Print on demand margins, compared
The cheaper shirt is not always the one that leaves you more.
Print on demand sellers compare printers by base price, and base price is the one number that never reaches your bank account. What reaches it is the sale price minus two stacks: the marketplace fee stack, and the printer's product plus shipping cost. Run one product through all of it below, for Printful, Printify, Printify Premium, and Gelato.
The comparator
What each printer charges you, per shirt. Every figure is yours to change.
| Per shirt | Printful | Printify | Printify Premium | Gelato |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marketplace fees | ||||
| Printer product + shipping | ||||
| Left per shirt | ||||
| Left per month, after any plan fee | ||||
| Margin on the sale price |
Your whole catalogueOne shirt is a snapshot. The tracker keeps the year.
The comparator settles one product. What a season of sales actually left you, across every listing and every marketplace, is the question our own seller income tracker answers: import your statements, add the one-off sales by hand, and see what you kept after fees on each one.
Who it fits: sellers past the first product decision, keeping score across a catalogue.
The verdict by seller stage
- First designs, no paid plan anywhere: on the standard tee, the Printify column starts ahead, because its product price starts lower and there is no plan fee to climb over. Printful's free plan is the closer second.
- Selling every week: the Premium question is pure arithmetic, and the break-even line under the table answers it with your own unit count. On the default shirt it lands under twenty shirts a month.
- A catalogue that lives or dies on print consistency: Printful prints in its own facilities. A Printify order is printed by whichever of its providers you route it to, and seller experience splits by provider. The table ranks money only. Weigh the actual provider's record before the money decides alone.
- Deciding on Gelato: Gelato prints close to the buyer through local production partners and keeps its prices inside its catalog, so its column runs on the quote from your own account. Type it in and it competes on the same terms as the other three.
How the math runs
The marketplace stack comes off first, on the price plus the shipping you charge, because that is how the marketplaces calculate it. On Etsy that is the $0.20 listing fee, the 6.5% transaction fee, and Etsy Payments at 3% plus $0.25, the same schedule as our Etsy fee calculator. On Shopify there is no marketplace commission; the stack is Shopify Payments at 2.9% plus $0.30, and your Shopify plan itself is a fixed monthly cost that sits outside a per-shirt table. The printer's product and shipping cost comes off next, then any paid plan fee is spread across the month.
The starting figures are the Bella + Canvas 3001 as the printers publish it. Printify lists the shirt at $10.98, or $8.77 on Premium, through a US provider. Printful's catalog price is $11.92, with US shipping at $4.95 for the first shirt. Printify routes each order to one of its print providers, so your product price moves with the provider you pick. Type your own dashboard figures over any starting number and the whole table follows.
Two plan facts worth knowing before the break-even lines make sense. Printful Growth costs $24.99 a month, takes up to 33% off product prices depending on the product, and turns free once you reach $12,000 a year in sales through Printful. Printify Premium is $39 a month, or $24.99 a month billed yearly, and its discount is already in the Premium product price above, so only its fee sits in the monthly line.
What the table leaves out, on purpose: advertising beyond the Offsite Ads toggle, taxes, returns and remakes, and sample orders. Those are real costs. They also differ so much by shop that folding a guessed figure into a printer comparison would flatter one column and punish another for no honest reason.
How this page fits the rest of the site
A printer decision sits between two other money questions: what a sale costs on the marketplace, answered by the free Etsy fee calculator, and what the research tools say to sell in the first place, compared on the Etsy research tools page. Fee schedules and tax thresholds move during the year; the fee change tracker and the 1099-K threshold tracker keep those two current. The full list lives on the seller resources page.
Seller updatesThe See the Fees list
One short email when a marketplace changes its fee schedule, seller money reminders ahead of tax season, and first word when a new seller tool opens. The calculators stay free either way.
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