eBay, Etsy or Your Own Website: Where Should You Sell?

Selling guide · Fees checked October 12, 2026 · US sellers

The usual way to compare places to sell is to line up the fees and pick the lowest. That gets the answer wrong surprisingly often, because the cheapest option per order is also the one that sends you no customers. This guide puts the same order through eBay, Etsy and a website of your own, shows what each keeps, and then looks at the three things fees leave out: who brings the buyers, what kind of product fits, and what you actually own at the end.

The short answer

• eBay if you sell used, collectable, branded or one-off items that people search for by name.
• Etsy if you make what you sell, or deal in vintage or craft supplies.
• Your own website once you can bring buyers yourself, usually as a second step and not the first.

Most small sellers end up with a marketplace and a website together. The order you add them in matters more than which is "best".

The same order, three ways

Take a $40 item with $6 shipping charged to the buyer: a $46 order, before sales tax. These are the published US rates for a seller with no store subscription, from eBay's selling fees page, Etsy's fees policy and a standard online card rate of 2.9% plus 30 cents for your own site.

eBay's rate here is for most categories; some are higher or lower, and eBay also charges its percentage on the sales tax the buyer pays, which nudges the real figure up. The eBay fee calculator handles both. Etsy's 20-cent listing fee is paid when you list and again every four months, whether or not the item sells.

The Etsy fee that changes the answer

On ordinary sales Etsy is cheaper than eBay. The exception is Offsite Ads. Etsy advertises listings on other sites, and when a buyer clicks one of those ads and orders from your shop within 30 days, you pay an extra 15% of the order, capped at $100. On the $46 order that is another $6.90, and Etsy's share goes from 10.5% to over 25%.

Shops with under $10,000 of sales in the past year can opt out. Once a shop passes $10,000 the rate drops to 12%, but taking part becomes compulsory for the life of the shop. You cannot know in advance which orders will carry the fee, so price as though some will. If one order in five comes through an ad, the average Etsy fee on this item is about $6.20, not far below eBay.

Your own website: cheapest per order, most expensive per customer

A card processor takes $1.63 of the $46. Nothing else is charged per sale, which is why a website looks unbeatable in a fee table. Two costs are missing from it.

The first is the subscription. A hosted store builder runs from roughly $20 to $30 a month on an entry plan; take $27. Against Etsy, where you would save $3.19 an order, you need nine orders a month before the site has paid for itself. Against eBay it is six.

Who brings the buyers

This is the real difference between the three. On eBay, people arrive already searching for a specific thing, often by brand or model, and compare listings on price and condition. On Etsy, they browse for a kind of thing, a gift or a style, and choose on photos and feel. On your own site nobody arrives unless something sent them. A new seller with no audience is really choosing between two marketplaces. The website becomes an option later.

What sells where

• eBay suits second-hand goods, collectables, electronics, parts, clearance stock and anything unusual enough to need an auction to find its price.
• Etsy suits handmade work, personalised items, vintage pieces and supplies for other makers.
• Your own site suits a consistent range under one name that people come back for: consumables, a signature product line, subscriptions.

If your product could sit in two of those lists, it can probably sell in two places.

What you own at the end

On a marketplace, the customers belong to the marketplace. You generally cannot market to them afterwards, the rules and fees can change with little notice, and an account problem can stop your sales overnight. On your own site you keep the customer list, set the rules and decide how the shop looks. That is worth something even at the same profit per order, and it is the main reason established sellers add a site once they have regulars.

A sensible order to do it in

• Start on the one marketplace that fits your product. You will learn what sells and at what price with almost no fixed cost.
• Collect what you are allowed to. A card in each parcel with your shop name gives buyers a way to find you again.
• Add a second channel when the first is steady, not when it is struggling. Two half-run shops do worse than one good one.
• Open your own site when repeat buyers appear, and send them there first.

Run it for your own product

The table above is one order at one price. Yours will differ, especially if your items are cheap, heavy or sold in a category with its own rate. Start from what the item costs you: the handmade pricing calculator has a field for selling fees and raises the price to cover them, and the markup calculator does the same job for goods you buy in. Then check what is left with the profit margin calculator, and use the break-even calculator to see how many orders a month would cover a website subscription. Fees change, so confirm the current rates on each platform's own page before you commit.

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