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Shopify wins on fees at ~24 orders a month. Winning on traffic is the hard part.
At $22.50 average orders, Etsy takes $2.59 per sale while Shopify costs $39 a month plus 95¢ per order — the fee crossover sits near 24 orders a month. This calculator runs both stacks at your volume, with the one caveat that decides everything: Etsy brings buyers, Shopify brings none.
Shop owners use it at the migration decision: Shopify undercuts Etsy past ~24 orders/mo on fees — but Etsy's $259 includes the buyers, Shopify's $134 does not.
On pure fees, past roughly 24 orders a month, yes: Etsy's stack ($0.20 listing + 6.5% transaction + 3% + $0.25 processing) runs about $2.59 on a $22.50 order, while Shopify Basic is $39 flat plus about 95¢ per order in processing. At 100 orders a month that is $259 versus $134. But the comparison hides the product: Etsy's fee includes access to 90+ million buyers searching the marketplace; Shopify's $39 buys a storefront with zero visitors. Sellers who move to Shopify for the fee savings without a traffic plan routinely trade a $125/month fee bill for a $500/month ad bill. The fee crossover only matters once you own an audience.
When repeat customers become a meaningful share of orders — that is the traffic you do not have to buy twice. The standard migration: keep Etsy for discovery (new buyers find you in search), and route repeats to your own site via packaging inserts, email lists you own, and social following. Signals you are ready: 30%+ repeat rate, an email list over 500, or social traffic already converting. Also consider the policy moat: Etsy can suspend shops, change fees (the Offsite Ads mandate at $10k caught sellers flat-footed), and delist products — a Shopify store is insurance on the revenue, not just a fee play. Run both in parallel; the calculator shows the fee picture of shifting volume gradually.
The $39 Basic plan is the floor, not the total: processing at 2.9% + $0.30 per online transaction, plus the apps most stores end up needing ($10–$50/month for reviews, email, upsells), plus a theme if free ones do not fit. A realistic all-in for a small store is $60–$120/month before ads. Higher tiers cut processing rates (2.6% on the $105 plan) — the break-even on upgrading is around $15,000/month in volume. The cost that dwarfs all of it is customer acquisition: if your traffic plan is paid ads at $1.50+ per click with 2% conversion, that is $75 per order — versus Etsy's ~11.5% of order value. Fees are the visible cost; traffic is the real one.