Etsy vs Amazon Merch for Print on Demand

For print on demand in 2026, Etsy and Amazon Merch are two genuinely different businesses wearing similar clothes. On Etsy you run a shop: you set prices, pay fees, handle a supplier, and own the customer relationship. On Amazon Merch you upload a design, Amazon does literally everything else, and you collect a royalty. I sell on both, and which one’s “better” depends entirely on what you want from this. Here’s the honest breakdown of fees, control, and the catch with each.

The fundamental difference

Etsy is a marketplace where you’re the merchant. You connect a supplier like Printful or Printify, set your own price, build your brand, and Etsy charges you fees per sale. You’re running a store.

Amazon Merch on Demand is closer to licensing. You upload artwork, set a list price within Amazon’s range, and Amazon handles printing, shipping, returns, and customer service. You never touch a supplier or a customer. You just get a royalty on each sale. It’s the most hands-off model in print on demand, and that’s both its appeal and its limit.

The fees, in real 2026 numbers

This is where people get fuzzy, so let’s be specific.

Etsy charges three things per sale in 2026:

A $0.20 listing fee (charged when the item sells, and again every time a listing renews after a sale).
A 6.5% transaction fee on the full order total, including shipping.
Payment processing, which for US sellers is roughly 3% plus $0.25 per order.

Add it up and Etsy takes somewhere around 10% to 12% of a typical sale. On a $25 item, that’s roughly $2.80 in fees before you’ve paid for the product itself. Then your supplier’s base cost comes out of what’s left. So on Etsy you’re managing two costs: Etsy’s cut and your print cost.

Amazon Merch doesn’t charge fees the same way. Amazon bakes its production cost into the math and pays you the difference as a royalty. As of a 2026 change, Amazon moved from a flat royalty to a three-tier system based on where your traffic comes from:

Creator tier (base): a standard $19.99 tee pays around $2.44.
Plus tier: about 2x base (around $4.88) if 15% or more of your sales come from external traffic you drive.
Premium tier: about 2.16x base (around $5.27) if 35% or more comes from external traffic.

Read that carefully, because it reshaped the platform. Sellers who lived purely on Amazon’s organic search traffic saw their royalties effectively cut, while sellers who bring their own traffic (ads, social, email) now earn up to roughly 2.16x more per sale. Amazon is paying you to bring an audience, not just to upload art.

Traffic: the real reason to care

Fees are the obvious comparison. Traffic is the one that actually decides your income.

Amazon has enormous built-in buyer intent. People are already there with cards out, searching for shirts. A design that ranks can sell with zero marketing from you. That’s the dream of Merch: passive, no ads, no shop to tend. The catch is brutal competition and Amazon’s gatekeeping. You start with a small upload limit (tier up by selling), you can be rejected or removed for content reasons, and after the 2026 royalty change, leaning only on Amazon’s organic traffic pays less than it used to.

Etsy has buyers actively hunting for unique, personal, giftable items, which suits original POD designs well. You get more control over branding and pricing, and you keep more of a customer relationship. The catch is you’re competing in a crowded category, Etsy’s own ads and saturation make organic reach harder than it was, and you’re doing more work: listings, SEO, supplier management, customer messages.

Notice the pattern: in 2026 both platforms increasingly reward sellers who bring their own traffic. On Amazon it literally bumps your royalty tier. On Etsy it lifts you above the saturation. If you learn to drive traffic, both platforms pay you more for it. That’s why I’d point most serious sellers toward testing designs with Facebook ads regardless of which storefront they pick.

Control and ownership

On Etsy you own your shop, your brand, your customer list (within Etsy’s rules), and your pricing. You can build something that’s actually yours and could move off Etsy someday. That’s worth a lot if you’re playing a long game.

On Amazon Merch you own the design and nothing else. No customer data, no branding to speak of, no real store. You’re a supplier to Amazon’s machine. Fine if you want passive income, frustrating if you want to build a business with equity in it.

There’s also risk concentration. Both platforms can suspend accounts, and it happens. On Amazon a removal can wipe your whole income stream because there’s no store to fall back on. On Etsy a suspension hurts but you still have your designs, your supplier, and potentially your own site. Don’t build your entire livelihood on a single platform you don’t control, whichever one it is.

Which should you choose?

Here’s how I’d actually decide:

Choose Amazon Merch if you want the most passive setup possible, you’re fine with low upfront royalties while you build, you don’t want to deal with suppliers or customers, and you’re willing to play the long ranking game (and ideally drive some external traffic to hit the better tiers).
Choose Etsy if you want control over pricing and brand, you’re comfortable managing a supplier and writing listings, you want to keep more of each sale’s value, and you eventually want a business that’s yours rather than Amazon’s.

For most beginners I suggest starting on one, not both, so you actually learn its rules instead of half-learning two. If you hate marketing and want pure passive, start Amazon. If you want to build something and don’t mind the work, start Etsy. And yes, plenty of us run both eventually, listing the same winning designs in both places. There’s no rule against it.

Whichever you pick, the design is what decides whether you make a dollar. A clean, sellable file that prints sharp beats a clever idea executed badly, on either platform. If you haven’t locked your creative process yet, start with my AI design workflow, and if you’re going the Etsy supplier route, Printful vs Printify for beginners covers who should actually print your stuff.

Where I land

Amazon Merch for passive and hands-off, Etsy for control and brand. Neither is a get-rich button, and the 2026 trend on both is the same: the platform rewards sellers who bring their own audience. Pick the one that matches how much work you want to do, then put your energy into designs and traffic instead of agonizing over the choice.

The part that’s the same no matter where you sell is the creative: a print-ready design and a mockup that looks real in the listing. That’s the busywork LzyPOD handles, turning a prompt into a transparent print file and a product photo into lifestyle mockups. You can try it free and spend your time on what sells instead of fighting with files.