Etsy vs Gumroad vs Your Own Store: Published Fee Comparison

What this page is. A side-by-side record of the published fee structures of the three main routes to selling digital products — a marketplace (Etsy), a creator platform (Gumroad, Payhip), and your own store (Shopify plus a payment processor) — together with the arithmetic for converting those headline rates into an effective take-rate at a given order value. Every figure below is quoted from the platform’s own public pricing page and linked. Fees change; verify before you act on them.

Published fee structures

Platform	Fixed / subscription	Per-sale platform fee	Payment processing	Source
Etsy	$0.20 per listing, renewing every 4 months or on sale; optional Etsy Plus $10/month	6.5% transaction fee on the total sale price including shipping	Varies by country; 3% + $0.25 in the US	Etsy Fees & Payments Policy
Etsy Offsite Ads	—	15% of attributed order value; 12% for shops with $10,000+ in sales over the trailing 12 months (participation becomes mandatory at that level)	As above	Etsy Fees & Payments Policy
Gumroad (direct link)	No monthly fee	10% + $0.50 per transaction	Included — Gumroad has acted as Merchant of Record since 1 January 2025	Gumroad Pricing
Gumroad (Discover marketplace)	No monthly fee	30% per transaction when a new customer finds you through Discover	Included	Gumroad Pricing
Payhip Free	$0/month	5% transaction fee	Stripe/PayPal charged separately at their standard rates	Payhip Pricing
Payhip Plus	$29/month	2% transaction fee	Charged separately	Payhip Pricing
Payhip Pro	$99/month	No transaction fee	Charged separately	Payhip Pricing
Shopify (own store)	Basic from $19/month billed yearly ($25 monthly); Grow $49/month; Advanced $299/month	No platform commission on Shopify Payments; 2% / 1% / 0.6% surcharge on third-party payment providers by plan tier	Processor rates apply	Shopify Pricing
Stripe (processor)	No setup or monthly fee	—	2.9% + 30¢ per successful domestic card transaction; +1.5% international cards; +1% currency conversion	Stripe Pricing

Fee structures as published on each platform’s public pricing page at the time of writing. All figures in USD. Rates outside the US differ — check your own region’s page.

Converting headline rates into an effective take-rate

Headline percentages are not comparable on their own, because fixed per-transaction components (Etsy’s $0.20 listing fee, Gumroad’s $0.50, Stripe’s 30¢) fall disproportionately on low-priced products. The correct comparison is the effective take-rate:

effective take-rate (%) = (total fees deducted ÷ order value) × 100

total fees = (order value × platform %)
           + platform fixed fee
           + (order value × processing %)
           + processing fixed fee
           + (subscription cost ÷ orders in the period)

Worked example on a $10 digital product sold on Etsy in the US, using the published rates above and one listing fee attributed to the sale:

Transaction fee: $10 × 6.5% = $0.65
Payment processing: ($10 × 3%) + $0.25 = $0.55
Listing fee attributed: $0.20
Total: $1.40 → effective take-rate 14.0%, before any advertising

The same $10 order sold through a Gumroad direct link: ($10 × 10%) + $0.50 = $1.50, an effective take-rate of 15.0% with processing included. If that same buyer had arrived through Gumroad Discover, the 30% rate applies: $3.00, or 30.0%.

On Payhip Free with Stripe: ($10 × 5%) + ($10 × 2.9%) + $0.30 = $1.09, or 10.9%. On Payhip Pro with Stripe, the per-order cost falls to $0.59 (5.9%) but you are carrying $99 per month, which only makes sense above a certain volume — see the break-even section below.

How the effective rate moves with order value

Route (US rates)	$5 order	$10 order	$25 order	$100 order
Etsy (6.5% + 3% + $0.25 + $0.20 listing)	$0.93 / 18.5%	$1.40 / 14.0%	$2.83 / 11.3%	$9.95 / 9.95%
Gumroad direct (10% + $0.50)	$1.00 / 20.0%	$1.50 / 15.0%	$3.00 / 12.0%	$10.50 / 10.5%
Gumroad Discover (30%)	$1.50 / 30.0%	$3.00 / 30.0%	$7.50 / 30.0%	$30.00 / 30.0%
Payhip Free + Stripe (5% + 2.9% + $0.30)	$0.70 / 13.9%	$1.09 / 10.9%	$2.28 / 9.1%	$8.20 / 8.2%
Own store + Stripe only (2.9% + $0.30, excl. subscription)	$0.45 / 8.9%	$0.59 / 5.9%	$1.03 / 4.1%	$3.20 / 3.2%

Computed from the published rates in the table above. Own-store row excludes the platform subscription, which is a fixed monthly cost rather than a per-order cost — add it using the break-even method below.

