Every fee schedule on this site answers what does the platform take when an item sells. There's a different question underneath it that most sellers only find out the hard way: does the platform charge you before that sale happens — win or lose — or does it wait until money actually changes hands? Across the twelve marketplaces this site tracks (the calculators listed on the Marketplace Fee Schedule), the answer splits into three genuinely different risk models.
Three models, not two
| Model | Platforms | What it costs if nothing sells |
|---|---|---|
| Per-listing fee | Etsy, eBay (beyond free allowance) | A small, non-refundable charge per item listed |
| Flat subscription | Amazon (Professional plan), Shopify | A fixed monthly cost, independent of any single listing |
| Success-only fee | Walmart, Poshmark, Mercari, Facebook Marketplace, StockX, Reverb, TikTok Shop, Depop (US) | $0 |
Stripe and PayPal aren't in this comparison — they're payment processors sellers plug into their own store, not marketplaces with a published listing or referral fee schedule, which is why they're also excluded from the Marketplace Fee Schedule.
Per-listing fee: Etsy and eBay
Etsy charges $0.20 per listing, charged "when you create a new listing, or renew an existing one" — not when it sells. An Etsy listing expires after four months; if it hasn't sold, renewing it costs another $0.20. List 100 items and sell none of them, and Etsy has still been paid $20.
eBay works the same way past a threshold: sellers get up to 250 zero-insertion-fee listings a month (more with an eBay Store), and "after you've used your zero insertion fee allowance," each additional listing costs $0.35 — charged per listing, whether or not it sells.
Both platforms treat a listing as a small bet you place, not a free option. See the full math for either platform on the Etsy Fee Calculator or eBay Fee Calculator.
Flat subscription: Amazon Professional and Shopify
Amazon's Individual plan charges $0.99 per item sold — no sale, no charge. Its Professional plan charges $39.99 a month, billed regardless of how many items sell that month. Shopify works the same way at the platform level: its Basic plan is $39/month (paid monthly), billed whether the store makes zero sales or a thousand. On top of that monthly floor, Shopify still charges its own per-order payment processing fee on whatever does sell.
The practical effect: on these two platforms, the cost of having a store open and the cost of any individual sale are two separate lines, and the first one runs whether or not the second ever happens. Run a specific sale through either platform's own math on the Amazon FBA Fee Calculator or Shopify Fee Calculator.
Success-only: the other eight
The remaining eight platforms this site tracks charge nothing until an item actually sells.
- Walmart Marketplace states plainly that there are "no setup, monthly, or hidden fees for any sellers" — sellers pay only a referral fee, deducted from each completed sale, at the category-specific rate on the Walmart Marketplace Fee Calculator.
- Poshmark: "you don't need to pay a fee for listing your products" — "the selling fee comes into play only after a sale is made," a flat $2.95 under $15, 20% at or above it.
- Mercari puts it just as directly: "Listing an item is always free on Mercari. Fees are charged when an item sells."
- Facebook Marketplace applies its 10% selling fee ($0.80 minimum) only to a completed transaction, calculated on the sale price, shipping, and tax combined — nothing at listing.
- StockX's own fee page describes its transaction and processing fees as charges on a completed sale, and lists no separate charge for creating a listing on its Verified Marketplace.
- Reverb advertises "no listing fee and no monthly subscription" — its 5% selling fee (minimum $0.50, maximum $500) plus payment processing applies only on a completed sale.
- TikTok Shop's referral fee is explicitly "a service fee charged on successfully paid and delivered orders" — nothing is charged for a product sitting unsold in a shop.
- Depop removed its US selling fee in July 2024; sellers there now pay only a payment processing fee, and only once an item sells.
What this actually changes for a seller
The difference isn't the size of the fee — $0.20 or $0.35 a listing is small money. It's who bears the cost of inventory that doesn't sell. List 200 items on Etsy and sell 50 of them, and the other 150 unsold listings still cost $30, on top of whatever the 50 sales cost in transaction fees. List the same 200 items on Poshmark or Mercari and the 150 that don't sell cost nothing — the entire fee structure is contingent on a sale happening at all.
Amazon's Professional plan and Shopify's monthly fee are a different kind of bet: not per item, but per month you keep the store open. A slow month on either platform still bills the same $39-ish fee a fast month does; a seller weighing Individual vs. Professional on Amazon, or whether a Shopify store is worth it yet, is really asking how many sales it takes in a month to cover that fixed floor before any of it counts as profit.
What this doesn't cover
This is about fee timing, not fee size — see the Marketplace Fee Schedule for every platform's actual rate, or Marketplace Fee Comparison to run one real sale price through several platforms at once. Amazon's Individual plan, StockX's newer no-fee "Listings Marketplace," and any platform's promotional or introductory pricing aren't modeled here — this covers each platform's standard, current seller terms only.