If you sell on Amazon, Flipkart, or Meesho, the number that matters isn't your selling price -- it's your payout after every fee the marketplace deducts. Those fees aren't one line item. Each platform breaks them into several categories, and if you only subtract one of them from your price, you'll overestimate your margin on every single order.
Here's what actually comes out of your payout on each marketplace, and how to add it up correctly.
Amazon FBA: three fees, not one
When you sell through Fulfilled by Amazon, your payout is reduced by a referral fee (a percentage of the selling price that varies by category), a fulfillment fee (based on the product's weight and size tier, since Amazon is the one picking, packing, and shipping it), and a storage fee (a monthly charge based on how much warehouse space your inventory occupies). None of these are optional, and none of them are flat -- a heavier or bulkier item can cost noticeably more in fulfillment fees even at the same selling price as a smaller product.
All three numbers are available in your Seller Central reports, usually broken out per order in your payments dashboard. The mistake most new FBA sellers make is grabbing just the referral fee percentage and ignoring fulfillment and storage, which quietly erodes margin on anything that isn't small and light.
Flipkart: commission, shipping, and a fixed fee
Flipkart's fee structure looks similar in spirit but splits differently: a commission fee tied to your product category, a shipping fee tied to the weight slab and distance zone, and a fixed fee (sometimes called a closing fee) that applies per order regardless of commission. GST applies on top of the fee total, not on your selling price alone, which is another place sellers lose track of the real deduction.
Meesho: lower upfront fees, but still real ones
Meesho's model leans more heavily on low or zero commission for many categories, which is why margin calculators for the platform often default the commission field to 0% -- a lot of sellers genuinely start there. But shipping cost and GST still apply, and since Meesho sellers typically set their own price including shipping, it's easy to quote a price that looks profitable until the actual shipping charge for that weight and zone comes out of the payout.
Why the same product can have three different margins
A product with an identical cost price and selling price won't return the same profit on all three platforms, because the fee categories don't scale the same way. A small, light item might do best on the platform with the lowest fixed fee. A heavier item might lose more to fulfillment or shipping fees than the commission difference between platforms would suggest. There's no universal "best" marketplace for margin -- it depends on the specific weight, category, and price point of what you're selling, which is why running the actual numbers per product matters more than assuming one platform is cheaper across the board.
Where sellers usually go wrong
The most common error isn't forgetting a fee exists -- it's using an old fee percentage after a marketplace updates its rate card, or applying GST to the wrong base amount. Pull your current numbers directly from Seller Central, Flipkart Seller Hub, or your Meesho supplier panel each time you price a new product, rather than reusing fees you memorized from a previous listing.
Run the numbers before you list
Once you have the actual fee figures from your seller dashboard, plug them into the Amazon FBA Fee Calculator, Flipkart Fee Calculator, or Meesho Margin Calculator to see your net payout and real margin laid out clearly, before you commit to a price.