BigCommerce vs Amazon: Which Keeps More Profit (2026)

BigCommerce is a store you build and own; Amazon is a marketplace stall you rent, and the difference shows up directly in how much of each sale you keep.

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Why This Comparison Matters

Sellers researching BigCommerce and Amazon are usually not comparing two similar products. They’re comparing two different business models: a store you own on your own domain, and a stall you rent inside the world’s largest retail marketplace.

That distinction gets lost in most “comparison” content, which tends to treat both as interchangeable ways to sell online. They aren’t. BigCommerce charges you a flat monthly fee and lets you keep your margin; Amazon hands you instant traffic and takes a meaningful cut of every sale in exchange.

This guide breaks down actual 2026 pricing, fee structures, features, and setup effort for both, so you can decide based on numbers instead of marketing copy. We’ll also cover the realistic option most sellers land on eventually: using both, or moving toward an AI-operated store like StableCommerce that removes the operational burden of running an independent site.

BigCommerce Overview

BigCommerce is a hosted ecommerce platform for building an independent online store. It’s aimed at sellers who want a store on their own domain, more built-in functionality than Shopify offers out of the box, and no per-transaction fee when using an approved payment provider.

Strengths:

• No transaction fee on sales processed through an “Embedded” payment provider (Stripe, PayPal Braintree, Adyen, and similar)
• Deep B2B functionality built into the platform (customer groups, price lists, quote management) without needing third-party apps
• Unlimited staff accounts on every plan, useful for teams that need multiple logins without paying per seat

Weaknesses:

• Revenue caps per plan tier: exceed them and you’re auto-upgraded to a pricier tier whether you wanted to or not
• If you don’t use an embedded payment provider, BigCommerce now charges an “Open Payment Provider Fee” of up to 2.0% of GMV, so “zero transaction fees” has real conditions attached
• No built-in audience. Every visitor to your BigCommerce store has to be found through your own marketing, unlike a marketplace listing

Pricing summary: BigCommerce’s plans (renamed in June 2026 from Standard/Plus/Pro/Enterprise to Core/Growth/Scale/Performance) start at $29/month billed annually for Core, $79/month for Growth, and $299/month for Scale, with Performance starting at $1,499/month for high-volume sellers on custom terms (BigCommerce pricing). Each tier carries a revenue cap that triggers an automatic upgrade once you exceed it.

Amazon Overview

Amazon is the largest online marketplace in the world, giving sellers access to hundreds of millions of active shoppers without building any traffic themselves. Sellers list products into Amazon’s existing catalog and pay fees on every transaction in exchange for that reach.

Strengths:

• Built-in demand: shoppers are already searching on Amazon with intent to buy, so a new listing can generate sales within days
• Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) handles storage, packing, shipping, and much of customer service, which removes real operational work from a seller’s plate
• Prime eligibility and Amazon’s trust signals (reviews, A-to-Z guarantee) lower the buyer’s hesitation to purchase from a seller they’ve never heard of

Weaknesses:

• Referral fees plus FBA fulfillment and storage costs regularly consume 30 to 45% of gross revenue once advertising is factored in
• Amazon owns the customer relationship. You cannot email a buyer after the sale or retarget them off-platform, so repeat purchases mostly benefit Amazon, not your brand
• Account suspensions can happen with little warning and no guaranteed resolution timeline, which puts your entire revenue stream at risk if Amazon is your only channel

Pricing summary: Amazon’s Individual plan charges $0.99 per item sold with no monthly fee, while the Professional plan costs $39.99/month with no per-item charge, making Professional the better deal past roughly 40 sales a month (Amazon seller pricing). Referral fees stack on top and range from about 5% to 45% depending on category, with most general categories landing around 15%.

Head-to-Head: Pricing & Fees

The two platforms don’t just charge different amounts, they charge for fundamentally different things. BigCommerce charges mostly for software access. Amazon charges for access to its customer base, transaction by transaction.

