Selling on renowned e-commerce sites like Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop gives you the clout and the brand awareness, but it comes with a price – quite literally.
As you may already know, selling items on these platforms does not mean you will get the exact amount you sold it for. All three platforms charge you various fees, and these fees compound.
We break down the commission fee, transaction fees, program charges of Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok, so you can compare them on one page. It also shows what the same ₱1,000 sale looks like when a customer pays you directly on your own store or checkout page.
How marketplace fees work in the Philippines
Understanding the various fees matters more than memorizing any single percentage, because the percentages change every few months. Here are the fees these platforms typically charge:
- Commission fee: A percentage of the item price, set by product category. This is the fee people usually mean when they say "Shopee commission fee" or "Lazada commission." It funds the platform.
- Transaction or payment fee: A percentage of the order value that covers payment processing. On Shopee and TikTok Shop this sits at 2.24% including VAT, and Lazada charges a similar payment fee. This is charged on top of commission, not instead of it.
- Per-order fees: Small flat charges per delivered order. They look harmless at ₱3 or ₱5, but on low-ticket items they can be a bigger share of your margin than the commission.
- Program fees: Optional charges for free shipping vouchers, platform vouchers, coin cashback, and livestream programs. These are technically optional. In practice, opting out often means losing visibility, so most active sellers pay them.
- Growth or support fees: Newer line items both Shopee and TikTok Shop introduced in 2025 and 2026, charged as a percentage on successful orders after your first few months.
Most of these fees are computed on the buyer's price before platform-funded discounts. For instance, if Shopee gives your customer a ₱100 voucher, your fee is still based on the higher price.
Shopee seller fees
Shopee Philippines publishes its fee schedule in Seller Education Hub, and the numbers below reflect the schedule as of this writing. Rates differ by category and seller type (Marketplace vs Shopee Mall), so treat these as the structure and confirm your own category rate in the Seller Centre.
Source: Shopee Philippines Seller Education Hub, fee schedule as of September 2026. Rates in PHP, VAT inclusive unless stated.
In practice, a Marketplace seller in the voucher and cashback programs pays four things on most orders: the commission, a 2.24% transaction fee, ₱5 per order, and around 7% in program fees. The commission rate alone is only about half of the total cost.Here is what that looks like in a real order. Say you sell a ₱1,000 item and you are enrolled in the voucher and cashback programs. Shopee takes its commission first, then 2.24% for processing the payment, then ₱5 for the order, then around 7% more for the programs. That is roughly ₱130 to ₱150 gone before shipping or ads. The commission rate you see in the Seller Centre is only about half of what you actually pay.
Lazada seller fees
Lazada does not publish one clean public rate card the way Shopee and TikTok Shop do. Rates are visible inside Seller Center, and third-party trackers disagree with each other on exact figures. The ranges below are what sellers have reported and what Lazada communicated in its 2025 adjustments.
Lazada's advantage on paper is that the total can come in slightly under Shopee for sellers who avoid the program add-ons. Its disadvantage is opacity. If you sell on Lazada, download your monthly statement and compute your effective rate yourself. Many sellers are surprised to find it lands between 9% and 12% once payment fees and campaign costs are in.
TikTok Shop seller fees
TikTok Shop Philippines publishes the most detailed schedule of the three through its Seller University. The trade-off is that it also has the most line items.
All fees are deducted automatically from your payout after the order is delivered. For a Marketplace fashion seller, that means commission, a 2.24% transaction fee, a 5.5% shipping service fee, a 1.5% growth fee, and ₱3 per order, all on the same sale. For many sellers, the total comes to more than 10% of each order, before paying affiliates or running ads.
Side by side: what a ₱1,000 order actually costs
The table below shows what happens to a ₱1,000 Marketplace order in a general merchandise category. We used the same 6% commission for all three platforms so you can compare how the fees stack up, not how categories differ. To get your own numbers, replace the 6% with your actual category rate.\
Direct sale fees vary by payment method. GCash is 2.23%; domestic cards are 3.125% + ₱13.39, or about ₱44.64 on the same order, which still leaves you keeping over ₱955. Rates for Maya, ShopeePay, GrabPay, QR Ph, and online banking are lower than cards; the full list is on the PayMongo pricing page.
The gap is roughly ₱100 per ₱1,000 sold. A seller doing ₱300,000 a month across marketplaces is looking at ₱30,000 a month, or about ₱360,000 a year, that a direct channel could put back into the business.
That said, we can’t discount the number of potential customers these platforms bring in. At the very least, this gives you an estimate on what you’re investing in for the awareness these platforms bring into your business. It should give you an idea on whether these fees are worth the volume.
Fees are only part of the cost
Fees are the easy part to measure. The harder costs are the ones that do not show up on a statement.
