Big Cartel vs Etsy 2026: Fees and Which to Choose

Big Cartel is the lower-fee home once a US maker can bring their own buyers. Etsy is the marketplace those buyers already search. On one $45 item plus $6 shipping, paid with a domestic card and no sales tax, Big Cartel Platinum at $15 a month plus Stripe costs less than Etsy's sale fees from the fifth order of the month. A shop with 12 products cannot use the free plan, which stops at 5 products.

Our analysis of that same order, repeated 20 times, charges $1,020. Etsy's transaction and payment fees alone are $101.90 before listing renewals and Offsite Ads. Platinum billed monthly, plus Stripe, is $50.58. Big Cartel adds no percent of the sale. The 6.5% Etsy charges on the item and the shipping is what opens the gap, while card processing on this order is nearly flat. Rates were read on October 30, 2026.

Etsy is a marketplace shop that can show up in Etsy search. Big Cartel is a hosted shop on its own address, with a flat plan and a hard product cap. An order still pays the channel that took it, so running both does not wipe either bill.

Big Cartel vs Etsy at a glance

Shop	Best for	Starting price
Big Cartel Gold	Five products or fewer on your own site	$0, then Stripe or PayPal on each sale
Big Cartel Platinum	Six to 50 products on your own site	$15/mo, or $144 billed for the year
Etsy	Shoppers already searching the marketplace	$0.20 to list, plus 6.5% and payment fees

Gold's published include list is 5 product listings, the Cosmos template, online checkout by card or PayPal, sales tax autopilot, real-time stats, and size and color variants. It asks for no credit card. Platinum is the plan a 12-product shop actually needs. Diamond, at $30 a month or $288 for the year, is the step from 51 products up to 500, and it is wasted money at a catalog of 12.

The plan prices are on Big Cartel's pricing page and the Gold plan page. Product caps are in Big Cartel's import help. Etsy's listing, transaction, and payment figures are in Etsy fee basics, the fees and taxes article, and the US processing table.

What does the same month cost?

The model is one maker, one catalog, and the same orders on either channel. Twelve products are already listed. Each sale is a single unit: a $45 item and $6 shipping, so the buyer is charged $51. There is no gift wrap, no sales tax, and no second quantity on the listing. The card is a standard domestic card. Etsy Payments uses a United States bank account. Big Cartel is connected to Stripe at the US domestic card rate both Stripe and Big Cartel publish, 2.9% plus $0.30. A second column swaps in PayPal Checkout.

Each fee line takes the published percent times the month's charged total, adds the flat fee times the order count, and rounds the monthly total to the nearest cent. Actual charges can differ slightly if the processor rounds each order separately. Listing renewals and Offsite Ads are left out of this table on purpose, then added back as separate cases. With only 12 single-quantity listings, 20 sales require at least 8 paid relistings: at $0.20 each, add at least $1.60 to the 20-order Etsy base. Actual per-order rounding can also change the result by a few cents. The table is not a forecast of traffic, and it does not include a domain, apps, refunds, or the cost of finding a customer.

Orders in the month	Amount charged	Etsy sale fees	Platinum monthly plus Stripe	Platinum monthly plus PayPal
4	$204	$20.38	$22.12	$24.08
5	$255	$25.48	$23.90	$26.35
6	$306	$30.57	$25.67	$28.62
20	$1,020	$101.90	$50.58	$60.40

Stripe plus the monthly plan is the cheaper column from the fifth order. PayPal Checkout needs a sixth order before it beats Etsy. At four orders, Etsy is still lower than both Big Cartel columns, by $1.74 against Stripe and by $3.70 against PayPal. Paying Platinum as $144 for the year, which is $12 a month, moves the Stripe cross earlier: at four orders that version is $19.12, under Etsy's $20.38. At three orders the annual Stripe total is still higher, at $17.34 against $15.29.

The 20-order bill splits like this. Etsy takes $66.30 as the transaction fee and $35.60 as payment processing. Big Cartel on Stripe takes $0 as a transaction fee, $35.58 as processing, and $15 as the plan. PayPal Checkout processing on the same $1,020 is $45.40, so the plan pushes that path to $60.40. Processing is close because 3% plus $0.25 and 2.9% plus $0.30 nearly offset on a $51 charge. The dollars that separate the columns are Etsy's 6.5% and, on the Big Cartel side, the plan.

