TL;DR
Etsy lets anyone open a shop in minutes and charges small per-listing and transaction fees. Amazon Handmade is application-only (you get vetted as a maker) and charges a flat 15% referral fee with no listing fees and the usual $39.99 per month Pro plan waived. Etsy is built for handmade and its shoppers come looking for it. Amazon has a far bigger audience, but handmade is a small corner of it. For most established Etsy sellers, Etsy stays home and Amazon Handmade is a maybe-later second channel, not a replacement. One thing to clear up first: Amazon Handmade is not the same as “selling on Amazon”.
If you have built a real business on Etsy, at some point you start wondering whether you are leaving money on the table by not being on Amazon. It is the biggest storefront on the planet. Surely some of those buyers want what you make.
Before I go further, let me be straight about where I sit. I run Listadum, a tools company for Etsy sellers, so I am not a neutral party, and I have never sold a single thing on Amazon myself. What follows is not “here is how I did it”. It is an honest comparison put together from Amazon’s and Etsy’s own rules and public numbers, so you can decide whether Amazon Handmade is worth your time. Where I do not know something from experience, I will say so.
One person who has actually made this move is my friend Nick, who expanded his personalized wedding shop from Etsy to Amazon Handmade and wrote up what he learned. Where his first-hand experience fills in what mine cannot, I will point you to it.
First, clear up the biggest confusion
When people say “sell on Amazon”, they can mean two completely different businesses, and mixing them up will waste weeks of your life.
The first is Amazon Handmade. This is Amazon’s version of Etsy: a curated section for makers selling their own handcrafted goods. That is the one worth comparing to your Etsy shop, and it is what the rest of this post is about.
The second is regular Amazon selling, the source-then-resell model (online arbitrage, wholesale, dropshipping). You find existing products, buy them cheap, and resell them for a margin. It has nothing to do with making things by hand. It is a numbers game of sourcing, deal analysis, and repricing, and it runs on a completely different toolset. If that is the path you are curious about, do not use this post as your guide. A platform like Seller Assistant is built specifically for that reselling workflow, from finding products to checking margins to repricing, and it will tell you far more than I can.
For everyone else, the maker selling their own work, Amazon Handmade is the real comparison. Here is how it stacks up against Etsy.
Getting in the door
This is the first real difference, and it is a big one.
Etsy is open. You create an account, pay a small one-time setup fee (currently in the $15 to $29 range), and you can be listing within the hour. No one vets you. That is why Etsy has millions of shops, and also part of why it can feel crowded.
Amazon Handmade is gated. You apply, and a human reviews you. You need a Professional seller account to start, then you fill out an artisan application describing what you make, the materials you use, and how you make it. Amazon wants detail and usually photos of your process and finished pieces. Vague applications get rejected more often than detailed ones. Approval typically takes a few business days, though it can stretch to a couple of weeks in busy periods.
Neither approach is better in the abstract. Etsy’s openness means speed and no gatekeeper. Amazon’s vetting means a smaller, more curated pool of sellers, which can work in your favor once you clear the bar.
The fees, side by side
Both platforms take a cut. They just take it differently, and the difference matters depending on your prices and volume.
On Etsy, the fees are smaller but there are more of them. You pay $0.20 to list an item (and again every four months, or each time one sells), a 6.5% transaction fee on the sale total, and payment processing that in the US runs about 3% plus $0.25 per order. If a sale comes through Etsy’s Offsite Ads, there is an additional 12% or 15% ad fee on that order depending on your shop’s revenue. Add it up and a typical Etsy order costs you somewhere around 10% in fees, or closer to 25% on the orders that come through Offsite Ads.
On Amazon Handmade, the structure is simpler and the headline number is bigger. There are no listing fees. The normal $39.99 per month Professional selling plan is waived for approved Handmade sellers. What you pay is a flat 15% referral fee on the total, item price plus shipping. No per-listing nickel-and-diming, no separate processing fee, just the 15%.
So on a $50 order, Etsy might take around $5 in fees before any ad fee, while Amazon Handmade takes a flat $7.50. Amazon’s cut is higher per sale, but you are not paying to list and you are not paying a monthly subscription. For a shop with a huge catalog of slower sellers, skipping listing fees can add up. For a shop with fast-moving items, Etsy’s lower percentage often wins. Run your own numbers on your actual prices before you assume either way.
Traffic and the kind of buyer you get
This is where honesty matters most, because it is the part I cannot speak to from experience, only from what is observable.
Amazon is the largest shopping platform in the world, with an enormous base of Prime buyers who already trust the checkout and expect fast shipping. That is real reach, and it can pay off: Nick saw his personalized wedding shop’s revenue double within two years of adding Amazon Handmade, helped by there being little competition for personalized wedding products at the time. He is also candid that it took more operational work than Etsy, from GTIN exemptions to Amazon’s tighter metrics and response-time rules. The catch is that Handmade is a small, tucked-away corner of that giant, and Amazon shoppers are not usually there hunting for handmade. They are there to buy quickly and cheaply. Your slower, made-to-order piece is competing for attention inside a machine optimized for convenience.