Cost Type	BigCommerce	Amazon
Monthly cost	$29 (Core) to $299 (Scale), billed annually; Performance from $1,499	$0 (Individual, $0.99/item) or $39.99 (Professional)
Transaction fee	0% with embedded payment provider; up to 2.0% GMV without one	Referral fee 5-45% by category, most ~15%
Listing fee	None	None for standard listings; media items carry a $1.80 closing fee
Fulfillment cost	Your own shipping or 3PL, not platform-billed	FBA per-unit fees plus monthly storage, both separate from referral fees
Hidden costs	GMV-based tier upgrades, apps for functionality not built in	Advertising (ACoS) is close to mandatory in competitive categories, plus long-term storage penalties

Fees change. Always verify current rates on official pages.

Run the numbers on a $30 sale. On BigCommerce with an embedded payment provider, you pay the platform’s monthly fee (amortized per order) and your own shipping cost, and you keep the rest. On Amazon, a $30 sale in a 15%-referral category loses $4.50 to the referral fee alone, then $3 to $6 more to FBA fulfillment, plus whatever share of your advertising budget that unit absorbs.

Amazon’s fee structure got slightly more expensive in 2026: the company added a 3.5% surcharge on FBA fulfillment fees in the US and Canada starting in April, on top of routine annual rate increases (Amazon’s 2026 fee update). BigCommerce made its own pricing more complex the same year, replacing a flat “no transaction fee” pitch with the tiered Open Payment Provider Fee for sellers who don’t use an approved processor.

Neither platform’s headline pricing tells the whole story. A BigCommerce seller who ignores the GMV cap can get auto-upgraded to a pricier tier mid-year. An Amazon seller who skips advertising can watch their listing disappear from page one regardless of quality.

Head-to-Head: Features & Automation

Feature	BigCommerce	Amazon
Storefront ownership	Full custom domain and design control	None. You get a listing inside Amazon’s UI
Product catalog size	Unlimited products, up to 600 variants per product	Unlimited listings within category restrictions
B2B / wholesale tools	Built-in customer groups, price lists, quotes	Amazon Business exists as a separate program with its own rules
Email marketing	Native or app-based, fully yours	Not permitted for post-sale marketing outside Amazon’s system
Fulfillment automation	Manual, 3PL, or app-based integrations	FBA handles pick, pack, ship, and returns automatically
Advertising	Optional; you control channel and spend	Amazon Ads (Sponsored Products, etc.), close to required for visibility
Multi-storefront	Available from Growth tier up	Not applicable; one seller account, one catalog
Reviews and social proof	Built-in product reviews, must be earned from scratch	Reviews pre-exist demand and carry Amazon’s trust halo

The practical difference: BigCommerce gives you more levers to pull, but you’re the one pulling every lever. Amazon gives you fewer levers, but several of the most operationally heavy ones (fulfillment, customer trust, discovery) are handled for you by default.

Head-to-Head: Ease of Use

Setting up a BigCommerce store involves choosing a theme, configuring payment and shipping, building out product pages, and connecting a domain. None of it is difficult individually, but it adds up to real setup time, typically one to three weeks for a functional store with a modest catalog.

Getting a first listing live on Amazon is faster in the narrow sense: you can create a seller account and publish a listing within a day if your product already exists in Amazon’s catalog or you’re comfortable creating a new listing yourself. The catch is that “live” and “selling” aren’t the same thing on Amazon, since a fresh listing has no reviews and no ranking history to earn visibility.

Technical requirements skew differently too. BigCommerce assumes you’ll spend time on store design, SEO, and marketing setup since none of that comes with built-in traffic. Amazon assumes you’ll spend time on listing optimization, keyword research for Amazon’s internal search (A9/A10), and advertising campaign management, since ranking inside Amazon’s search results is its own discipline.

For a seller who wants to be selling something within 48 hours with minimal setup, Amazon is faster to launch. For a seller building a brand that needs to look and feel like their own business, BigCommerce takes longer upfront but produces an asset you control indefinitely.

