TikTok Shop vs Amazon: 6% vs 15% fees, and which to pick

TikTok Shop vs Amazon comes down to one trade: TikTok Shop costs less per sale, and Amazon brings buyers who are already searching. TikTok Shop charges a 6% referral fee on most US categories and no monthly fee. Amazon charges 15% on most categories plus $39.99 a month for a Professional plan. On TikTok Shop you usually also pay creators a commission, and you need new videos every week to be seen at all.

The verdict: start on Amazon if people already search for your product by name and you can't make videos. Start on TikTok Shop if the product proves itself on camera in a few seconds. If you already sell through FBA, add TikTok Shop and ship its orders from the same stock. People also hunt for Amazon products on TikTok itself: in our 30 September 2026 pull, 23 typed searches with "amazon" in them drew 4.49 million searches on TikTok in seven days.

Fees and policies checked 30 September 2026 against TikTok Shop Academy, sell.amazon.com and the dated sources linked below. TikTok search numbers are our own pulls from the same day.

TikTok Shop vs Amazon at a glance

The table compares the US versions of both marketplaces. Rates differ in other countries; the UK TikTok Shop fee, for example, is 9%.

Sources: TikTok Shop Academy, Referral Fees by Category; beBOLD Digital (8 September 2026) on the reported 8%; FastMoss (June 2026) for FBT, new-seller rate and commissions; Amazon, Selling on Amazon fees and 2026 fee update; Novadata (10 September 2026) for FBA rates; Momentum Works (February 2026) for GMV. Checked 30 September 2026. All fee facts.

Is TikTok Shop cheaper than Amazon?

Per sale, yes, until a creator makes the sale. TikTok's fee page still lists 6% for most US categories today. A September 2026 report says the rate rose to 8% on 4 August, based on seller guides rather than a TikTok notice. Your Seller Center statement settles it for your category.

Amazon's pricing page puts most categories, including Home and Kitchen, Toys and Sports, at 15%. After no increases in 2025, Amazon raised FBA fees by an average of $0.08 a unit on 15 January 2026, per its fee announcement.

The difference that matters is who pays the creator. On TikTok Shop most sales come through affiliate videos, and you pay that commission. Hamster Garage, an affiliate agency, put the average open rate at about 13% in June 2026. On Amazon, Amazon pays its Associates out of its own cut. Here is one $30 sale, fees only:

Our arithmetic from the fees above. The Brand Referral Bonus needs Amazon Brand Registry and Amazon Attribution links (Novadata, January 2026). The 3.5% FBA fuel and logistics surcharge applies from 17 April 2026 (Digital Commerce 360). Worked example.

So margins end up closer than the headline fees suggest. TikTok Shop wins when you drive your own sales with your own videos. Amazon wins on a creator-driven sale, but you pay for visibility there too, through Sponsored Products clicks. Two smaller costs to budget on TikTok: free samples to creators, and a refund administration fee of 20% of the referral fee, capped at $5, on returns. Our TikTok Shop fees guide runs the maths at three price points.

Where do buyers find products: search or the feed?

Amazon is search-led. A buyer types "shower caddy", compares ten listings and buys. TikTok is feed-led: the buyer wasn't shopping until a video showed them the thing. That is why TikTok Shop suits products that surprise, and Amazon suits products people already know they need.

The split is less clean than it sounds, because people also search on TikTok, and they search for Amazon. Type "amazon" into TikTok's search bar and the first suggestion is "Amazon finds". Type "amazon must haves" and TikTok finishes it with "2026", "for women", "for school", "men" and "baby". We pulled the numbers behind those searches from Creator Search Insights, TikTok's own search tool, on 30 September 2026.

Data: TikTok Creator Search Insights via TokConnect, pulled 30 September 2026. Searches are TikTok's 7-day global figure; videos matched is the count TikTok lists for the topic. Eight topic searches returned 100 topics: 29 typed searches and 71 labels TikTok generates. Snapshot.

Three things stand out. Twelve of the 23 typed Amazon searches had over 200,000 searches that week. The median one had only 481 videos matched, while "TikTok Shopping Finds", at similar demand, had 21,794. And five typed Amazon searches had no videos matched at all, including "Amazon Shoe Finds" at 292,953 searches. For an Amazon seller, that is demand on TikTok you can answer with a video and an Amazon link, no TikTok Shop needed.

Kitchen, beauty and fashion: the same gaps on both sides

TikTok also groups many searches under labels it writes itself, like "Amazon kitchen storage and sink products". Nobody types those word for word, so don't paste them into captions. They show where TikTok sees a cluster of demand with nothing filed under it, and it happens for both marketplaces:

Data: TikTok Creator Search Insights via TokConnect, 30 September 2026. All six are TikTok-generated labels (every label in this pull had 1.8 million searches or more). Snapshot.

