Which Platforms Hide Their Seller Fees? A 2026 Transparency Audit of 25 Marketplaces and Processors

Every month we re-read the official fee page of each platform in our index and record what it says. In September 2026 that exercise produced a finding worth its own article: the platforms are drifting apart on transparency. Most still publish a complete rate card any seller can read before signing up. A few have moved their prices behind a login, into a Terms of Service document, or out of public view altogether — and third-party blogs fill the vacuum with numbers nobody can trace. This is the scorecard, platform by platform, with what each one publishes, what it hides, and what a seller should do about it.

How we scored it

For each platform we asked three questions of its own website, without an account: Can a prospective seller find the complete fee schedule? Is every component published — percentage, fixed fee, tiers and category exceptions — or only a headline? And is the number dated or otherwise verifiable? A platform scores 'Open' when all three hold, 'Partial' when the rate exists publicly but is incomplete or buried somewhere a seller would not think to look, and 'Hidden' when the current rate cannot be read from the platform's public pages at all.

We did not score marketing claims, only fee schedules. A page that says 'competitive rates' and nothing else counts as hidden. A page that publishes a rate but geo-blocks visitors from some countries counts as open, with a note, because the schedule exists and a seller in the platform's market can read it.

The scorecard

Of the 25 platforms in this month's pass, 20 publish an open, complete rate card, two are partial, and three are hidden. The direction of travel matters more than the count: two of the three hidden entries were open a year ago.

TikTok Shop: the rate that exists only after you log in

TikTok publishes its US referral fee schedule inside Seller Center, which requires a seller account. The consequence is visible across the web: articles published in 2026 confidently state the fee as 3%, 5%, 8% or 9%, and none links to a TikTok page that says so, because there is none to link to. Our own calculator shows the last rate TikTok published openly — 6% for most categories — and says on the page that it is the last openly published figure rather than a confirmed current one. That is the honest position, and it is uncomfortable: the largest new marketplace for small sellers cannot be priced from public information. Sellers should read their own Seller Center rate card and use our TikTok Shop calculator with the override field.

Shopify: the card rate quietly left the pricing page

Shopify's pricing page used to be the canonical source for its card rates — 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic, and so on — and thousands of articles cite it. On 22 September 2026 we loaded the page for the United States and found the rates gone. The page publishes plan prices and the third-party transaction fees, and says only that card rates 'vary depending on the plan that you choose'. The help centre's billing overview confirms the change: card rates are shown when you activate Shopify Payments.

Two things make this more than a cosmetic change. First, plan prices themselves now render differently by country under Shopify's local pricing, so the number a reader sees depends on where they are sitting. Second, without a published card rate, every 'Shopify fees' article on the web is now quoting a figure it cannot source. We have kept the last published rates in our Shopify fees guide and labelled them as reference values. The published fee that remains, and that every merchant using an external gateway pays, is the third-party transaction fee — and it is the one most sellers forget.

Klarna: the price is a conversation

Buy-now-pay-later providers have always priced by negotiation for large merchants, but Klarna used to publish a standard US rate for everyone else. The business page we recorded that rate from now returns a 404, and the current US business site routes merchants to a sales contact. Our calculator still carries the last verified figure and its verification date; we will not update it from a blog post. For a small merchant the practical answer is that Klarna's real cost is whatever appears in the contract, and it should be compared against Afterpay through Square, which publishes 6% + 30¢ on its pricing page.

The partial cases: published, but not where you would look

Poshmark's fee structure is fully public — 20% on sales over $15, $2.95 on sales of $15 and under — but it lives on the Terms of Service page under a 'Fee Policy' tab, and the notice explaining the October 2024 reversion is a banner on that legal page. A seller who searches for 'Poshmark fees' finds blogs first. Facebook's Marketplace fee page is precise (10% per shipment, $0.80 minimum) but geo-blocked: visitors outside markets with Marketplace checkout are told the feature is unavailable in their location and never see the number. Bonanza's pricing article is complete, but its support site sat behind a bot-protection wall for weeks during 2026 — long enough that its May 2025 fee rise from 3.5% to 11% went almost unreported, and we only caught it this month.

These are not attempts to hide anything. They are failures of findability, and they have the same effect on the information ecosystem: the stale third-party number outranks the correct official one.

Why it matters: stale numbers compound

A rate that cannot be read is a rate that cannot be corrected. Our fee changes tracker records the consequences: Facebook Marketplace's fee doubled from 5% to 10% and the 5% still dominates search results; Cash App's 2.75% survived for years after the rate became 2.6% + $0.15; Grailed's flat commission is still quoted months after it became tiered. In each case the platform did publish the change — the problem was reach, not secrecy. When the platform stops publishing at all, as TikTok and Shopify have for their key rates, there is no correct number for the ecosystem to converge on. Every calculator and every article becomes a guess.

What a seller should do

Treat any fee figure without a link to the platform's own page as unverified, whatever site it appears on, including this one — which is why every rate in our index carries its official source URL and verification date. For TikTok Shop and Shopify, read the rate in your own seller dashboard and model it with the override fields in our calculators. For Klarna, price from the contract. And check the fee changes tracker before a pricing decision: it lists every dated change we have verified and the rates most guides still get wrong.

For the full method behind these checks, read our methodology and editorial policy. The underlying dataset is open under CC BY 4.0 in the Global Fee Index.

Frequently asked questions

Which platforms do not publish their seller fees?

As of September 2026: TikTok Shop keeps its US referral rate card behind a Seller Center login; Shopify removed Shopify Payments card rates from its public pricing page; and Klarna's US merchant pricing page is gone, with pricing by sales contact. Most other marketplaces and processors publish a complete rate card.

Is Shopify's card rate still 2.9% + 30¢?

That was the last openly published US Basic-plan rate. Shopify's pricing page no longer prints card rates and says they vary by plan and are shown in the admin. The third-party transaction fees (2%, 1%, 0.6%, 0.2%) are still published.

What is TikTok Shop's referral fee?

TikTok does not publish it openly. The last openly published US rate was 6% for most categories. Figures of 3%, 5%, 8% and 9% appear in 2026 articles without a TikTok source. Your Seller Center shows your actual rate.

How do you verify the fees in your index?

Each rate is read from the platform's official fee page, recorded with its URL and the date we read it, and re-checked monthly. Where a platform does not publish a figure, we show the last published one and say so, rather than estimating.

Sources

• Shopify Help Center — Pricing plans and billing overview
• TikTok Shop — Referral fees (Seller Center, login required)
• Poshmark — Terms of Service / Fee Policy
• Facebook Help Center — Marketplace selling fees
• Whatnot Help Center — Whatnot seller fees

Related calculators

• TikTok Shop Fee Calculator
• Shopify Fee Calculator
• Klarna Fee Calculator
• Poshmark Fee Calculator
• Fee changes tracker
• Global Fee Index — every rate with its source
• Compare all platforms