Every platform tells you what it charges. Almost none of them tell you what selling on them actually costs. The headline fee — Etsy's 6.5% transaction fee, Shopify's monthly subscription, Amazon's 15% royalty — is just the entry point. The real number includes listing fees, payment processing, ad spend requirements, and the hidden costs of how each platform's algorithm forces you to behave.
Most sellers pick a platform based on where they have seen other sellers succeed or where they feel most comfortable. Very few run the actual numbers before committing. This article does that for you — a complete per-sale cost comparison across Etsy, Shopify, and Amazon Merch on Demand, with worked examples at two price points so you can see exactly what each platform takes from every shirt you sell.
Before the numbers, one important framing point. Platform fees are not the only cost that differs between channels. The other major variable is customer acquisition cost — how much you spend to get a customer to your listing or store in the first place.
Etsy and Amazon have built-in organic search traffic. You can, in theory, list a product and sell it without spending a cent on advertising. In practice this is increasingly difficult, but the platform does the heavy lifting of bringing buyers to the marketplace. You pay for that through their fee structure.
Shopify brings you zero customers by default. It is a storefront, not a marketplace. Every visitor has to be acquired through SEO, social media, email marketing, or paid advertising. The subscription fee is low but the customer acquisition cost can be very high, especially in the early stages.
A fair comparison accounts for both the platform fees and the realistic customer acquisition cost on each channel. That is what this article does.
Etsy's fee structure has multiple components that stack on top of each other and are easy to underestimate if you only look at one line item.
The listing fee is €0.20 per item, charged when you create or renew a listing. Listings expire after four months regardless of whether the item sold. If you have 50 active listings that is €10.00 every four months just to stay listed — €30.00 per year before you have sold a single shirt.
The transaction fee is 6.5% of the total sale price including shipping. Note that it is charged on the shipping charge too if the buyer pays for shipping. If you sell a shirt for €25.00 with €5.00 shipping, Etsy takes 6.5% of €30.00, which is €1.95.
The payment processing fee via Etsy Payments is 4% plus €0.30 in most European countries. On a €25.00 shirt that is €1.30.
Etsy also has an optional but practically necessary offsite ads programme. If your shop earns over $10,000 USD per year you are automatically enrolled and Etsy charges 12% on any sale that came from one of their offsite ads. Below that threshold you can opt out, but many sellers find the programme drives meaningful traffic and choose to stay enrolled.
Adding it all up on a €25.00 shirt with €5.00 shipping, standard enrolled seller: transaction fee €1.95, payment processing €1.30, listing fee amortised (assuming one listing per shirt, renewed every four months, selling ten units per listing period) €0.02. Total Etsy fees: approximately €3.27, or about 13% of the product price.
Add a realistic organic-only customer acquisition cost of €0 to €2.00 (Etsy SEO does the work if your listings are optimised) and your effective platform cost per sale is €3.27 to €5.27.
Shopify's headline cost is the monthly subscription. The Basic plan costs $29 USD per month (approximately €27), the Shopify plan $79 USD (approximately €73), and Advanced $299 USD (approximately €275). Most small sellers start on Basic.
If you use Shopify Payments as your payment processor — which you almost certainly should — the transaction fee on Basic is 2% plus €0.30 per transaction in most markets. On a €25.00 shirt that is €0.80.
If you use a third-party payment gateway instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify charges an additional 2% on Basic, 1% on Shopify, and 0.5% on Advanced. Use Shopify Payments to avoid this.
The subscription cost per unit depends entirely on your sales volume. At 50 units per month on Basic, the subscription contributes €0.54 per unit. At 200 units per month it drops to €0.135 per unit. This makes Shopify's effective cost per unit highly volume-dependent.
At 50 units per month: payment processing €0.80, subscription allocation €0.54. Total Shopify platform fees: €1.34 per unit, or about 5.4% of the product price. Significantly lower than Etsy on fees alone.
