Gumroad vs Etsy vs Stan Store: Fees and Fit, Checked Nov 2026

Pick the platform by where your first buyers will come from. Etsy suits you if you have no audience yet, because its search brings shoppers, and you pay per listing and per sale. Gumroad suits you if you'll send people from your own posts or email list and want no monthly bill. Stan Store suits you if you already have a social following, because its flat monthly plan beats percentage fees once you sell steadily. Fees below were checked on November 8, 2026.

You've built your first digital product, maybe a budget tracker, a planner or a short guide. Now you're stuck on a dull question that feels like it matters more than it does: where do you sell it? Comparison posts list 20 features each. Most of those features won't touch your first 30 days. Two things will: who brings the buyer, and how the fees are shaped.

Who this is for

You have one digital product ready, or nearly ready, and you're choosing between Gumroad, Etsy and Stan Store for your first sales. By the end you'll have:

• Each platform's current fees, with the date and source
• What you keep on a $15 and a $40 sale on each one
• A break-even formula for when Stan Store's monthly plan beats a percentage fee
• A fit verdict based on where your buyers are today

No sales numbers are promised here. A platform doesn't create demand. It only changes what you keep and who can find you.

The bottleneck: who brings the buyer

Fees get all the attention, but on your first few sales the fee gap between these three is a couple of dollars. The real difference is traffic.

• Etsy is a marketplace. Shoppers search it, so a new listing can be found by strangers. You pay for that through per-listing and per-sale fees.
• Gumroad is mainly a checkout you send people to. It has a Discover marketplace, but sales that come through it cost far more (see below). Mostly, you bring the buyer.
• Stan Store is a link-in-bio storefront. It assumes you already have followers to send there. Nobody browses Stan looking for products.

So the first question isn't "which is cheapest?" It's "who is going to see my product in week one?" Answer that, then use the fee math to confirm.

Current fees, checked November 8, 2026

Gumroad

• Direct sales: 10% + $0.50 per transaction, for sales through your profile or links you share. Source: Gumroad pricing.
• Discover marketplace: 30% per transaction when a new customer finds you through Gumroad's Discover.
• Card processing: not included. Gumroad's fees help article says the 10% + $0.50 does not include credit card or PayPal processing fees. Neither page states the processing rate. This guide assumes 2.9% + $0.30, which is Stripe's standard US card rate, as a stand-in. Check your own payout statement for the real figure.
• Monthly fee: none.
• Sales tax: Gumroad's pricing page says it has handled sales tax collection and remittance since January 1, 2025.

Etsy

• Listing fee: $0.20 per listing. Listings expire after four months and auto-renew at $0.20 unless you turn that off. Source: Etsy fees and payments policy.
• Transaction fee: 6.5% of the item price.
• Payment processing (US): 3% + $0.25 per order. Source: Etsy Payments policy.
• Setup fee: Etsy says a one-time, non-refundable setup fee may be required to open a shop, and doesn't state an amount on the fees page. Check at signup.
• Offsite Ads: 15% on orders Etsy attributes to its offsite ads, or 12% once your shop has made $10,000 or more in sales over the prior 365 days, capped at $100 per order.
• Monthly fee: none required.

Stan Store

Stan's pricing page wouldn't load for our fee check (it needs JavaScript), so these figures come from Stan's own pricing post, last updated July 22, 2026. They match a Checkout Page review dated October 31, 2026. Checkout Page is a competitor, so treat that as a cross-check only.

• Creator plan: $29 a month, or $300 a year.
• Creator Pro plan: $99 a month, or $948 a year.
• Free trial: 14 days. There's no free plan.
• Stan's transaction fee: 0%.
• Payment processing: standard Stripe or PayPal fees. This guide uses Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 US card rate.

Fees change. Check every number above against the platform's own page before you commit, and note the date you checked.

Math gate: what you keep, and when Stan's plan pays off

Three inputs:

• P, your price.
• F, fees per sale on each platform, from the list above.
• M, Stan's monthly plan: $29 on monthly billing, or $25 a month if you pay $300 a year.

Per-sale fees on a $15 product (worked example, example price)

• Etsy: $0.20 listing + $0.98 transaction (6.5%) + $0.70 processing (3% + $0.25) = $1.88. You keep $13.12.
• Gumroad direct: $2.00 Gumroad fee (10% + $0.50) + $0.74 assumed processing = $2.74. You keep $12.26.
• Gumroad Discover: $4.50 (30%), before any processing. You keep $10.50 at most.
• Stan Store: $0.74 processing, plus your share of the monthly plan. You keep $14.26 per sale before the plan.

