🇺🇸 Updated 2026-07-13 · 7 min read · every figure sourced & dated (dataset 2026.10)
If you sell the same product on five US marketplaces, you will keep five different amounts of money. Not because your product changed — because each platform's fee stack takes a different bite. Here's the 2026 landscape in one place, from the same verified dataset that powers our Channel Comparator.
Amazon charges a referral fee on the total sale (item + shipping): 3–20% across categories, with a $0.30 minimum. Most categories pay 15% and electronics 8%, while apparel is price-tiered — 5% to $15, then 10% to $20, then 17% — so a cheap t-shirt and a $40 jacket are not on the same rate. Fees are frozen through 2026. Add $39.99/month for the Professional plan, and FBA fulfilment on top if you use it. eBay takes a final value fee on the full order, including shipping and even the buyer's sales tax: 13.6% to $7,500, then 2.35% on the rest in general categories, 15% to $5,000, then 9% for jewellery, plus $0.30 at or under $10, $0.40 above. Etsy looks cheap at 6.5%, but stack the $0.20 per order listing fee and 3% + $0.25 Etsy Payments and a $30 sale pays about $3.30 all-in (11%). Walmart Marketplace runs 3–20% by category with no monthly fee — and unlike Amazon and eBay, its referral fee applies to the item price only, not shipping. TikTok Shop is the outlier: a flat 6% referral fee that includes payment processing — but if you sell through creators, their 10–20% affiliate commission changes the picture entirely.
Take a $29.99 apparel item with $8 landed cost and $5 shipping. On eBay you pay $4.08 commission plus the $0.40 order fee and keep $12.51 (41.7% margin). On TikTok Shop, fees drop to $1.80 and you keep $15.19, before any creator commission. On Amazon, apparel's top band (17% at this price) takes $5.10, netting $11.89 minus your share of the monthly fee. Etsy nets $13.69 and Walmart $12.49. Run your own numbers — including the ad cost that each channel realistically needs — in the comparator or work backwards from a profit goal in the Goal Planner.
Three costs wreck more margin forecasts than referral fees ever do. First, fee base: Amazon and eBay charge their percentage on shipping you collect from the buyer, so "free shipping built into the price" and "cheap item + high shipping" produce different fee bills. Second, fixed per-order fees quietly dominate low-priced items: $0.40 on a $8 eBay sale is another 5 points of margin. Third, import duty: since the $800 de-minimis exemption was suspended (August 2025, extended indefinitely in June 2026), every unit you import owes duty per the tariff schedule — landed cost is the real COGS now. Estimate it with our shipping & landed cost tool.
TikTok Shop’s 6% referral fee is the lowest headline rate among major US marketplaces, followed by Etsy’s 6.5% + 3% + $0.25 payment processing. Amazon and Walmart sit at 15% for most categories and eBay at 13.6% on typical order values. But the cheapest headline fee is not always the highest net margin — fixed fees, payment processing and your traffic source change the ranking per product.
A healthy net margin after all marketplace fees, product cost and shipping is 15–25%. Below 10%, one fee change or ad-cost spike can wipe out your profit. Use a reverse calculator to find the price that protects your target margin.
Yes. All major US marketplaces (Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Walmart, TikTok Shop) are marketplace facilitators — they collect and remit state sales tax at checkout, so it never touches your margin. Only Shopify / own-store sellers must register and remit where they have nexus.
No — Amazon froze US referral fees for 2025 and 2026. Category rates run 3–20%: most categories pay 15%, electronics 8%, and apparel is tiered — 5% to $15, then 10% to $20, then 17%.
Every commission, per-order fee, monthly fee and payment rate above is read from the Farolane dataset (2026.10) when this page is built, so it cannot drift from the calculators. The worked example runs through the same engine as the calculators. Hand-written figures, with no dataset home yet: creator affiliate commission ranges, the suspended $800 de-minimis exemption, and the statement that major US marketplaces act as sales-tax facilitators.