished items. Per-order fee at $48: $6.93 in both countries — the highest of the three, paid for the widest marketplace reach.
No marketplace audience, but no marketplace percentage either: about $1.69 (US) / C$1.64 (Canada) per order in card fees plus a monthly subscription. It wins on fees above 8–14 orders a month — see the crossover table below — and only wins overall if you can bring the traffic.
| Channel | US per order | Canada per order |
|---|---|---|
| Etsy | $5.01 | C$5.25 |
| eBay | $6.93 | C$6.93 |
| Shopify (Basic, monthly) | $1.69 + $39/mo | C$1.64 + C$49/mo |
At a $48 order total, verified fees from 4 Nov 2026. Full pairs: per-sale comparison.
On fees alone, a Shopify store becomes cheaper than Etsy at 12–14 orders a month and cheaper than eBay at 8–10 orders a month (at a $48 order total, Canada and US). The exact crossover depends on your country and the marketplace you are leaving:
| Comparison | Crossover (orders/month) |
|---|---|
| Canada, Shopify vs Etsy | 14 |
| Canada, Shopify vs eBay | 10 |
| US, Shopify vs Etsy | 12 |
| US, Shopify vs eBay | 8 |
At a $40 item with $8 shipping ($48 order total), using verified fees from 4 Nov 2026. Detail: Etsy vs Shopify (Canada), eBay vs Shopify (US), per-sale comparison.
Payment handling, buyer trust, dispute processes, and built-in search are part of what the marketplace percentage buys. A store replaces them with apps, payment setup, and your own customer service time. Moving also costs real money and time: re-listing, redirecting buyers, rebuilding reviews and ranking, and the months where both channels run at once. The Migration Cost calculator totals the one-off costs and shows how many months of fee savings repay them.
Most sellers do best in stages: keep the marketplace running, open the store, send repeat buyers to the store, and only wind the marketplace down once store orders cover the traffic the marketplace used to bring. Moving everything at once is how sellers lose the traffic that paid the fees in the first place.
Fees do not equal profit. Product cost, shipping cost, refunds, and acquisition cost decide profit; fees are one line. The Product Pricing & Profit tool puts them together. One channel is not a strategy. Many sellers run a marketplace for discovery and a store for repeat buyers, and compare the pair in the Breakeven Planner rather than picking one forever.
Fee-only view: it does not include discovery, traffic, refunds, apps, fulfilment, packaging, or taxes, and it makes no claim about traffic, sales, or earnings.
Yes, many sellers do — marketplace for discovery, store for repeat buyers. Just compare the combined fees, and watch for channel rules about pricing and fulfilment.
No. The cheapest fee with no buyers earns nothing. Audience fit first, fee comparison second.
Then the fee tables still help — they show what each channel costs — but the audience question matters more. Look for where buyers of that product already search before choosing on fees.
Amazon referral fees vary by category and its Seller Central schedule is login-gated, so no Amazon figure could be verified from an official page. No Amazon numbers are shown rather than guessed ones.
No. The crossover moves with your prices, your shipping, and your country — and it ignores traffic entirely. Use it as a fee checkpoint, not a move date.
On fees alone, yes, at the stated scenario. In real life, no: if store traffic costs more per order than the fee saving, the marketplace still wins overall. Include acquisition cost in the calculation.
Guides explain the decision; only your prices and order volume give the answer. Try the Breakeven Planner, the Platform Crossover tool, and the Migration Cost calculator. Every figure and its official source is on the Fee Index.