The short version
- Both platforms allow the same basic model - fulfil from a real wholesale supplier, never buy from another retailer and have them ship - and suspend accounts for breaking it, but the rest of the two platforms are genuinely different businesses to run.
- Amazon's packaging rule is written down as an explicit, named policy: you must be the only seller of record on every packing slip, invoice and box, with any other name removed before shipping - eBay expects the same outcome but polices it through buyer disputes rather than a single named rule.
- eBay is the easier, cheaper place to start: no monthly subscription needed to sell, fees generally lower on comparable categories, and a market that does not pit a new seller against the platform's own inventory.
- Amazon's Professional plan costs £25 a month before you sell a single item, on top of referral fees of roughly 8-15% depending on category - real, upfront costs eBay does not have.
- The two platforms judge your account completely differently: eBay uses three private levels checked monthly; Amazon runs a live 0-1,000 point score alongside a separate, always-on 1% order-defect-rate limit that can suspend you even with a perfect score.
The same rule, enforced differently
Both platforms draw the same line: sourcing from a genuine wholesale supplier or manufacturer who fulfils the order is allowed; buying the item from another retailer or marketplace after it sells, and having that retailer ship it, is not - and both treat it as a suspension-worthy policy violation, not a performance issue. eBay's own policy states this in terms of who you buy from.
Amazon states the same underlying requirement, but writes the packaging part down as its own explicit rule rather than leaving it to buyer disputes. Purchasing products from a third party and having that party ship directly to customers is against policy unless the shipment identifies you, and only you, as the seller of record - and any packing slip, invoice, or piece of external packaging naming a different seller or supplier must be removed before the order ships. Amazon calls this out as strictly prohibited, not just discouraged, and treats an unremoved supplier invoice inside a parcel as a policy breach in its own right, independent of whether the buyer ever complains about it.
Fees, in real numbers
eBay charges a percentage-based final value fee that varies by category, plus a small per-order fee, with no monthly subscription required to list and sell - the same structure this site's own fee calculator works from.
Amazon's cost structure starts before your first sale: the Professional selling plan - the one almost every dropshipper needs, since the free Individual plan caps you at low volume and charges 75p per item on top - costs £25 a month, excluding VAT, whether you sell anything or not. On top of that sits a referral fee charged on every sale, typically 8-15% of the total sale price depending on category, with a minimum referral fee of £0.25 per item regardless of how cheap the item is. The referral fee applies to the full amount the buyer pays including delivery, not just the item price. Selling through Fulfilled by Merchant (posting the item yourself, the model that actually fits dropshipping) also means competing directly against Amazon's own Prime-badged, next-day listings, including Amazon's own stock in some categories - a form of competition eBay simply does not have, since eBay itself never sells inventory against its own sellers.
Put together: a new seller on eBay pays nothing until something sells, and even then pays a lower percentage on most categories. A new seller on Amazon pays £25 before the first sale, then a broadly similar or higher percentage on top, while also competing against Amazon's own listings in the same search results.
A worked example, same item, both platforms
Take a £50 item sold in a category with an 8% Amazon referral fee and a comparable eBay final value fee. On eBay, that sale costs a final value fee of roughly £6.40 plus a small per-order fee, and nothing at all if the item never sells - no listing fee, no subscription, on a standard account within the free listing allowance. On Amazon, the same £50 sale costs a referral fee of £4 (8% of £50), which looks cheaper on that single sale - but only once the £25 Professional plan is already being paid that month regardless of how many items sell. Sell one £50 item in a month on Amazon and the true cost of that sale is £29 once the subscription is counted; sell fifty, and the subscription cost per item falls to 50p, making Amazon's real per-item cost genuinely competitive at volume. The crossover point is exactly the problem: a new dropshipper testing whether a product sells at all is paying Amazon's fixed cost regardless of the outcome, where eBay's cost only appears once a sale has actually happened.
Returns: who actually deals with the buyer
On eBay, a return is a conversation you have directly with the buyer through eBay's returns flow - you set the returns policy on the listing, and when a buyer opens a return, you are the one approving it, arranging the label, or issuing the refund, inside the timeframe covered in detail in the returns post. Amazon's returns process is more standardised and more buyer-favourable by default: many categories carry a baseline return window Amazon sets platform-wide rather than the seller choosing it, and Amazon's own returns policy tends to approve a return automatically within its stated window rather than leaving the decision to the seller in every case. For a dropshipper specifically, that matters because a returned item still has to go somewhere - and if your supplier does not accept returns of already-dispatched stock (a real, common limitation covered in the returns post), Amazon's more automatic, buyer-favourable returns process can leave you refunding a sale with no way to recover the item's cost from the supplier at all, more often than eBay's seller-led process does.
Who actually touches the order
This is the biggest operational difference, and it is easy to underestimate before you have run either. On eBay, you place the order with your supplier yourself, add the tracking number to the eBay order once the supplier sends it, and answer the buyer directly if anything goes wrong - the whole loop most of this blog is about. Selling through Amazon's own fulfilment network changes that: Amazon can store, pick, pack and ship the item, and the listing inherits Amazon's own delivery promise. It is a genuinely different job - less hands-on order by order, but only available in the way that suits a dropshipper if your supplier can get stock into Amazon's fulfilment network in the first place, which is its own real logistics step most pure dropshippers do not have. Selling Fulfilled by Merchant on Amazon instead - posting each order yourself, the way a dropshipper actually operates - keeps the hands-on loop but adds the packaging and invoice restriction above, and still runs against Amazon's own Prime inventory in search.