But now add customer acquisition. A new Shopify store with no organic traffic, no email list, and no social following needs paid advertising to drive sales. Realistic Facebook and Instagram ad CAC for a new apparel brand is €15.00 to €40.00 per sale. At €20.00 CAC, your effective total platform cost is €21.34 per unit — far higher than Etsy.
This is the core trade-off: Shopify charges less per sale but forces you to buy your own customers. Etsy charges more per sale but provides the marketplace traffic.
Amazon Merch on Demand operates differently from the other two. You upload designs, Amazon prints and ships on demand, and you earn a royalty on each sale. You have no production cost, no inventory, and no fulfilment responsibility.
The royalty rate depends on the product price you set. Amazon publishes a royalty calculator but the effective rate works out to roughly 13% to 18% of the selling price for standard t-shirts at typical price points. On a $25.00 shirt you might earn $3.50 to $4.50 in royalty.
There are no listing fees, no monthly subscriptions, and no payment processing fees to you — Amazon handles all of that. Your only cost is the opportunity cost of the margin you give up versus owning your own production.
The catch is that Amazon Merch is invite-only and tiered. New accounts start at tier 10, meaning you can only have 10 active designs. You move up tiers by making sales. Getting to a meaningful catalogue size takes months or years of consistent selling.
The royalty model means you have almost no control over your effective margin. If Amazon decides to discount your product, your royalty is calculated on the discounted price. If they run a sale site-wide, your earnings drop without notice.
Here is the complete comparison at a €25.00 selling price and 50 units per month, including realistic customer acquisition costs for each platform.
Etsy: platform fees €3.27, CAC €1.00 (optimised organic listings), total per-unit platform cost €4.27. Net revenue after platform costs: €20.73. Effective platform take: 17.1%.
Shopify Basic: platform fees €1.34, CAC €20.00 (new store with paid ads), total per-unit platform cost €21.34. Net revenue after platform costs: €3.66. Effective platform take: 85.4%. At this stage Shopify is a money-losing channel unless you have organic traffic.
Shopify Basic with established organic traffic: platform fees €1.34, CAC €3.00 (email list and SEO), total per-unit platform cost €4.34. Net revenue after platform costs: €20.66. Effective platform take: 17.4%. Now it is competitive with Etsy.
Amazon Merch: platform fees built into royalty structure, effective earnings approximately €4.00 per shirt. Net revenue: €4.00. Effective platform take: 84%. The trade-off is zero production cost and zero risk — but the earnings ceiling is very low.
The answer changes depending on where you are in building your business.
If you are just starting and have no audience, no email list, and limited capital: Etsy is the most logical starting point. The marketplace brings you buyers. Your fees are predictable and proportional to your sales. You can validate designs without a large upfront investment in advertising.
If you have an established social following or email list: Shopify becomes competitive immediately because your CAC is near zero on existing audience traffic. The lower per-transaction fee and full control over the customer relationship make it the superior long-term platform.
If you want zero operational complexity and are happy with low royalties: Amazon Merch makes sense for passive income from a large design catalogue. It is not a primary income vehicle for most sellers but it is an incremental revenue stream that requires almost no maintenance once the designs are uploaded.
The most successful sellers in the t-shirt space typically use all three in combination: Etsy to find and validate new designs with marketplace traffic, Shopify to build a direct brand relationship with proven customers, and Amazon Merch as a passive catalogue that earns independently. Each channel serves a different function and the fees make sense in that context.
The T-Shirt Profit Margin Calculator includes a sales channel selector that pre-fills the correct platform fee for Etsy, Shopify, and Amazon, plus a payment gateway field where you can enter the processing cost for your specific setup. Enter your real selling price, production cost, and volume and you will see instantly how each platform affects your margin.
If you are selling or planning to sell in Cyprus or the EU, the team at TshirtJunkies.co has operated across all three platforms and can speak from direct experience about what the fee structures mean in practice for a European apparel seller.
Select your sales channel in the calculator and enter your real numbers. The tool pre-fills Etsy, Shopify, and Amazon fee rates and shows you your net margin after all costs instantly.