Amazon vs Etsy — where handmade and vintage actually belong

What this comparison covers

• The short answer
• What each platform lets you sell
• Vintage: the 20-year line, and where Amazon has none
• Fee shapes, and the sell-through rate that decides it
• Offsite Ads, the fee you cannot always refuse
• How buyers find you on each
• Amazon Handmade, head to head with Etsy
• Postage, returns and the day-to-day
• Whose customer is it
• Running both, and what FLUF syncs
• What FLUF costs
• Sources and verification
• Related guides

The short answer

If you make things, start on Etsy. It is built for you, its buyers arrive wanting what you sell, and you can open a shop this afternoon without asking permission. Add Amazon Handmade later, as a second channel, once you know which of your pieces actually move — because Handmade rewards volume and punishes a slow catalogue far less than Etsy does.

If you resell mass-produced modern goods, neither of these is your platform. Etsy prohibits it and Amazon Handmade prohibits it. Amazon’s main marketplace is where that stock belongs, and the Amazon and eBay comparison is the more useful page for you.

What each platform lets you sell

This is the whole comparison, and almost every other difference is downstream of it.

Etsy’s Creativity Standards require that an item be made, designed, handpicked or sourced by the seller. Etsy sets out four routes:

• Made by a seller — handcrafted, hand-altered, hand-assembled, or made on your own computerised tools: a 3D printer, a Cricut, a CNC machine.
• Designed by a seller — your original design produced by someone else. This is the route that legitimises print-on-demand and production partners, and it also covers digital downloads and seller-prompted AI art.
• Handpicked by a seller — vintage items 20 years old or more that you personally curated or collected.
• Sourced by a seller — craft and party supplies, and items you personalise for the buyer.

Note what that means for anyone working from an out-of-date guide. “Etsy is handmade only” has not been accurate for some time: a print-on-demand shop using a production partner is squarely inside the rules, provided the design is yours. What remains firmly outside is plain resale of modern commercially available goods.

Etsy’s enforcement is also post-hoc rather than gated. You open a shop and list; Etsy may remove listings later, and its policy notes that sellers “remain obligated to pay any fees incurred in listing such items”. That is a meaningful risk if you list several hundred pieces on an interpretation Etsy does not share.

Amazon inverts both halves of that. Its main marketplace has no creative-provenance rule whatsoever — mass-produced catalogue goods are the default, and the constraint is having a product identifier rather than having made anything. Amazon Handmade, the programme that competes with Etsy directly, then applies a stricter test than Etsy’s and applies it before you list: products must be hand-altered, hand-designed, handcrafted, repurposed or upcycled, and you are approved as a maker by application.

Vintage: the 20-year line, and where Amazon has none

For anyone selling old things rather than new ones, this is the deciding paragraph.

Etsy has a clear, generous and enforceable definition: 20 years or older, personally curated or collected by you. The exclusion is written to close the obvious loophole — “Resold commercially available items that are newer than 20 years old, even if the item is designed to appear vintage.” A 1970s dress qualifies. A 2019 dress cut to look like one does not.

Amazon Handmade has no vintage route at all. Its distinction is between items you hand-altered or hand-assembled and vintage pieces sold as they are — and only the first qualifies. A genuinely reworked garment can go on Handmade; the same garment sold untouched cannot.

Nor does Amazon’s main marketplace help, at least in fashion. Amazon’s UK condition guidelines make Apparel and “Shoes and Handbag” New only, so second-hand clothing has no home on Amazon in any programme. If your business is curated vintage clothing, Etsy is the comparison winner by default and the rest of this page is academic. Vintage homeware, books, records and collectibles are a different matter, because Amazon permits used in those categories — but it permits them as offers on existing catalogue entries, which suits a repeatable title far better than a one-off object.

Fee shapes, and the sell-through rate that decides it

Both platforms take roughly a tenth to a sixth of a sale. They take it in structurally different ways, and the difference matters more than the headline percentages.