Per-sale fees on a $40 product (example price)

• Etsy: $0.20 + $2.60 + $1.45 = $4.25. You keep $35.75.
• Gumroad direct: $4.50 + $1.46 = $5.96. You keep $34.04.
• Stan Store: $1.46 processing. You keep $38.54 per sale before the plan.

The break-even line

Stan only wins once your per-sale savings cover the plan. The formula:

Break-even sales per month = M ÷ (fees per sale elsewhere − Stan's processing per sale).

Worked example at $15, on monthly billing ($29):

1. Against Gumroad direct: $2.74 − $0.74 = $2.00 saved per sale. $29 ÷ $2.00 = 14.5, so 15 sales a month.
2. Against Etsy: $1.88 − $0.74 = $1.14 saved per sale. $29 ÷ $1.14 = 25.4, so 26 sales a month.

The same check at $40:

1. Against Gumroad direct: $5.96 − $1.46 = $4.50 saved. $29 ÷ $4.50 = 6.4, so 7 sales a month.
2. Against Etsy: $4.25 − $1.46 = $2.79 saved. $29 ÷ $2.79 = 10.4, so 11 sales a month.

What this tells you:

• Below the break-even line, Stan's plan costs you money every month, including the months you sell nothing.
• Higher prices pull the break-even down fast, because Gumroad and Etsy fees are percentages and Stan's isn't.
• The Etsy comparison leaves out traffic. If Etsy search brings sales you'd never get from your own followers, its fees are buying you customers. Stan can't do that.

To set the price itself, run your numbers through the Offer & Pricing Calculator. It shows what you keep at each price once your costs are in, so you aren't guessing at P.

Which one fits you

• No audience yet, a product people search for (planners, templates, printables): start on Etsy. You need its search more than you need lower fees. Research what already sells before you list, and expect the first listings to be slow.
• Some audience (posts, an email list, a community), selling occasionally: start on Gumroad. No monthly bill while sales are lumpy, and it handles sales tax. Treat Discover sales as a bonus, at 30%.
• A real social following and steady sales above your break-even line, or you also sell calls or coaching: Stan Store's flat plan starts to pay off. Use the free trial to check your actual sales count against the break-even before the first charge.
• Unsure: start where there's no monthly fee. You can move a digital product later. You can't get back months of a plan you paid for while sales were zero.

For the full fee stack, including Shopify and newsletter platforms, see how to sell digital products and a newsletter. If you're using AI to build the product, AI content tools by task covers which tools do which job.

Friction: what the comparison posts skip

• Etsy's rules on what you sell. Etsy sets its own rules on what counts as an acceptable item and how items made with outside tools, including AI, must be described. We didn't re-check those rules for this guide. Read Etsy's current seller policy and creativity standards before you list, because a policy problem can take down a listing or a shop.
• Digital tax. Etsy's fee page notes that it must collect and remit VAT on digital items sold to buyers in some countries, and that Washington state applies sales tax to digital items. Gumroad says it handles sales tax. With Stan, read its tax help pages for how tax is handled on your plan before you assume.
• Refunds. A downloaded file can't be returned. Vague sales pages turn into refund requests. List exactly what's in the file, show a preview, and write a refund policy that covers delivery failures.
• Who owns the customer. Etsy buyers are Etsy's customers first, and your ability to email them later is limited. On Gumroad and Stan you get the buyer's email. That list may matter more than any fee.
• Rights. You need the right to sell every font, image and template inside your product, including anything AI-generated. If you can't show you have the right, cut it before launch.
• The listing fee repeats. Etsy's $0.20 renews every four months per listing. Ten slow listings cost you $6 a year just to sit there. That's small, but it's not zero.

The Online Side Hustles hub lists every online guide on the site if you're still choosing what to sell.

Your 30-day test

1. Pick the platform from the fit list above. Choose one, not all three.
2. List one product at one price. Write down P and your break-even sales count.
3. For 30 days, log every sale and where the buyer came from: platform search, your post, your email, or a friend.
4. On day 30, compare sales to your break-even line and look at the source column.

Pass means at least one sale from a stranger, with a known source. If you fail, the source column says why. Zero visits means the platform isn't bringing buyers and you aren't either, so fix traffic before you change platforms. Visits with no sales means the product page, preview or price is the problem. Sales that all came from your own posts while you paid for Etsy listings, or sales that never reach Stan's break-even, mean you picked the right product on the wrong platform. Move it, and run the test again.