A buyer pays $40 for an item. It cost you $10 and you pay $5 for postage. On TikTok Shop with a 6% referral fee you keep $22.60. On Etsy you keep $20.75. On eBay you keep $19.16. Same sale, three different answers.
I pulled the rates from my other guides into one place. They are US figures, and each guide says where I read its rates and when, and flags anything I could not confirm. I haven't sold on any of these platforms, so this is arithmetic on published rates and nothing more.
What does the same $40 sale cost on each?
The buyer pays $40 in total, which I treat as a $35 item plus $5 of shipping you collect. Your product costs $10 and your postage costs $5. "You keep" is what is left after the fee, the product and the postage.
| Where you sell | What it charges | Fees | You keep | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Etsy | 6.5% + 3% + $0.25, plus the $0.20 listing fee | $4.25 | $20.75 | 51.9% |
| Etsy, sale from an offsite ad | the above, plus 15% of the order | $10.25 | $14.75 | 36.9% |
| eBay (US, most categories) | 13.6% + $0.40 per order | $5.84 | $19.16 | 47.9% |
| TikTok Shop, 6% referral | 6%, no creator | $2.40 | $22.60 | 56.5% |
| TikTok Shop, 8% referral (reported) | 8%, no creator | $3.20 | $21.80 | 54.5% |
| TikTok Shop, 6% plus a 15% creator | 6% + 15% creator commission | $8.40 | $16.60 | 41.5% |
| Stripe on your own site | 2.9% + $0.30 | $1.46 | $23.54 | 58.9% |
| PayPal checkout on your own site | 3.49% + $0.49 | $1.89 | $23.11 | 57.8% |
The two Stripe and PayPal rows are not marketplaces. They only process the payment, so the buyer has to find your shop some other way, and a store platform adds its own monthly cost. They are in the table because many sellers use them next to a marketplace, and because they show what the payment part alone costs.
Look at the TikTok rows. The 15% creator commission costs more than the referral fee itself, and it takes the margin from 56.5% to 41.5%. For the full breakdown, see the TikTok Shop fees guide.
How does it change at $10 and $200?
Most of the gap comes from the fixed amounts. Here are the fees on three order sizes, with the share of the order in brackets.
| Where you sell | $10 order | $40 order | $200 order |
|---|---|---|---|
| Etsy | $1.40 (14.0%) | $4.25 (10.6%) | $19.45 (9.7%) |
| eBay | $1.66 (16.6%) | $5.84 (14.6%) | $27.60 (13.8%) |
| TikTok Shop (6%) | $0.60 (6.0%) | $2.40 (6.0%) | $12.00 (6.0%) |
| Stripe | $0.59 (5.9%) | $1.46 (3.7%) | $6.10 (3.1%) |
| PayPal | $0.84 (8.4%) | $1.89 (4.7%) | $7.47 (3.7%) |
On a $10 order, eBay takes 16.6% and Etsy takes 14.0%. On $200 they take 13.8% and 9.7%. PayPal falls from 8.4% to 3.7% over the same range. Small orders are where the fixed fees hurt, and my guide on fixed fees on small orders shows how to find the sale size where they stop mattering.
What is each fee worked out on?
- Etsy: the transaction fee covers the item price plus the shipping and gift wrapping you charge. The processing fee covers the full order amount.
- eBay: the total sale amount, which eBay's page says includes the item, handling, shipping you collect and sales tax.
- TikTok Shop: a formula that starts from what the customer paid, adds any discount TikTok funded and takes off tax. TikTok's category page says the base includes the shipping fee the customer pays, so I applied the percentages to the whole $40.
- Stripe and PayPal: the whole payment.
So free shipping is not free from the fee's point of view. If you build the postage into the price, the fee is still charged on it.
Where do Daraz and Shopify fit?
Daraz. Its rates depend on your category and your own seller account, and I can't read them for you. In my Daraz guide I used example figures: a 10% commission, a 2% payment fee, Rs 20 handling and 1% tax withheld. Those are placeholders, not Daraz's published rates. On a Rs 2,500 sale they come to Rs 345, or 13.8%. Find your own rates in Seller Center before you use any of it.
Shopify. It charges a monthly plan, not a fee on every sale. On the Pakistan pricing page I read on 26 and 29 October 2026, Basic is $22 a month billed yearly, which is 22 cents an order at 100 orders a month and $1.10 at 20. Shopify Payments isn't available in Pakistan, so the payment side depends on the provider you use. The Shopify guide works it through.
Is the cheapest one the best one?
Not by itself. Fees are one input. The other is where your buyers come from. A marketplace charges more because it brings traffic and handles part of the sale. On your own site you pay less per order, but the traffic is your job, and ads cost money too.
What I'd do is run the same product through each calculator with your own cost and postage, and compare the net profit and the break-even price, not the fee. A 14% fee on a product with a high margin can still beat a 4% fee on one you can't get anyone to see. I can't tell you which will sell more for you. The numbers only tell you what each sale leaves.
How do I run my own numbers?
- Open the calculator for each place you sell: the multi-platform calculator (it has Etsy, Shopify and others as presets), the eBay fee calculator, the TikTok Shop calculator, the Stripe and PayPal calculator or the Daraz calculator.
- Enter the same price, product cost and postage in each one, so the results are comparable.
- Replace any preset rate with the one on your own dashboard.
- Compare net profit and break-even price side by side.
If you then want to set a price, my guide on pricing for a 30% margin uses the same formula.
Each platform has its own guide with the detail: Etsy, eBay, TikTok Shop, Stripe and PayPal.
Sources, read on 29 October 2026: Etsy Fees & Payments Policy (last updated 5 October 2026) and Etsy Payments Policy (last updated 31 July 2026); eBay US selling fees (no date shown); TikTok Shop referral fee updates (US) (the page shows 05/08/2025) and TikTok Shop referral fees by category (US) (the page shows 10/08/2026); Stripe pricing (no date shown); PayPal US merchant fees (last updated 1 October 2026); Shopify pricing (Pakistan page, no date).
Who is writing this?
I'm Saqib, the developer behind PayoutCalc. I haven't sold on these platforms, so I stick to what each company publishes and to arithmetic you can check. Rates change, and some of mine came from search summaries of a page I couldn't open. If a number here is out of date, tell me and I'll fix it.