Two notes before you do arithmetic on that. Etsy’s 6.5% transaction fee is charged on the total order, explicitly including the postage and gift wrapping you charge the buyer — so a cheap item with expensive shipping costs proportionally more than the headline suggests. And Amazon’s Handmade rate genuinely differs by market: Amazon’s US page states “15% or $0.30, whichever is greater” while its UK page states 12.24%. We quote both because both are verbatim from Amazon; we have not been able to reconcile the gap and it may be a VAT-exclusive presentation.

The listing fee is the thing that actually decides this. Etsy charges £0.15 or $0.20 every four months per listing, sold or not, and again on each additional quantity sold in a multi-quantity order. For a maker with 40 fast-moving items that is a rounding error. For a maker with 600 one-off pieces that turn over slowly, it is roughly £90 every four months in pure standing cost before a single sale — and Amazon Handmade’s equivalent standing cost, after the first month, is zero.

So the rule of thumb is: a fast catalogue is cheaper on Etsy, a slow one on Handmade. Work out your own crossover rather than trusting either platform’s marketing. If your annual sell-through is above about two-thirds, Etsy’s roughly 11% beats Handmade’s 15%. Below that, the listing fees close and then reverse the gap.

Etsy also sells a subscription, Etsy Plus, at $10 a month for listing credits and an ads credit. It is optional and it does not change the fee rates.

Offsite Ads, the fee you cannot always refuse

This is Etsy’s least-liked mechanism and it has no Amazon equivalent, so it deserves its own section.

Etsy buys advertising on Google, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Bing and display networks, using your listings. When a sale is attributed to one of those ads, Etsy takes a further cut: 15% of the sale, or 12% for high-volume shops. You choose neither the listings nor the budget. Attribution is last-click within 30 days, and the fee is capped at $100 per order.

Below a revenue threshold you are auto-enrolled but may opt out in your shop settings. Above it, participation becomes mandatory for the lifetime of the shop — and Etsy does not restore the opt-out if your revenue later falls. Etsy’s own wording is that Offsite Ads “may be required based on how much you make in sales on Etsy in a 12 month period”. Its financial filings confirm the two rates are set “based on the seller’s volume of sales”.

Stack that on the base fees and an Offsite Ads sale in the UK costs roughly 26% all in. That is the number to plan around if you are pricing for the worst case rather than the typical one.

There is a counter-move worth knowing, because it is the strongest commercial argument for driving your own traffic. Etsy’s Share & Save gives you a 4% instant refund on the eligible order total when a buyer orders within 30 days of clicking your own trackable link. Because attribution is last-click, a sale whose last click was your own link is not an Offsite Ads sale. Between avoiding 15% and earning 4%, the swing is around 19 points of margin — which is why the Etsy and Instagram route is worth more than it looks.

How buyers find you on each

Etsy is a search-and-browse destination with a strong browse habit. Buyers arrive without a specific product in mind, looking for a kind of thing, and they scroll. That rewards distinctive photography, a coherent shop aesthetic and titles written for how people describe things rather than how manufacturers name them.

Amazon is overwhelmingly a search destination, and the search is usually for a product that already exists by name. A buyer types what they want and compares offers. For a handmade item — which by definition nobody is searching for by name — that is a harder starting position, and it is why Handmade sits in a curated storefront rather than relying on generic Amazon search alone.

The practical consequence: a piece that would find its buyer on Etsy through browse may simply never surface on Amazon, where nothing is browsing for it. Makers who move to Handmade expecting Amazon’s traffic volume to translate are frequently disappointed, and the disappointment is structural rather than a failure of listing quality.

Amazon Handmade, head to head with Etsy

The Handmade category list on Amazon’s UK site is worth reading if you make clothing: Accessories; Artwork; Baby; Beauty & Personal Care; Clothing, Shoes & Handbags; Home, Outdoor & Home Care; Jewellery & Watches; Kitchen & Dining; Pet Supplies; Sporting Goods; Stationery & Party Supplies; Toys & Games. Clothing, Shoes & Handbags appears there even though used apparel is banned on the main marketplace — because a hand-altered or hand-assembled garment is a different thing from a resold one.