Fee on 20 orders	Etsy	Platinum monthly plus Stripe
Plan, or listings renewed this month	$0 if nothing renews	$15.00
Transaction fee	$66.30	$0.00
Card processing	$35.60	$35.58
Total before ads	$101.90	$50.58

Twelve listings cost $2.40 when they are published or when the four-month term renews, not when each one sells. A month with no publish and no renewal adds nothing. If all 12 renew in the same month, Etsy's four-order bill becomes $22.78, which flips that month in favor of monthly Platinum plus Stripe at $22.12. Listings do not have to renew together, so a shop near the line should look at its own renewal calendar before treating four orders as an Etsy win.

Shipping is inside the Etsy percent. On 20 orders the $6 charge is $120 of shipping, and 6.5% of that shipping is $7.80 that Big Cartel does not take. Stripe and PayPal still apply their percent to the full charge, shipping included. Building shipping into the item price does not remove it from Etsy's base. A private custom listing is the exception: Etsy charges the listing fee only if the named buyer purchases.

A catalog of five products can stay on Gold and drop the plan to $0. The 20-order Stripe bill is then the processing alone, $35.58, against Etsy's $101.90. Gold is the wrong plan the moment the sixth product goes up. The longer Big Cartel review prices that cap against other hosted shops, and the free ecommerce website guide covers the other no-plan options.

How do listing fees, sale fees, and card fees differ?

Etsy charges its listing fee when a listing is published, again when that listing auto-renews after four months, and again for each extra unit sold from a multi-quantity listing. The fee is due whether or not the item sold. Big Cartel has no per-product listing fee on any plan. The constraint is the cap: 5, 50, or 500 products, from the import article. A variant in another size or color is still one product on Gold, which is why a small apparel line can fit further than a count of SKUs suggests, until the product count itself hits the wall.

Etsy's transaction fee is 6.5% of the order amount in the listing currency, including shipping and gift wrap. Big Cartel's processing article says Big Cartel does not charge transaction fees and does not hold the payout. Stripe or PayPal deducts its own fee and pays the rest on that processor's schedule. Those processor fees do not appear in the Big Cartel admin. The seller opens the order and follows the link into Stripe or PayPal to see them. A shop that only looks at the Big Cartel balance will think the payout is the full charge.

For a United States bank account, Etsy Payments is 3% plus $0.25 on the total sale price, including shipping and any sales tax. This model charges no tax, so the percent applies to the $51 only. If a state tax is added to the buyer's total, Etsy's processing base rises with it. On Big Cartel, tax the company collects and remits for certain US states shows up at the processor as an application fee or a partner commission. That line is the tax, not an extra Big Cartel cut, and it is outside this model.

Stripe's pricing page lists 2.9% plus $0.30 per successful domestic card transaction. Big Cartel's processing article, dated March 20, 2026 on the page, gives the same US example and walks a $50 charge down to a $1.75 Stripe fee. PayPal's US business fee page lists PayPal Checkout at 3.49% plus a fixed fee, and the fixed fee for a commercial payment received in US dollars is $0.49. International cards, currency conversion, buy-now-pay-later, and disputes sit on top of these rates and are not in the table. The seller confirms the live rate in the processor account, because both companies say the rate can change by country and by payment method.

Offsite Ads are the fee that can wreck an otherwise planned margin, and only on Etsy. Etsy charges it when a buyer clicks an off-site ad and purchases from the shop within 30 days. Shops that have always stayed under $10,000 in any consecutive 365-day period pay 15% and can opt out. A shop that reaches $10,000 in any such period pays 12% and must stay in the program for the life of the shop, even if sales later fall. The fee is capped at $100 on an order. A $51 order is under that cap, so the cap does not help this example. One attributed order adds $7.65 at 15% or $6.12 at 12%.

