If you make something worth selling, the first real decision isn't your product — it's where the customer finds you. Two answers dominate: Etsy, the marketplace with millions of shoppers already browsing, and Wix Stores, the sell-it-yourself engine inside the Wix website builder. They attack the same problem from opposite directions, and picking wrong costs you either margin or months of traffic. Here's how each works, what each charges, and the honest rule for deciding which to open first.
One ground rule: the Wix plan prices below come from our verified baseline, and Etsy's fee numbers reflect its published US seller rates as of October 2026. Both companies change pricing, so treat every figure as "at our latest check" and confirm on the official page before you build a plan on it. We don't invent numbers here.
Two different kinds of "store"
The comparison trips people up because both are called an online shop, but the underlying model is opposite.
- Etsy is a marketplace. You list products inside someone else's storefront. Etsy already has shoppers searching for handmade, vintage and craft supplies, and your listings compete inside that traffic. In exchange, Etsy takes a cut of every order and controls the relationship with the buyer.
- Wix Stores is a store you own. It's an eCommerce app inside a Wix website. There's no audience baked in — you drive visitors to your own domain — but you keep the customer list, the branding and the margin, and Wix doesn't skim a commission on top of your payment fees.
Everything else — cost, control, effort, discoverability — flows from that one difference. Etsy front-loads the traffic and charges you per sale. Wix front-loads the empty room and charges you per month.
What Etsy actually costs
Etsy has no monthly fee to open a basic shop. Instead it charges you every time someone lists or buys. The US rates as of our October 2026 check:
- $0.20 listing fee per item, which renews every four months or whenever the item sells.
- 6.5% transaction fee on the total you charge — item price plus shipping and any gift wrap.
- Payment processing of roughly 3% + $0.25 per order through Etsy Payments (varies slightly by country).
- 12–15% offsite-ads commission on orders that came from Etsy's own advertising — 15% for most shops, 12% once you pass $10,000 in the previous year. Effectively unavoidable early on unless you opt out and lose the visibility.
Stack those on a typical sale and Etsy's cut lands somewhere around 10–15% of order value before offsite ads, and noticeably more when an order arrives through Etsy's ads. On a $50 order with shipping included, that's roughly five dollars of fees — every single time. None of it is a bad deal in isolation; you're paying for the fact that a stranger already on the site found you.
What Wix Stores actually costs
Wix Stores is flat-rate. The app ships with the site; what you really pay for is the plan underneath it, because accepting payments requires a paid tier. From our verified baseline (USD, billed yearly):
- Core — $29/mo billed yearly ($36 month-to-month). This is the entry point for selling: it unlocks online payments and basic eCommerce.
- Business — $39/mo billed yearly ($46 monthly). Adds the fuller eCommerce toolkit — subscriptions, advanced shipping, and more — for shops that grow into it.
On top of the plan, you pay your payment provider's processing fee — the same card-network cost Etsy passes through. The key difference: Wix takes no commission on your sales. Your per-order overhead is payment processing and nothing else, while the platform fee is fixed no matter how much you sell. The free plan is fine for building and previewing a store, but it can't accept payments at all — selling starts at Core. Our Wix pricing breakdown covers every tier in detail.
| Cost line | Etsy | Wix Stores |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly platform fee | $0 to open | $29/mo (Core, billed yearly) |
| Listing fee | $0.20 per item | None |
| Commission on the sale | 6.5% + payment fees | None (payment fees only) |
| Ad commission | 12–15% on offsite-ad orders | Optional, you set your own budget |
| Who brings the customer | Etsy's existing traffic | You do |
Read the math the right way
The two fee models don't compare at the same sales volume. On Etsy you pay almost nothing until you sell, then pay a slice of every sale forever. On Wix you pay a fixed amount every month whether you sell $0 or $10,000, and keep the rest.
That creates a crossover. A handful of small orders a month? Etsy's per-sale fees beat a $29 plan. Steady, healthy volume? The flat Wix fee wins every month, because Etsy's percentage scales with your revenue while your platform cost stays put. Rough rule: once Etsy fees would top $29 in a month, owning the store starts to win on cost alone — and it wins by more the more you sell.
Cost is only half the question. The other half is what Etsy's fee is secretly buying you.
Where each one genuinely wins
Start on Etsy when you're validating demand, your product fits what shoppers already search for there (handmade, custom, vintage, craft supplies), or you have no audience yet. Etsy's real product is discovery: a brand-new shop can land its first sale in days without spending a cent on marketing — exactly the risk you want to dodge while testing whether people want your thing.
Move to — or start with — Wix Stores when you're building a brand rather than renting listings, your margins are too thin for per-sale fees, you want the customer emails and repeat business for yourself, or you sell outside Etsy's categories. Owning your domain also sidesteps the marketplace's two quiet risks: sudden fee or policy changes, and account suspensions that can freeze income overnight. The eCommerce setup guide walks the mechanics of turning a Wix site into a working store.
A practical order to do it in
- 1. List on Etsy. Open a free shop, publish your best sellers, and watch what actually moves — cheap research into which items are worth building a brand around.
- 2. Build a Wix store alongside it. Preview on the free plan, upgrade to Core (from $29/mo billed yearly) the day you switch on payments, and use the custom domain that paid plans give you free for the first year.
- 3. Point bestsellers and packaging at your own site, moving your most loyal buyers onto a storefront where the margin and the relationship are yours.
- 4. Time the upgrade around a sale. Annual billing already runs roughly 25–35% below monthly, and seasonal promotions take up to about 50% off for a window — applied automatically, no code. The sale calendar maps when those land.
Still choosing the platform itself? Our Wix vs Shopify head-to-head covers the other big name in selling, and the free vs paid breakdown shows exactly where selling stops being free.
Bottom line: Etsy is the fastest way to make a first sale; Wix Stores is where you keep the money from your hundredth. Start where your risk is highest — proving people want the product — then graduate to owning the channel. Whichever you open first, check the deals hub before you pay; every Wix offer we list is verified and date-stamped.