On a marketplace, the buyer is the platform's customer. You cannot email them, you cannot retarget them without buying the platform's ads, and you cannot see their contact details. The most you can do is chat with them on the platform. A repeat buyer on Shopee is a new acquisition cost every time.
Secondly, ranking favors sellers in the free shipping and voucher programs. Opting out to save the 4% often costs more in lost visibility than it saves in fees.
Another caveat is that you wait for delivery confirmation, then for the return window, then for the release schedule. On a direct sale, settlement follows your payment provider's schedule, and you can choose faster settlement when cash flow is tight.
Lastly, the same product, the same category, and the same page layout push buyers to sort by price. A branded store does not remove competition, but it removes the side-by-side.
None of this means you should leave the marketplaces. They are still the biggest source of new buyers in the Philippines. However, you can potentially stop routing your repeat buyers through them.
How to take payments outside Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop
You have three practical options, depending on where your customers already find you.
Option 1: Sell from your own online store
If you have a product catalog, the cleanest path is your own store with checkout built in. PayMongo Storefront lets you set up a branded store with your logo, colors, and layout, add products with variants and stock tracking, and manage orders from the same dashboard you use for payments.
Customers check out with GCash, Maya, cards, QR Ph, online banking, or BNPL, and you pay only the transaction fee for the method they used. Storefront is free on your first month; plan starts at ₱349/month the succeeding months.
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Other options are of course, Shopify and WooCommerce, however you still need a plugin for a payment gateway that accepts modes of payment in the Philippines.
Either way, selling from your own online store suits sellers who want a permanent home for their brand, a link they can put in every marketplace package insert, bio, and thank-you message.
Option 2: Add a checkout to a site or page you already have
If you already have a website, a Facebook page with a real following, or a landing page, you do not need to rebuild anything. Hosted Checkout gives you a secure, PayMongo-hosted payment page you can link to from anywhere. You send the customer to the checkout, they pay with their preferred method, and the funds settle to your PayMongo account.
This suits sellers with a working site or a strong social presence who mostly need the payment step handled.
Option 3: Send a payment link for one-off orders
For orders that come in through Messenger, Viber, or Instagram DMs, a payment link is the fastest route. Create it in the dashboard, set the amount, send it in the chat. The customer pays, you get notified, you ship.
This suits sellers who close a lot of sales in conversations and want to stop asking customers to send screenshots of bank transfers.
Moving marketplace buyers to your own channel
That said, how do you convince repeat customers to buy from your own channel instead of Shopee, or other marketplaces they found you in?
One way is to put a QR code or short link to your store on every package insert. The buyer already trusts you enough to have purchased once. Give them a reason to buy the second time directly, such as a small discount or free shipping above a threshold that you can afford because you are not paying 12% in fees.
Keep your marketplace listings for discovery, and keep your best bundles or new releases for your own store first. Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop bring in the traffic. Your store keeps the relationship.
Secondly, be consistent with pricing. If your own store is visibly cheaper, marketplace buyers will find it. If it is the same price with a better experience, they will still come back for the experience.
Keep more of every sale you make
Marketplace fees are not going down. Shopee added a growth fee this year, TikTok Shop layered on a shipping service fee, and Lazada's LazMall commission went up in 2025. Every seller with repeat customers is paying acquisition fees on buyers they already acquired.
PayMongo gives you a direct channel for those customers. Build a branded store with PayMongo Storefront, add Hosted Checkout to a site you already run, or send payment links for orders that close in chat. Accept GCash, Maya, cards, QR Ph, and more, pay only per-transaction fees with no commission, and see every order and payout in one dashboard. Setup is free.
Frequently asked questions
Which is cheaper for sellers: Shopee, Lazada, or TikTok Shop?
It depends on your category and which programs you join. Lazada can be cheapest for sellers who skip paid programs, Shopee sits in the middle, and TikTok Shop tends to be the most expensive once its 5% to 5.5% shipping service fee and 1% to 1.5% growth fee are included. All three charge a payment fee of about 2.24%. A direct sale through your own store or checkout avoids commission and program fees entirely.
Do I need to pay tax on marketplace sales in the Philippines?
Yes, marketplaces withhold 1% on half of your gross remittances (0.5% effective) under BIR RR 16-2023.
Can I sell on Shopee and on my own website at the same time?
Yes, and most established sellers do. Marketplaces are the discovery channel, and your own store or checkout is where you send repeat buyers so you stop paying commission on customers you already have. Keep pricing consistent, and use package inserts and social bios to move buyers to your direct channel.
What is the cheapest way to accept payments outside a marketplace?
A payment gateway that charges per transaction with no monthly commission is usually the cheapest. PayMongo, for example, charges 2.23% for GCash, 1.34% for QR Ph, and 3.125% + ₱13.39 for domestic cards, with free setup. Compare that to 8% to 15% in combined marketplace fees on the same order.
*Last updated: September 2026