Extra case on the 20-order month	Added to Etsy	Etsy total
No Offsite Ad, no renewal	$0	$101.90
All 12 listings renew	$2.40	$104.30
One order from Offsite Ads at 15%	$7.65	$109.55
One order from Offsite Ads at 12%	$6.12	$108.02

None of those rows is a prediction of how often Etsy will attribute an order. They show the dollar size of a single attributed sale next to the base bill. Shops under the threshold can turn the program off. Crossing $10,000 removes that choice. The Offsite Ads article is the enrollment rule, and our Etsy seller fees page stacks the same fees on a single smaller order.

Etsy Plus is optional and separate from the sale. It is $10 a month and returns 15 listing credits plus $5 of Etsy Ads credit. Credits expire at the end of the cycle. Fifteen listing credits cover $3 of listing charges, so a shop that would have paid those listings and $5 of on-site ads anyway is prepaying spend it already makes. A 12-product shop that rarely renews and does not buy Etsy Ads does not have a place to spend the credits. Etsy Ads themselves have no fixed price. The seller sets a budget, which is why they are not in the comparison table.

Pattern is Etsy's own website, not a discount on marketplace fees. After a 30-day trial the subscription matches Platinum's monthly price. Pattern-only listings have no listing fee, and Pattern sales have no 6.5% transaction fee. They still pay Etsy Payments. Move all 20 orders onto Pattern and the bill is that subscription plus $35.60 of processing, or $50.60. That is $0.02 more than monthly Platinum plus Stripe on this order, so the fee race is a tie and the product is not. Pattern does not include a domain. Domain registration is a separate charge, and optional WHOIS privacy is $3 a year. A marketplace order still pays the full Etsy sale fees even if Pattern is also switched on.

Which platform brings shoppers?

Etsy can place a listing in front of someone who is already searching the marketplace. That is the entire case for paying 6.5% plus processing. Appearance in search is not a promised rank, a promised visit, or a promised sale. The shop still competes with other listings, and an order attributed to Offsite Ads picks up the extra percent above. A maker who needs that search, and whose goods are allowed, is paying for distribution.

Big Cartel does not supply a marketplace. The pricing page lists running ads and a Google Shopping connection on Platinum and Diamond, which is a feed, not an audience. Buyers arrive from the seller's own email, social posts, markets, or ads the seller pays a network for. A cheaper platform bill is a loss if those buyers cost more to reach than the fee difference. The Shopify vs Etsy comparison makes the same split for a larger store, and marketplace seller fees puts Etsy next to other marketplaces, including the separate eBay seller fees breakdown.

What you may sell is not the same question. Etsy requires that an item be made, designed, handpicked, or sourced by the seller, and it bars reselling mass-produced goods aside from limited exceptions. A design produced by a partner has to be disclosed. Seller-prompted AI work has to be disclosed too. Big Cartel does not apply that marketplace test. It will host a small catalog the seller is willing to stand behind, including print-on-demand through installable apps on the paid plans. A maker using a print partner should read what a print-on-demand business involves and the print-on-demand options aimed at Etsy sellers before assuming one catalog can be copied to both channels unchanged.

Who should open which shop?

Pick Gold when the catalog is five products or fewer and someone other than a marketplace will send the buyers. There is no plan fee to earn back. There is also one template, and the published include list does not mention a custom domain or in-person checkout. The moment a sixth product is real, Gold is finished and Platinum's $15 is the relevant bill.

Pick Platinum when the catalog is between six and 50 products and the maker wants the shop on their own address. The plan comparison lists custom domain support, product import from Etsy, Squarespace, and Shopify, shipping labels, and in-person checkout in the mobile app. The trial is seven days, then the monthly price, unless the year is paid as $144. Diamond adds abandoned-cart recovery, scheduled drops, password-protected products, a Zapier connection Big Cartel describes as 7,000-plus apps, and priority support. None of that changes the processing rate. It changes the ceiling from 50 products to 500.

Pick Etsy when the goods fit the creativity rules and the shop still depends on marketplace search. The bill scales with sales instead of with a plan, which is why four small orders in this model still cost less on Etsy than on monthly Platinum. That advantage shrinks once orders repeat, and it reverses if Offsite Ads attach. A new shop also faces a one-time setup fee that Etsy shows during opening and does not publish as a single dollar amount. A US shop that lists and gets paid in dollars avoids the separate 2.5% currency conversion. Listing in another currency would add it.

