We worked out the fees on one ₹1,499 kurta in three places: Amazon, Flipkart and your own Shopify store.
On Amazon, the referral fee and the closing fee come to ₹326, before delivery. On Flipkart, the commission is zero, because Flipkart charges none on fashion. On your own store, Shopify’s transaction fee and the payment gateway fee come to about ₹60.
Numbers like these are why brands look at Shopify. But your own store has other costs that don’t appear on Shopify’s pricing page. One of them can cancel out everything you save on fees.
We’ve used the fees that Shopify, Amazon and Flipkart publish, as of 14 October 2026.
What Shopify charges every month
Shopify has three main plans in India. You pay less a month if you pay for a year at once. These are the plan fees and transaction fees on Shopify’s Indian pricing page:
| Plan | Paid monthly | Paid for a year, per month | Transaction fee on each prepaid order |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | ₹1,994 | ₹1,499 | 2% |
| Grow | ₹7,447 | ₹5,599 | 1% |
| Advanced | ₹30,164 | ₹22,680 | 0.6% |
Shopify Plus is for the largest stores. Its plan fee starts at ₹1,75,000 a month.
When you sign up, Shopify currently offers 3 days free, then ₹20 a month for 3 months. An agency may build your store in its own Shopify account, then transfer it to you. If it does, you don’t get these starting offers.
Most new brands start on Basic. Moving to Grow cuts the transaction fee from 2% to 1%. But when you pay yearly, the Grow plan fee is ₹4,100 a month more than Basic.
So Grow costs you less once your prepaid orders cross about ₹4.1 lakh a month.
The fees on every prepaid order
Shopify Payments, Shopify’s own payment service, isn’t available in India. In many countries, Shopify charges no transaction fee on orders paid through it.
So you use a payment gateway such as Razorpay, PayU or Cashfree. Shopify charges its transaction fee on every prepaid order that goes through that gateway. It’s 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced.
Shopify charges the transaction fee on the whole order, including tax and shipping. If you refund an order, you don’t get the transaction fee back. You don’t pay it at all on cash-on-delivery orders.
The payment gateway also charges a fee on each payment. Razorpay’s standard payment gateway fee is 2%. Other payment gateways charge about the same.
The payment gateway adds 18% GST to its fee. Ask about a free period before you sign up, because payment gateways often offer one to new businesses.
On the Basic plan, the transaction fee and payment gateway fee come to about 4% of each prepaid order. You also pay GST on both fees. On the ₹1,499 kurta, that’s about ₹60.
Cash on delivery and shipping
Many Indian shoppers still want to pay on delivery. In Shopify admin, you can set up cash on delivery for free. But your courier charges a cash-on-delivery fee to collect the cash.
Customers also refuse cash-on-delivery orders at the door more often. You pay for each refused parcel to come back.
On your own store, you choose the courier and pay for each parcel. You can pay the courier directly or through a shipping service such as Shiprocket. The courier’s charge depends on the parcel’s weight and how far it goes.
On Amazon’s Easy Ship, Amazon deducts a shipping fee for delivery instead. At Amazon’s Standard level, it’s ₹55 for a parcel up to 500 g.
GST: the cost of selling across India
If you’re a small seller on a marketplace, you can sell within your own state without registering for GST. That exemption has applied since October 2023. Our guide to selling online without GST explains how it works.
For your own store, GST law says you must register if you ship to customers in other states. That’s true however small your sales are.
If you sell only within your own state, you don’t have to register while you stay under the turnover limit. In most states, that limit is ₹40 lakh a year for goods.
Most brands want to sell across India, so most need to register for GST before they launch. Ask your CA what applies to you.
Building the store
You can build a Shopify store yourself, hire a freelancer, or work with an agency. In every case, the same questions decide the cost:
- How many products do you have?
- Will you use a ready-made theme or a custom design?
- Which apps and couriers do you need to connect?
- Who writes the product pages and shoots the photos?
- Will someone run the store once it’s live?
A free Shopify theme is enough to start. If you buy a paid theme, you pay for it once. You’ll also pay a yearly fee for your domain name.
Apps raise your monthly costs. Apps for reviews, WhatsApp, GST invoices and loyalty often charge a fee every month. Each app also slows your store down a little.
Install only the apps you need.
One kurta, three places
The ₹1,499 kurta is a women’s kurta that weighs under 500 g. The customer pays for it online.
On Amazon, kurtas are in the Ethnic wear category. Since March 2026, Amazon has deducted no referral fee on products under ₹1,000 in more than 1,800 categories.
But your kurta’s selling price is above ₹1,000, so Amazon deducts a referral fee of 16.5%. That’s ₹247. Amazon’s closing fee for an Easy Ship order above ₹1,000 is ₹79.
Together, the referral fee and the closing fee come to ₹326. Amazon’s shipping fee adds ₹55. Amazon also adds 18% GST to all its fees.
So in total, Amazon deducts about ₹450 from your payout. All these fees are on Amazon’s fee page.
On Flipkart, the commission on this kurta is zero. In July 2026, Flipkart stopped charging commission on fashion at every price.
Flipkart still deducts a fixed fee and a shipping fee from your payout on each order. The fixed fee depends on your seller tier. Flipkart shows both fees in Seller Hub, its seller dashboard.
On your own Shopify store, there’s no commission. You pay Shopify’s transaction fee of 2% and a payment gateway fee of 2%.
Together, they come to about ₹60. You also pay GST on both fees, plus the courier’s charge.
Below ₹1,000, the difference in fees almost disappears.
On a ₹699 T-shirt, Amazon deducts no referral fee. It deducts only its ₹48 closing fee and its ₹55 shipping fee. On Flipkart, there’s no commission.
On your own store, the transaction fee and payment gateway fee on the same T-shirt come to about ₹28. Compared with Amazon, you save about ₹20 an order, before delivery.
The cost the pricing pages don’t show
On your own store, you have to bring in every visitor yourself, usually with Instagram and Google ads. On Amazon and Flipkart, shoppers are already there, searching.
Say you spend ₹300 on ads to get one kurta order on your own store. That’s more than the ₹266 you saved on Amazon’s fees, so you lose money on the order.
For many brands, ads are the biggest cost of running a store. That cost doesn’t appear on any pricing page.
The real gain from your own store comes with the second order. A customer who bought from your store can order again when you send a WhatsApp message or an email. That second order costs you almost nothing to get.
A marketplace deducts its fees again on every order. And it keeps the customer’s contact details.
What we would do
We’d keep selling on Amazon and Flipkart, because that’s where new customers find you. We’d start with the Basic plan, a good free theme and only the apps you need. We’d reuse the photos, videos and product details you already have for your marketplaces.
Then we’d focus on bringing your store’s customers back, with offers they can only get on your store. And we’d switch to the Grow plan once your prepaid orders cross about ₹4.1 lakh a month.
We build Shopify stores for brands that also sell on Amazon and Flipkart. We connect the payments, cash on delivery, couriers and GST invoices. And we can run your store day to day.
Our Shopify websites page shows two of the stores we’ve built. If you’d like to know what your store would cost, tell us what you sell.