One practical note on identifiers. Handmade goods have no manufacturer barcode, and Amazon’s answer is the product ID exemption, which it grants for private brands and handmade products. It is an application, granted per category and per store, and Amazon says approval usually takes about 48 hours. Etsy asks for nothing of the kind.

Postage, returns and the day-to-day

The operational experience of the two is different enough to change how much of your week selling takes.

Postage. Etsy expects you to set your own postage prices and profiles, and it charges its 6.5% transaction fee on the postage you charge as well as on the item. That has a quiet pricing consequence: burying your costs in a high postage charge does not avoid the fee, and building postage into the item price with free delivery is usually the cleaner choice on Etsy for that reason alone. Amazon’s referral fee is charged on the item price, and its merchant-fulfilled sellers work to Amazon’s delivery promises rather than their own.

Returns. Etsy lets you set your own returns policy per listing, including accepting none at all — a real freedom for made-to-order and personalised work, where a return is often worthless to you. Amazon applies its own returns framework, and a Handmade seller inherits it. If a meaningful share of your work is bespoke, that difference is not a detail; it is a business model question.

Personalisation. Etsy has a first-class personalisation field: the buyer types their name, their date, their message, and it arrives attached to the order. Amazon has customisation tooling but it is neither as prominent nor as universally expected, and buyers are far less primed to look for it. For a maker whose margin comes from bespoke work, this is one of the strongest arguments for Etsy that has nothing to do with fees.

Selling abroad. Etsy is a single global marketplace: one shop, one listing, buyers in any country, with a 2.5% conversion charge where the currencies differ. Amazon is a set of national marketplaces, and reaching another country means the right unified account and, in practice, a separate compliance posture. For a small maker shipping the occasional international parcel, Etsy’s model is dramatically less work.

Photography and copy. On Etsy these are your competitive weapons and they compound — a coherent shop looks like a brand. On Amazon Handmade the listing template is Amazon’s, the layout is fixed, and the room for a distinctive visual identity is much narrower. Makers who have invested years in a look often find that investment does not travel.

Whose customer is it

Etsy gives you a shop with your name on it, a seller story, buyer-to-seller messaging and a shopper base that often arrives knowing they are buying from a person. Repeat custom is a realistic ambition.

On Amazon the product page is the unit of identity and the customer belongs to Amazon. Post-sale contact is restricted to order-related messaging. Handmade’s maker profile is a genuine concession but not an equivalence: buyers still largely experience the purchase as buying from Amazon.

If you are building a name, that is the trade, and it is worth making deliberately. Etsy takes a larger cut in the typical case and gives you a relationship. Amazon takes a smaller one in some cases and keeps it.

Running both, and what FLUF syncs

Plenty of makers run both, and the reason to use a tool for it is the same as always: one physical piece, two live listings, and a buyer on each.

Both channels connect to FLUF through an official OAuth handshake on the marketplace’s own screens — no browser extension, no password shared. What each supports is not the same, and we would rather set that out than let you find it.

On Etsy, FLUF drives crosslisting, inventory sync, order sync and relisting. On Amazon it drives crosslisting, price and stock updates, and sold-elsewhere protection: when a piece sells anywhere else you have connected, your Amazon quantity goes to zero. Order sync is not claimed on Amazon, so a sale on Amazon does not yet pull the Etsy listing down. That protection runs one way today, and the reason is that Amazon’s order feed includes a Pending status for payments that have not cleared — treating one as a sale would delist a real piece everywhere else for a sale that never happened.

For a maker with genuinely one-off pieces, that asymmetry is worth planning around: keep Etsy as the channel you check, and let Amazon be the one that gets cleared automatically.

What FLUF costs

7 days for £1, then from £9/month. There is no free plan and no free tier.