Two patterns fall out of the arithmetic and hold regardless of which platform’s rates you plug in. First, fixed per-transaction fees dominate at low price points — the gap between an $5 order and a $100 order is roughly ten percentage points of margin on most routes. Second, percentage-only structures (Gumroad Discover at 30%) are flat: they never get cheaper with scale, which is the deliberate trade you make for marketplace-sourced demand.

Break-even for a subscription plan

Any plan that trades a monthly fee for a lower per-sale rate has a break-even volume. The formula:

break-even monthly revenue = monthly subscription ÷ (old rate − new rate)

Moving from Payhip Free (5%) to Payhip Plus ($29/month, 2%) saves 3 percentage points, so break-even is $29 ÷ 0.03 = $967 of monthly sales. Moving from Free (5%) to Pro ($99/month, 0%) saves 5 points: $99 ÷ 0.05 = $1,980 of monthly sales. Below those thresholds the subscription costs you money. Run the same calculation with your own current rate before upgrading anything.

What the fee table does not capture

Fee comparisons systematically flatter the own-store route, because they price the transaction and ignore the demand. A marketplace fee is partly a customer-acquisition cost: Etsy and Gumroad Discover put your listing in front of buyers who were already searching. On your own store, that same acquisition has to be paid for in advertising, content, or email — costs that do not appear on any pricing page.

Other factors worth pricing into a real decision:

Merchant of Record status. Gumroad states it has handled sales-tax and VAT obligations as Merchant of Record since 1 January 2025. On your own store with Stripe, VAT/GST registration and remittance is your responsibility. That administrative burden has a real cost.
Customer list ownership. Marketplaces generally restrict direct marketing to buyers. Your own store gives you the email address, which compounds over years.
Chargeback and refund handling. Processing fees are frequently non-refundable on a refunded order — check each platform’s published refund terms.
Currency conversion. Stripe publishes a 1% surcharge where conversion is required, and 1.5% extra on international cards. If most of your buyers are overseas, your blended rate is higher than the domestic headline.

The realistic answer for most sellers is not “pick one” but “run more than one”: a marketplace for discovery, an owned store for margin and list-building, and consistent pricing between them so you are not undercutting yourself.

Frequently asked questions

Which platform has the lowest fees for digital products?

On per-transaction cost alone, an own store paying only processor fees is cheapest (2.9% + 30¢ on Stripe’s published US rate), followed by Payhip’s paid tiers, then Etsy and Gumroad direct at broadly similar effective rates, with Gumroad Discover the most expensive at a flat 30%. Including the monthly subscription and the cost of generating your own traffic changes the ranking substantially.

Does Etsy really charge its transaction fee on shipping?

Etsy’s published policy applies the 6.5% transaction fee to the total sale price including shipping. For digital downloads there is normally no shipping component, so the fee applies to the item price alone.

Can I avoid Etsy Offsite Ads fees?

Etsy publishes a 15% Offsite Ads fee for shops under $10,000 in trailing-12-month sales, with the option to opt out at that level, and a reduced 12% rate for shops above $10,000 — at which point participation is mandatory. The fee applies only to orders attributed to an offsite ad click, not to all orders.

At what revenue does an own store beat a marketplace?

Use the break-even formula above with your actual numbers: divide the monthly platform cost by the percentage-point saving. The answer is only meaningful if you also account for the traffic you would have to replace — a store that saves 8 points on fees but converts a tenth of the orders is a worse business.

How often do these fees change?

Frequently enough that any fee table, including this one, should be treated as a snapshot. Each figure here links to the platform’s own pricing page — always confirm there before making a pricing or platform decision.

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Pixquo. "Etsy vs Gumroad vs Your Own Store: Published Fee Comparison."
Pixquo, 6 August 2026. https://pixquo.com/etsy-vs-gumroad-vs-own-store/

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More reference data from Pixquo

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