Online shops

Selling on Etsy, on Amazon or from your own shop: what each charges a seller in Ireland, and what each controls

On Etsy or Amazon the marketplace runs the checkout, sets the listing rules and decides how you may contact a buyer. In your own shop all three are yours. Both marketplaces publish their fees and rules for sellers in Ireland, and this page sets them side by side.

By Oscar CobbeCurrent as at 30 October 20268 minute read17 sources

Three ways to sell online from Ireland

Etsy is a marketplace for goods its sellers make, design, handpick or source themselves. Amazon takes brand owners and resellers alike, with some categories needing its approval, and Amazon.ie, which Amazon says launched in March 2025, can be listed on from a single European seller account. Your own shop is a website with a checkout, on a platform such as Shopify or WooCommerce or built for you; Shopify or WooCommerce in Ireland prices the platforms.

The marketplaces charge per listing, per sale or per month, and each figure below is as its seller pages showed it in October 2026.

What Etsy charges a shop in Ireland

Etsy's Help Centre names three fees it says most sellers need to know: a listing fee, a transaction fee and a payment processing fee. Its fixed fees are published in US dollars and converted into your payment account's currency at the market rate when they are charged.

Fee	What Etsy charges	When
Set-up	A one-time, non-refundable fee that varies by location	When you open the shop, shown during set-up
Listing	$0.20 per listing, and per extra unit sold from one listing	When you publish, whether or not it sells; a listing expires after 4 months
Transaction	6.5% of the order total, postage and gift wrap included	On each sale
Payment processing, bank account in Ireland	4% + €0.30 of the total sale price, postage included	On each sale through Etsy Payments
Currency conversion	2.5%	When the listing currency differs from your bank account's

Offsite Ads, and VAT on the fees

Etsy advertises listings on Google, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Bing and other sites, and charges 15% of an order that came from one of those ads within 30 days of the click, never more than $100 an order. A shop can opt out until it has made $10,000 in any 365 days; from then the fee is 12% and taking part is required for the life of the shop. For shops based in Ireland, Etsy says it must charge VAT on its applicable fees whether or not you have given it a VAT number.

What Amazon charges a seller in Ireland

Amazon's Irish seller pages offer two selling plans and charge a referral fee on each item sold, set by category. Its plan prices are shown excluding VAT.

Fee	What Amazon charges	When
Individual plan	€0.99 per item sold, excluding VAT	On each sale; Amazon suggests it for fewer than 40 items a month
Professional plan	€39 a month, excluding VAT	Monthly, however many items sell
Referral fee	A percentage of the total price, delivery and gift wrap included, or a €0.30 minimum where the category sets one, whichever is more: 15% for products in no named category, 7% for computers, 20% on the part of a jewellery price up to €250	On each item sold
Fulfilment by Amazon (optional)	A fee per unit by product type, size and weight, plus storage: €27.54 per cubic metre a month from January to September and €42.37 from October to December, for standard-size goods outside the named categories	If Amazon stores and ships for you
Refund administration	The lesser of €5.00 or 20% of the referral fee	When you refund an order you have been paid for

Stock in Ireland means an Irish VAT number

Amazon's Irish page says that if you store inventory in Ireland, including through Fulfilment by Amazon, you need an Irish VAT registration. To register it asks for a business email or Amazon customer account, a chargeable credit card, a passport or ID, and a company's registration details including its VAT number. It pays out 14 days after registration and every 7 days after that. From 17 April 2026 it added a 1.5% fuel and logistics surcharge to FBA fulfilment fees in stores including Ireland.

One €40 order on each

Our arithmetic on the published rates, for an order the buyer pays €40 for, postage included. It leaves out tax, VAT on the fees, and any delivery or fulfilment cost.

Where it sells	Fees on the order	Fixed costs
Etsy	€2.60 transaction fee and €1.90 processing fee: €4.50, plus the $0.20 listing fee	None monthly; €6.00 more if the order came from an Offsite Ad
Amazon, Professional plan	€6.00 referral fee at 15%	€39 a month
Amazon, Individual plan	€6.00 referral fee and €0.99 per item: €6.99	None monthly
Your own shop	The card fee of your payment provider	The platform's plan and the site itself

What Etsy controls

What you may sell. Everything listed on Etsy must be made, designed, handpicked or sourced by the seller, reselling mass-produced items is not allowed apart from limited exceptions, a seller using a production partner has to name it in the listing, and items made with AI must say so in the description. Vintage means at least 20 years old.