Etsy is the opposite. It is far smaller than Amazon, but nearly everyone on it came specifically to buy handmade, vintage, or personalized goods. The intent is already aligned with what you sell. You are not explaining why handmade costs more; the buyer showed up understanding that.
Neither is a free traffic faucet. On both platforms you still earn visibility through good listings, strong photos, reviews, and search optimization. Amazon gives you a bigger ocean. Etsy gives you a pond full of the exact fish you want.
Storefront, brand, and shipping
A few smaller but real differences.
Etsy gives you more of a storefront. Your shop has a name, a look, an About section, and a bit of personality. Buyers can follow you and browse your whole catalog as a brand.
Amazon is product-page first. Your items live as listings inside Amazon’s uniform layout, and the brand-building tools are thinner. You are a seller of products more than you are a shop with a face.
On shipping, Amazon Handmade lets you use Fulfillment by Amazon, where Amazon stores and ships your inventory for added fees, which can unlock Prime badges and faster delivery. That is powerful for reach but awkward for made-to-order or highly personalized work. On Etsy you handle fulfillment yourself or through a print partner, which is more hands-on but keeps you in control of the last mile.
So which one is right for you?
Since I cannot hand you a personal war story, here is the honest framework instead.
If you are early and still finding your footing, Etsy is almost certainly the place to start. It is faster to launch, cheaper to test with, and its audience is already looking for what you make.
If you are an established Etsy seller with capacity to spare and products that ship well, Amazon Handmade can be worth adding as a second channel for the extra reach. Treat it as an experiment on top of a stable Etsy business, not a replacement for it. Getting approved, learning a new system, and managing a second stream of orders is real work. It is the same juggling act sellers hit when they start running more than one Etsy shop, and spreading yourself thin across two platforms you half-run is a good way to do neither well.
And if what you actually want is the reselling side of Amazon, go back to the top of this post. That is a different business with a different toolset, and it deserves its own research.
Where Listadum fits (and where it does not)
I will be honest about my own tool here too. Listadum is built for Etsy, not Amazon. If you go the Amazon Handmade route, Listadum will not help you there, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
What it does do is take the busywork out of the Etsy side: keyword research and listing recommendations built right into the editor, and every one of your Etsy shops in a single dashboard so you are not signing in and out all day. If you decide Etsy is where you are putting your energy, that is the part we make easier. It is free to start, so you can see if it fits before spending anything.
Whatever you choose, choose it on purpose. One platform run well beats two run halfway.
Cyril
FAQ
Is Amazon Handmade cheaper than Etsy?
It depends on how you sell. Amazon Handmade charges a flat 15% referral fee with no listing fees and no monthly plan cost for approved sellers. Etsy charges smaller fees but more of them: $0.20 per listing, 6.5% transaction, plus payment processing, which lands around 10% on a typical order and higher if the sale comes through Offsite Ads. High-volume shops with fast sellers often pay less on Etsy per sale; shops with large catalogs of slower items can benefit from Amazon’s lack of listing fees. Run your real numbers.
Do I need approval to sell on Amazon Handmade?
Yes. Unlike Etsy, which anyone can join, Amazon Handmade requires an artisan application that a person reviews. You describe what you make, your materials, and your process, ideally with photos. Approval usually takes a few business days and can take up to about two weeks when Amazon is busy.
Can I sell the same products on both Etsy and Amazon Handmade?
Yes, plenty of makers list on both. Just go in knowing it means maintaining two sets of listings, two inboxes, and two systems, which is real ongoing work. Many sellers keep Etsy as their main shop and treat Amazon Handmade as an additional channel rather than a replacement.
Is Amazon Handmade the same as selling on Amazon?
No, and this trips a lot of people up. Amazon Handmade is a curated marketplace for makers selling their own handcrafted goods, comparable to Etsy. “Selling on Amazon” more often refers to reselling sourced products through arbitrage, wholesale, or dropshipping, which is an entirely different business with its own tools and skills.
Which has more traffic, Etsy or Amazon Handmade?
Amazon has vastly more total traffic, but most of it is not shopping for handmade. Etsy has less traffic overall, but the people there arrived specifically to buy handmade, vintage, and personalized items, so the intent is a much better match for what you make.
Should I leave Etsy for Amazon Handmade?
For most established sellers, no. The stronger play is usually to keep Etsy as your home base and test Amazon Handmade as an extra channel if you have the capacity. Abandoning a shop with existing reviews, search history, and repeat buyers is a steep cost to pay for an unproven second platform.