Read a label as a signpost. Open the category in TikTok search, find the phrases people really type, and make the video for the one with the fewest videos. The product research guide walks through it, and what TikTok search volume means explains the numbers.

FBA vs Fulfilled by TikTok: how does shipping compare?

Both marketplaces will store and ship your stock, and per-unit prices are close. Amazon's FBA starts at $3.06 for a small standard item of 4 oz or less and reaches $4.65 for a 12 to 16 oz large standard item priced $10 to $50, according to Novadata's 2026 fee tables. A 3.5% fuel and logistics surcharge has sat on top since 17 April. Storage runs $0.78 per cubic foot a month from January to September and $2.40 from October to December.

Fulfilled by TikTok costs about $2.86 to $4.28 a unit depending on weight and units per order, with 60 days of free storage, per FastMoss. Ship yourself and TikTok's Fulfillment Policy gives you two business days to get a carrier scan. Miss it on more than 10% of orders and TikTok cuts account health points and caps daily orders. FBT orders don't count against you.

The useful news for Amazon sellers is that you don't need two warehouses. Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) ships TikTok Shop orders from your FBA stock in unbranded boxes, through nine named integration apps, PPC Land reported in August 2026. Amazon's TikTok Shop promotion takes 35% off Standard and Expedited MCF rates for US TikTok Shop orders for 12 months from 16 July 2026. Orders must come through a supported integration; ones typed into Seller Central by hand don't qualify.

How is advertising different?

On Amazon you buy position in search. Sponsored Products are cost-per-click ads with no monthly fee, shown at the top of, beside and within shopping results and on product pages. You pick keywords, bid, and pay when someone clicks.

On TikTok Shop you mostly pay for reach through two routes. The first is creators on commission. The second is GMV Max, the only ad type for TikTok Shop since July 2025: you set a budget and a return target, and TikTok builds ads from your videos and your affiliates' videos. Both need videos to work with, so ads can't rescue a product nobody has filmed.

This is where TikTok for Amazon sellers pays off even without TikTok Shop. Amazon's Brand Referral Bonus credits an average of 10% of sales (Novadata, January 2026) that come from outside traffic, TikTok included, measured through Amazon Attribution links with a 14-day window. It needs Brand Registry, which in turn needs a registered or pending trademark. Amazon also lets brands add bonus commission for creators through Creator Connections, on top of what Amazon pays them, as Modern Retail described in October 2025.

How much content does each platform need?

Amazon runs on one good listing: title, photos, bullet points and reviews. Once it ranks, it keeps selling with far less new work. TikTok Shop runs on a stream of videos. A listing with no videos behind it relies on the Shop tab and search alone, and the feed is where most TikTok buyers meet products.

The hashtags show how crowded that stream is. #tiktokshopfinds has more videos than #amazonfinds, yet each video has drawn well under half the views:

Data: TikTok hashtag search via TokConnect, 30 September 2026. Views and videos are lifetime totals for each tag; views per video is our division. Snapshot.

The tags started at different times, so treat the ratio as a hint, not a ranking. The practical load is plain enough. On TikTok Shop, plan to film a short demo yourself first, then send samples to creators who already post in your category; the affiliate guide shows how to shortlist them. Say the phrase people search in the first seconds and put it in on-screen text, as the TikTok Shop SEO guide explains.

Which should you start on? Verdict by seller type

Start where your buyer already is. Walk through the three questions below, then check your row in the table.

If you pick TikTok Shop, the how to sell on TikTok Shop guide covers registration, the documents and your first week.

Do this in TokConnect

Before you choose, check whether anyone on TikTok is searching for your product, and how they phrase it. Ask TokConnect in plain words, for example: "What do people search on TikTok for kitchen products on Amazon and on TikTok Shop, and how many videos cover each search?"

When we pulled those searches through TokConnect on 30 September 2026, the typed searches and TikTok's labels came back separately. "kitchen amazon must haves" had 175,852 searches in a week and 825 videos matched. "tiktok shop kitchen gadgets" had 262,326 searches and 883 videos. Two labels, "Amazon kitchen storage and sink products" and "TikTok Shop kitchen appliance deals", each had over 4.7 million searches and no videos filed under them.

What to do next: if the Amazon-framed searches are bigger and thinner on videos, make videos that point to your Amazon listing and claim the Brand Referral Bonus. If the TikTok Shop searches are bigger, list there and send samples to creators. Either way, write the typed phrase into your first spoken line.

How we got these numbers