Where your listings are advertised. Etsy says you cannot choose which listings Offsite Ads promote; it picks them by what performs best on each channel.

How you reach the buyer afterwards. Etsy's guidance on shop policies refers sellers to its Privacy Policy for the requirement to obtain a buyer's consent before using their information for marketing, and Etsy scans and may review messages, among its reasons to detect spam and scams, including attempts to direct buyers off Etsy to complete a sale.

What Amazon controls

What you may sell, and where. Some categories need Amazon's approval first: its Irish page names grocery, jewellery, watches, apparel, beer, wine and spirits, health and personal care, and personal care appliances. Its seller code of conduct asks for one Seller Central account for each region unless there is a legitimate business need, and says offences can result in suspension.

How you reach the buyer. Amazon's communication guidelines for Ireland allow messages through Buyer-Seller Messages that are needed to complete an order or answer a customer service question. Marketing or promotional messages, vouchers included, are not permitted messages, and messages may not include email addresses, or links other than secure ones needed to complete the order or links to Amazon. Amazon sends the order and shipping confirmations itself, may block any message, and can limit a seller to its templates or suspend selling for breaking the guidelines. Contact through other channels is allowed where the seller obtains consent and follows privacy law.

What your own shop leaves to you

In your own shop the listing rules, the checkout and the customer list are yours, and so are the duties that come with them, among them the consent or soft opt-in a marketing email to a customer needs: the rules for marketing email in Ireland set them out.

A shop that sells only its own goods from its own site is outside most of the Digital Services Act; whether the DSA reaches an online shop explains why, and what changes that. A shop of your own is not in a marketplace's search results, so finding its visitors is your job.

Duties that follow you onto any marketplace

Before you can offer products to consumers in the EU through a marketplace, Article 30 of the Digital Services Act requires the marketplace to have obtained, where they apply to you: your name, address, telephone number and email address; a copy of your identification document; your payment account details; your trade register and registration number, if you are registered; and a self-certification that you will only offer products that comply with EU law. The Article makes the trader liable for the accuracy of that information, and has the marketplace show your name and contact details, register entry and self-certification to buyers. Etsy says a shop that does not confirm its information by the deadline it is given cannot receive funds from its sales and may be paused.

Marketplaces also collect and report information on their sellers to tax authorities under DAC7. Revenue's guidance says a platform operator must file its return by 31 January for the previous calendar year and give each reportable seller a copy of their information by the same date. Sellers of goods with fewer than 30 transactions and a total of less than €2,000 in the year are excluded.

On a marketplace, a business seller is still a trader. Etsy tells business sellers delivering to the EU that they must offer a minimum 14-day right of withdrawal, with exceptions that include made-to-order and customised items, digital items and some perishable goods, and must show buyers their business registration number and address. It adds that declaring yourself a private seller while acting as a business is misleading and violates consumer protection law. The cancellation rules in Irish law, and EU VAT on sales to consumers in other EU countries, are set out in Shopify or WooCommerce in Ireland.

Which suits which seller

From what each publishes:

1Etsy, where the goods are made, designed, handpicked, vintage or craft supplies, and you accept Etsy's rules on what may be listed, its Offsite Ads and its limits on contacting buyers.
2Amazon's Individual plan, where you sell a few items a month and pay per item; the Professional plan, at a fixed monthly fee, once you sell more than Amazon's suggested 40 a month or want its advertising tools.
3Your own shop, where you want the customer list, your own rules and your own prices, and will bring the visitors yourself.
4More than one: a marketplace listing and a site of your own can run side by side, within each marketplace's limits on steering its buyers elsewhere.

Sources

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Price a shop of your own

Pick the site, add card payments or a small shop, and see the build price and the yearly running cost from our published list, to set beside a marketplace's fees. A payment provider's own fees are not in it.

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A shop of your own, built for you

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Who wrote this

Oscar Cobbe · Founder, FourWinds Digital

Writes and maintains the legal explainers on this site, and does the compliance work behind them. Every date and article number here is checked against the legislation itself before it is published, and each article shows the date it was last checked.

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