Every time you sell a t-shirt online, a portion of the money travels through at least two separate systems before it reaches your bank account. Each system takes a cut. The cuts are small individually. Stacked together they represent one of the most consistent and underappreciated drains on apparel margins — and unlike production costs, most sellers never think to add them up.
This article maps out every fee category across the major platforms and payment processors used by t-shirt sellers, shows you exactly what each one costs on a real sale, and explains the strategies that reduce your total fee burden without requiring you to change your product or your price.
Platform fees and payment gateway fees are distinct costs that are often confused or merged into one vague number. Understanding the difference matters because they behave differently and can be optimised separately.
Platform fees are what you pay to the marketplace or storefront for the right to sell there. They include listing fees, transaction commissions, and subscription costs. They are the price of accessing the platform's infrastructure — their audience on a marketplace, their checkout system on a hosted store.
Payment gateway fees are what you pay to process the financial transaction itself — moving money from the buyer's card or account to your merchant account. These fees exist regardless of which platform you sell on and are charged by the financial infrastructure that handles card processing: Stripe, PayPal, Shopify Payments, Etsy Payments, and so on.
On some platforms, particularly Etsy and Shopify, these fees are bundled or presented together in your dashboard. On others they appear as separate line items. Either way, you are paying both, and both need to be in your margin calculation.
Etsy has the most complex fee structure of the major platforms. There are four separate charges that apply to most standard sales.
The listing fee is €0.20 per listing, charged when you create or renew. Listings auto-renew every four months whether or not the item sells. For a catalogue of 100 active listings, that is €20 every four months — €60 per year in listing fees alone before a single sale occurs.
The transaction fee is 6.5% of the total sale amount including any shipping charge the buyer pays. This is the headline fee most sellers know about, but the fact that it applies to shipping revenue is frequently overlooked. If you charge €5.00 shipping, Etsy takes €0.325 of that too.
The payment processing fee via Etsy Payments is 4% plus €0.30 per transaction in Cyprus and most of the EU. Some countries have slightly different rates but this is the standard for European sellers.
The regulatory operating fee is a small additional charge applied in certain countries. In the UK it is currently 0.25% of the sale price. Cyprus-based sellers are not currently subject to this charge but it is worth checking the current Etsy fee schedule for your country as these change.
On a €28.00 shirt with €5.00 shipping, total sale value €33.00: transaction fee (6.5% of €33.00) €2.145, payment processing (4% plus €0.30 of €33.00) €1.62, listing fee amortised over ten sales €0.02. Total Etsy fee per sale: €3.785. That is 13.5% of your product revenue gone before production costs are touched.
Shopify's fee structure depends heavily on which payment processor you use and which plan you are on.
The monthly subscription on Shopify Basic is $29 USD per month (approximately €27). On the mid-tier Shopify plan it is $79 USD (approximately €73). This fixed cost needs to be allocated per unit based on your monthly sales volume. At 40 units per month on Basic that is €0.675 per unit. At 100 units it falls to €0.27.
Payment processing via Shopify Payments on the Basic plan is 2% plus €0.30 per transaction in the EU. On the Shopify plan it drops to 1% plus €0.30. On Advanced it falls to 0.5% plus €0.30. These differences are meaningful at volume: on 500 transactions per month the difference between Basic (2%) and Shopify plan (1%) at an average sale of €28.00 is €140 per month.
If you use a third-party payment processor instead of Shopify Payments — PayPal, Stripe, or others — Shopify charges an additional transaction fee on top of whatever the gateway charges. On Basic this is 2%, on Shopify 1%, on Advanced 0.5%. This double-fee structure is a strong incentive to use Shopify Payments.
On a €28.00 shirt via Shopify Basic with Shopify Payments: payment processing (2% plus €0.30) €0.86, subscription allocation at 50 units per month €0.54. Total Shopify fee per sale: €1.40. That is 5% of revenue — significantly lower than Etsy in fee terms alone.
Many sellers running their own WooCommerce or custom stores use Stripe directly. Stripe's standard European pricing is 2.9% plus €0.30 per successful transaction for most card types. For premium cards such as corporate cards or non-European cards the rate can be higher.
Stripe also has a dispute fee of €15.00 per chargeback regardless of outcome. For a t-shirt seller with an occasional chargeback this adds a small but real cost to the effective gateway rate.