Run both when the Etsy shop is already being found and the maker wants a checkout that does not give up 6.5%. Platinum and Diamond list an importer for Etsy products, so the catalog does not have to be typed twice, but stock, shipping promises, and returns still have to match. An Etsy order keeps every Etsy fee. A Big Cartel order keeps the plan and the processor. Track the channels apart: revenue, processing, listing spend, ads, and repeat buyers. Tools for the Etsy side are collected in the Etsy seller tools guide. A catalog that will pass 500 products does not fit Diamond at all. Other hosted shops, with their own plan fees, are in the ecommerce platforms ranking.

Big Cartel wins the fee round for this $51 order once volume clears the plan, and it wins ownership of the shop. Etsy wins discovery, and it wins a very small month if the maker is content to stay inside the marketplace rules. A tie on raw processing, for this one charge size, is not a tie on the total bill.

FAQ

Is Big Cartel cheaper than Etsy in 2026?

On the $45 item plus $6 shipping in this page, monthly Platinum plus Stripe is cheaper from the fifth order of the month, and PayPal Checkout from the sixth. At four orders with no listing renewal, Etsy is still cheaper than both. Twenty orders with no ads and no renewal cost $101.90 on Etsy and $50.58 on monthly Platinum plus Stripe. A different order size, a renewal month, or an Offsite Ad changes the count.

How much does Big Cartel cost?

Gold is $0 and holds 5 products. Platinum is $15 a month after a seven-day trial, or $144 billed for the year, and holds 50 products. Diamond is $30 a month, or $288 billed for the year, and holds 500 products. None of those prices includes Stripe or PayPal. US Stripe domestic cards are 2.9% plus $0.30. PayPal Checkout on a domestic commercial payment in US dollars is 3.49% plus $0.49.

How much does Etsy charge on a sale?

A US shop pays $0.20 to publish or renew a listing, 6.5% of the item plus shipping and gift wrap, and 3% plus $0.25 through Etsy Payments when the bank account is in the United States. Offsite Ads add 15% or 12% only when an ad click leads to an order within 30 days, capped at $100. There is no required monthly subscription for a standard shop.

Does Big Cartel take a percentage of each sale?

No. Big Cartel says it does not charge a transaction fee and does not deduct the processor's fee itself. Stripe or PayPal does, at that processor's rate. The fee is visible in the processor dashboard, not in the Big Cartel admin.

Can a maker sell on Big Cartel and Etsy at the same time?

Yes, if the Etsy listings meet Etsy's rules. Platinum and Diamond list an import from Etsy. Each channel still charges its own fees on the orders it takes, and quantities have to stay accurate in both places. Using both does not remove the 6.5% from an Etsy order.

When do Etsy Offsite Ads become mandatory?

When the shop has made $10,000 in any consecutive 365-day period. Below that line the shop can opt out, and attributed orders cost 15%. After the line, the rate is 12% and the shop cannot leave the program for the life of the shop. The fee applies only to orders attributed to an ad click within 30 days, and it stops at $100 on one order.

Is the free Big Cartel plan enough for a new maker?

Only while the shop has 5 products or fewer and the maker can reach buyers without marketplace search. Gold includes one template and does not list custom-domain support. A sixth product requires Platinum. The free plan also does not remove card processing.

Methodology and bottom line

Retailpresso read Big Cartel's pricing, Gold, processing, and import pages, Stripe's pricing page, PayPal's US business fee page, and Etsy's help articles on fees, payment processing, Offsite Ads, Etsy Plus, Pattern, and what can be sold, all on October 30, 2026. The order math is our calculation from those published rates. We did not open merchant accounts, and we did not measure visits or conversion. Fees vary by country and can change. A shop near four to six orders a month should rerun the table with its own item price, shipping, tax, and processor before switching.

Use Etsy to be found, and Big Cartel to keep the repeat order. For this US maker's $51 charge, the hosted shop is the lower fee from a handful of orders a month, as long as the catalog fits the plan and the buyers have a reason to arrive. The marketplace remains the rational place for goods that fit its rules and still need its search.

Cite this: Retailpresso, "Big Cartel vs Etsy 2026: Fees and Which to Choose," prices checked October 30, 2026.

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