Crosslisting, inventory sync, order sync and bulk operations are on every plan. Relisting, offer management and smart pricing are included from Seller (£29/month) upwards; Starter does not include them. Paying annually saves 40%.

Relevant to this pairing specifically: Etsy supports relisting and Amazon supports none of the automation features, so the automation tiers earn their keep on the Etsy side of this comparison and not the Amazon one.

Sources and verification

Every fee, rule and date was checked against a primary source on 7 September 2026.

• Etsy’s Creativity Standards — the four routes (made, designed, handpicked, sourced by a seller), the inclusion of computerised tools and production partners, the 20-year vintage definition, and the verbatim exclusion of resold commercially available items newer than 20 years.
• Etsy’s UK seller pricing and its US equivalent — the £0.15 / $0.20 listing fee and its four-month duration, the 6.5% transaction fee, payment processing at 4% + £0.20 in the UK and 3% + $0.25 in the US, the 0.48% UK regulatory operating fee, the 2.5% currency conversion charge, and the statement that Offsite Ads “may be required based on how much you make in sales on Etsy in a 12 month period”.
• Etsy on fees and taxes — that the 6.5% transaction fee is charged on the total order amount including the postage and gift wrapping charged to the buyer, and that the listing fee applies again per additional quantity sold.
• Etsy on Offsite Ads — the placements Etsy buys, the 15% and 12% rates, the seller’s inability to choose listings or budget, the 30-day last-click attribution, the $100 per-order cap, and the mandatory participation above a revenue threshold.
• Etsy on Share & Save — the 4% instant refund on eligible orders within 30 days of a click on the seller’s own trackable link.
• Etsy’s FY2025 annual report on Form 10-K, filed 19 February 2026 — the $0.20 listing fee recognised over a four-month period, the 6.5% transaction fee inclusive of shipping fees charged, Offsite Ads at “12% or 15% of the value of a sale based on the seller’s volume of sales”, and the 86.5 million active buyers and 5.6 million active sellers quoted above.
• Amazon Handmade (US) and Amazon Handmade (UK) — the definition of qualifying handmade goods, the absence of listing fees, the “15% or $0.30, whichever is greater” US referral fee and the 12.24% UK figure, the waiver of the Professional subscription after the first month, the application process, the UK category list, and the requirement to provide a product ID or request an exemption.
• Amazon’s UK Condition Guidelines (PDF) — the New-only restriction on Apparel and on the Shoes and Handbag category.
• Amazon’s GTIN guide — handmade products as a qualifying ground for a product ID exemption, and the roughly 48-hour, per-category, per-store approval.

What we could not verify, and therefore left out. The exact revenue threshold at which Etsy’s Offsite Ads becomes mandatory, and which side of it carries the 12% rather than the 15% rate. Etsy’s own filings confirm only that the two rates are set by sales volume, and Etsy’s legal fee pages block automated access, so we describe the mechanism and decline to print a figure — check it in your own Shop Manager rather than trusting a number from a blog. Etsy Plus’s current price in pounds, which Etsy does not publish, and its $10 monthly price, which we read from a January 2026 archive rather than a live page. Whether Etsy has changed any fee rate during 2025 or 2026: we found no announcement of one, but absence of an announcement is not confirmation. The reconciliation between Amazon Handmade’s 15% US and 12.24% UK referral rates, since Amazon’s authoritative Handmade fee schedule sits behind a Seller Central login. Amazon Handmade’s application turnaround time, which appears only on third-party sites. And any current Amazon active-customer or Prime figure — Amazon publishes none, so no Amazon buyer number appears on this page.

Related guides

• Sell on Etsy — the complete seller guide
• Sell on Amazon — the complete seller guide
• Amazon vs eBay — a catalogue against a listings board
• Crosslist from Etsy to Amazon
• Promote your Etsy products on Instagram
• Etsy vs Shopify
• All marketplace guides
• All crosslisting routes
• Amazon vs Shopify