Amazon vs Flipkart vs Meesho for Sellers: Where Should You Start?

For a new seller, the right first marketplace is the one where your product, price and paperwork fit. Compare the full cost per kept order, not the headline commission. The tax side is the same on all three: 0.5% GST TCS, 0.1% income tax TDS and one GSTR-1. Start on one, learn its reports, then add the next.

How do the three compare?

We print a marketplace fee only when we read it on that marketplace's own page today. On 12 Nov 2026 we could read Amazon's fee page. Flipkart's page did not load its content and Meesho's site refused our request, so for those two we describe the charges without rates.

Which one should you start on?

Ask yourself three questions before you register anywhere.

What price is your product? On Amazon, the Rs 1,000 line matters. Most categories pay no referral fee at or below it and a category rate above it, as on 12 Nov 2026. A Rs 900 product and a Rs 1,100 product can face very different fees. On any marketplace, flat per-order charges hurt cheap products most, because Rs 60 of shipping is a quarter of a Rs 240 item.

How often will buyers return it? Clothes and footwear come back far more than, say, kitchen tools. Each return costs you shipping and the sale. A zero commission offer does not help much if returns eat the margin.

Do you have a GSTIN? Notification 37/2023-Central Tax lets a marketplace accept a seller with only an enrolment number, for sales within that seller's state, without collecting TCS. Whether a given marketplace accepts such sellers is its own choice, so check its registration page. If you plan to sell across India, you need a regular GSTIN. Our guide on selling on Meesho without GST explains the limits.

Then pick one and learn it well. Our step-by-step guides cover Amazon, Flipkart and Meesho.

A worked example

Arjun sells cotton bedsheets from Jaipur on all three marketplaces. We take the GST on his bedsheets as 5% for this example. His taxable sales less returns for one month:

The tax treatment is the same everywhere. What grows is the work. Arjun now has three sales reports in three formats, three sets of fee invoices to match against GSTR-2B, and three TCS entries to accept on the GST portal before Rs 1,250 reaches his cash ledger. His GSTR-1 must report the sales made through each marketplace against that marketplace's GSTIN. Our guide to GSTR-1 for multiple marketplaces walks through it.

Is it worth it? If the second marketplace adds real sales, yes. If it adds a few orders a month, the extra reconciliation may cost you more time than it earns.

How to compare them for your own product, step by step

1. Pick one real product and its selling price.
2. For each marketplace, write down every charge on one order: commission or referral fee, fixed or closing fee, shipping, collection fee.
3. Add GST on those charges at the rate on the fee invoice. If you have a GSTIN, mark it as credit you get back.
4. Add an allowance for returns: your expected return rate times the cost of one return.
5. Divide by the orders you expect to keep. That is your true cost per sale.
6. Choose the marketplace with the best margin after that cost, not the one with the lowest headline commission.

The mistake people usually make

New sellers often register on all three in the first week. Listings go stale, ratings suffer from late dispatches, and at month end there are three reports nobody has reconciled. The GST return then gets filed on bank credits instead of sales, which will not match what the marketplaces report in their GSTR-8.

The other mistake is choosing on commission alone. Read Amazon seller fees, Flipkart seller fees and Meesho charges to see why the shipping and return lines often matter more.

Frequently asked questions

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