Where StableCommerce Fits

Sellers choosing between BigCommerce and Amazon are really choosing between two different kinds of work: the marketing and design work of running an independent store, or the listing optimization and advertising work of competing inside a marketplace. StableCommerce, an AI-operated commerce platform, is built for sellers who want the ownership of an independent store like BigCommerce without doing either kind of manual work themselves.

Instead of you configuring shipping rules, writing product descriptions, and managing ad campaigns, StableCommerce’s AI runs day-to-day store operations: order processing, inventory syncing, customer service responses, and ongoing SEO and pricing adjustments. That’s a meaningfully different model from BigCommerce, where the platform gives you powerful tools but you still operate them, and from Amazon, where you get traffic but surrender the customer relationship entirely.

The honest downside: StableCommerce is a newer platform with a smaller app and integration ecosystem than BigCommerce, and it isn’t the right fit for sellers who specifically want hands-on manual control over every operational decision. If you enjoy running the details yourself or need a mature app marketplace for a complex catalog, BigCommerce’s maturity still wins there.

For sellers weighing this specific trade-off, see our deeper breakdowns: StableCommerce vs BigCommerce and StableCommerce vs Amazon.

Who Should Choose BigCommerce?

• You want to build a brand on your own domain with full design and checkout control
• Your business is B2B-heavy and needs customer groups, price lists, or quote workflows without bolting on third-party apps
• You already have (or are actively building) a traffic source: email list, social following, paid ads, or organic search
• You run high transaction volume where Amazon’s referral fees would meaningfully erode margin
• You need multi-storefront support for multiple brands or regions from a single back end

Who Should Choose Amazon?

• You’re launching a new product and need fast market validation without months of marketing setup
• Your category is research-heavy (electronics, supplements, tools) and shoppers default to searching Amazon first
• You want fulfillment, storage, and much of customer service handled for you through FBA
• You don’t yet have an audience of your own and need built-in discovery to generate first sales
• Your margins can absorb a 30-45% effective take rate and you’d rather trade margin for volume and speed

Migration Guide: Switching from BigCommerce to Amazon

Moving from an independent BigCommerce store to Amazon isn’t a full data migration in the traditional sense. It’s closer to launching a second sales channel that runs in parallel, at least at first.

1. Export your product catalog. Pull product titles, descriptions, images, SKUs, and variant data from BigCommerce’s built-in export tool. You’ll reformat most of this for Amazon’s listing structure, since Amazon’s fields and category requirements differ from a standalone store.

2. Register an Amazon Seller Central account. Choose Individual or Professional based on expected volume; Professional makes sense past roughly 40 sales a month given its flat $39.99 fee versus $0.99 per item.

3. Create or match your listings. If your products already exist in Amazon’s catalog, you can list against existing ASINs. New products need brand registry and new listing creation, which takes longer and requires more upfront documentation.

4. Decide on fulfillment. FBA gives you Prime eligibility and offloads shipping and much of customer service, but adds fulfillment and storage fees. FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant) keeps fulfillment in your hands and avoids those fees, at the cost of managing shipping yourself.

5. Set up advertising. Budget for Sponsored Products campaigns from day one. New listings rarely rank organically without some paid support in competitive categories.

Common pitfalls: underestimating how much advertising spend is required to be visible, listing under the wrong category (which changes your referral fee), and assuming your BigCommerce product descriptions will work unedited on Amazon, when they typically need rewriting for Amazon’s search algorithm and formatting rules.

Realistic timeframe: Expect one to two weeks to get listings live and technically functional, and two to three months before sales stabilize and advertising costs become predictable. Most sellers keep their BigCommerce store running throughout this process rather than shutting it down.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

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CartCompare is an independent e-commerce platform research site, affiliated with StableCommerce. Have a platform we haven’t covered yet, or think we got a fact wrong? Reach out via ecomcartcompare.com/about.