On a €28.00 shirt: Stripe standard fee (2.9% plus €0.30) €1.112. On a €45.00 shirt: €1.605. The fixed €0.30 component makes Stripe proportionally more expensive at lower price points — another argument for pricing above €25.00 where possible.
PayPal's standard rate for online transactions in the EU is 2.99% plus a fixed fee that varies by currency. For Euro transactions the fixed fee is €0.35 per transaction. On a €28.00 shirt that is €1.187 — marginally more expensive than Stripe at this price point.
PayPal also charges a currency conversion fee if the buyer pays in a different currency from your settlement currency. For a Cyprus-based seller accepting payments from UK buyers in GBP, this conversion fee is typically 2.5% to 3% of the transaction. If a meaningful share of your sales are cross-currency this cost is significant and worth factoring in.
Amazon Merch does not present fees separately — instead it takes a royalty that is the residual after Amazon deducts all its costs including production, fulfilment, payment processing, and its own platform margin. The effective fee rate is therefore the inverse of your royalty rate.
On a $25.00 t-shirt where Amazon pays a royalty of approximately $3.50, Amazon's effective take is $21.50 or 86% of the sale price. The royalty model makes the fee structure opaque by design. What matters is the absolute royalty amount, not the percentage, because you have no visibility into or control over Amazon's cost structure.
The damaging thing about platform and gateway fees is not any individual charge — it is the way multiple charges stack on a single transaction. A seller on Etsy is paying a listing fee, a transaction fee, and a payment processing fee simultaneously. A seller on Shopify using a third-party gateway is paying a subscription, a gateway fee, and an additional Shopify transaction fee at the same time.
Here is the total fee stack comparison on a €28.00 shirt across four common setups:
Etsy with Etsy Payments: €3.785 total fees, 13.5% effective rate.
Shopify Basic with Shopify Payments at 50 units per month: €1.40 total fees, 5.0% effective rate.
Shopify Basic with Stripe (third-party gateway) at 50 units per month: Shopify adds 2% (€0.56) on top of Stripe's €1.112, plus subscription allocation €0.54. Total: €2.212, 7.9% effective rate.
WooCommerce with Stripe only (no platform fee): €1.112 total fees, 3.97% effective rate. Lowest fee burden but requires self-managed hosting, customer acquisition, and technical maintenance.
The difference between the most expensive setup (Etsy) and the least expensive (WooCommerce plus Stripe) is €2.673 per sale. At 100 sales per month that is €267.30 per month. At 500 sales per month it is €1,336.50. These are not marginal differences — they represent the difference between a healthy margin and a thin one at the same selling price.
Use the platform's native payment processor where possible. On Shopify this means Shopify Payments. On Etsy it means Etsy Payments. The third-party gateway penalty on Shopify in particular makes using an alternative processor expensive at any meaningful volume.
Upgrade your Shopify plan once you hit volume thresholds. The payment processing rate on the Shopify plan (1%) versus Basic (2%) saves 1% per transaction. Break-even on the plan upgrade cost at an average order value of €28.00 is approximately 520 transactions per month. Above that volume the higher plan costs less overall.
Build a direct sales channel alongside marketplaces. Every customer you move from Etsy repeat purchases to direct Shopify or email-driven purchases saves the full Etsy fee structure on those transactions. A customer who buys twice a year on Etsy generates €7.57 in Etsy fees over those two purchases. The same customer buying directly via your Shopify store generates €1.72 in gateway fees. The difference — €5.85 per customer per year — compounds significantly across a growing customer base.
Build the fees into your price correctly from the start. The most important strategy is not to reduce fees — it is to ensure your pricing already accounts for the full fee stack so your margin target is met after all charges are paid. The T-Shirt Profit Margin Calculator has pre-filled fee rates for all major platforms and payment processors and calculates your margin after all fees automatically.
If you are selling from Cyprus or anywhere in the EU and want accurate current fee rates and production cost benchmarks to model your full margin picture, the team at TshirtJunkies.co operates across Shopify and Etsy and works with these exact fee structures daily.
The calculator pre-fills platform and gateway fees for Etsy, Shopify, and Amazon. Enter your selling price and costs to see exactly what each platform leaves you with after all charges.