How Do Fee Structures Differ Across Rakuten, Amazon, ZOZOTOWN, and Yahoo! Shopping?

Introduction: why you can't simply compare "which marketplace has the lowest fees"

If you sell across multiple marketplaces, it's natural to wonder which one ultimately has the lowest fees. But because the fee breakdown differs by marketplace — monthly fixed costs, revenue-based fees, point-funding obligations, advertising costs, and more — simply lining up the published rates doesn't produce a fair comparison. On top of that, some marketplaces don't make their specific rates easy to confirm from public sources. This article organizes what can be confirmed from public information as of July 2026.

Amazon.co.jp: monthly registration fee plus category-based referral fees

Amazon's Professional selling plan charges a monthly registration fee plus a referral fee that varies by category. According to Amazon's official seller fee page, the monthly registration fee is ¥4,900 (excluding tax), and category-based referral fees generally range from 5% to 15.4%, with the rate stepping up or down depending on the category (for example, media categories are a flat 15.4%, while home electronics are 5% up to a certain amount and 8.4% above it). Sellers using FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) also pay separate fulfillment and storage fees based on product size. Advertising (Sponsored Products) is pay-per-click and optional.

Yahoo! Shopping: free to open a store, but several costs stack up

Yahoo! Shopping prominently advertises that its initial setup fee, monthly system usage fee, and revenue royalty are all free. Taken at face value, this looks dramatically cheaper than other mall-type EC platforms. However, several costs that are not free do exist — point funding, campaign funding, and affiliate partner compensation among them. We cover this in detail in a separate article, but adding up these mandatory charges shows that even with a free storefront, a meaningful share of revenue still goes to cumulative costs.

Rakuten Ichiba: the structure is public, but this article could not confirm the current specific rates

It's generally known that Rakuten Ichiba's fee structure is made up of a monthly system usage fee (tiered by plan), a revenue-based royalty (a closing fee that varies by category and store plan), a fixed-rate point-funding charge, and search-linked advertising (such as RPP). However, at the time this article was written, we were unable to directly confirm the current specific rates from Rakuten's official pages. Because rates can change by plan and over time, we recommend confirming exact figures through Rakuten's RMS (the merchant management system) or a Rakuten sales representative. This article presents the structure only and avoids asserting specific rates as fact.

ZOZOTOWN: the fee structure is not publicly disclosed

A review of the official site of ZOZO, the company that operates ZOZOTOWN, found that the fees and rates charged to merchants are not publicly disclosed. It's known that the contract type (consignment, self-managed merchandising, and so on) affects who bears inventory risk and who controls pricing, but specific fee rates appear to be communicated individually after a merchant inquires about opening a store. Rate figures circulating online should not be treated as fact unless they can be traced to a primary source.

A direct-to-consumer storefront (via Shopify, for example) has no concept of a store-opening fee or revenue royalty at all — the main costs are a monthly plan fee and payment processing fees (such as Shopify Payments). On the other hand, it lacks the built-in customer acquisition that a marketplace provides (search traffic, an existing member base), so essentially all advertising spend to drive traffic falls on the seller. That's the fundamental difference from mall-type EC.

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