How each platform judges your account
The two platforms measure whether you are running a good account in genuinely different ways, and the difference matters for how much room you have to make a mistake. eBay sorts every account into one of three private levels, checked once a month, based on cases, defect rate and late delivery - a buyer never sees your level except indirectly through the Top Rated badge, and a bad month is judged against a rolling 3- or 12-month average, not in real time.
Amazon runs something stricter and more immediate: an Account Health Rating from 0 to 1,000, updated continuously rather than monthly. A score of 200 or above keeps full selling privileges and Buy Box eligibility; 100-199 is a corrective-action zone with possible listing suppression; below 100 is eligible for immediate deactivation. Ordinary policy violations deduct 2-8 points each, but a critical violation can drop the score straight to zero in one go. Crucially, this score runs entirely separately from Amazon's Order Defect Rate requirement - sellers must keep ODR (negative feedback, A-to-Z Guarantee claims, and chargebacks combined) below 1% at all times, and breaching that 1% limit can trigger suspension even with an otherwise perfect Account Health Rating. The two systems operate in parallel and either one alone can end an account.
In practice, this means Amazon offers less room to recover from a bad run than eBay's rolling-average system does, and punishes a cluster of problems - even a small one - faster and more visibly than eBay's monthly check ever will. A new dropshipper's first few weeks - the period most likely to include a supplier stock surprise, a slower-than-expected delivery, or a listing mistake - is exactly when this difference is felt hardest, since it is also the period with the least trading history to average a mistake against on either platform.
Getting approved to sell in the first place
eBay lets a new account list in almost any category from day one, with a handful of genuinely restricted categories (certain electronics, some health-related items) needing extra verification. Amazon gates far more categories behind an approval process - "ungating" - that can require invoices from an approved brand or distributor, a minimum account history, or both, before a new seller is even allowed to list in that category at all. Furniture and home categories, the ones this site's own suppliers focus on, are more commonly open to new Amazon sellers than categories like toys, grocery, or certain electronics brands, but the approval step itself is still real friction eBay simply does not have for the same products. A new dropshipper choosing Amazon needs to check category approval requirements before assuming a chosen product can even be listed, not after building a shop around it.
Which is actually the more realistic place to start
For a first dropshipping shop with no existing brand, no stock sitting in a fulfilment centre, and a limited budget, eBay is usually the more realistic starting point: no subscription fee before you have made a sale, generally lower fees once you have, a market that does not pit you against the platform's own inventory, and a monthly-average standards system with more room to recover from an early mistake. Amazon's traffic and Prime badge are real advantages, but they suit a seller who already has the volume, the margin, or the brand to absorb a £25 monthly fee, a stricter real-time account-health system, and a category-approval process, before the first sale has even happened - which is a second-stage decision more often than a first one. Nothing here says never sell on Amazon. It says know which stage of the business each platform actually suits before choosing where to put the first real effort, and treat a move onto Amazon later as a genuinely new setup to learn properly, not an extension of whatever already works on eBay.
Where Sellhelm fits
Sellhelm is built specifically for the eBay side of this decision - pricing after eBay's own fees, an order desk built around eBay's order flow, and listings built from eBay's own template system. That is a deliberate choice, not an oversight: eBay is where a new dropshipper can realistically start well, and building one tool that does that properly beats trying to do both platforms adequately. If a shop later grows into Amazon as a second channel, that is a genuinely separate setup - Amazon's own fee structure, its own account-health rules, and its own packaging requirement all need their own attention, not a bolt-on to an eBay workflow.
Questions people ask
Is dropshipping allowed on both eBay and Amazon?
Yes, on the same basic condition: you fulfil from a genuine wholesale supplier or manufacturer, never by buying from another retailer or marketplace and having them ship to your customer. Both platforms treat breaking that rule as a suspension-worthy policy violation.
Does Amazon dropshipping have stricter rules than eBay?
The underlying rule is the same, but Amazon states the packaging requirement more explicitly and by name: you must be the only seller of record on every packing slip, invoice and box, with any other name removed before shipping. eBay expects the same outcome, enforced more through buyer disputes than a single named rule.
Which is cheaper to start dropshipping on, eBay or Amazon?
eBay, for most new sellers. There is no monthly subscription fee to start selling, and fees are generally lower on comparable categories. Amazon’s Professional plan costs £25 a month before any sale, plus a referral fee typically between 8% and 15%.
Do I have to pay Amazon a monthly fee to dropship?
In practice, yes. The free Individual plan charges 75p per item sold and caps your volume, which does not suit most dropshipping shops. The Professional plan removes those limits for a flat £25 a month, whether you sell anything that month or not.
How does Amazon judge seller performance compared to eBay?
Amazon runs a continuously-updated Account Health Rating from 0 to 1,000, alongside a separate requirement to keep Order Defect Rate under 1% at all times - either one can trigger suspension independently. eBay instead checks three private levels once a month against a rolling 3- or 12-month average, which gives more room to recover from a bad patch.
Should I dropship on both eBay and Amazon at once?
Most sellers are better off doing one properly first. Running both from day one usually means neither gets the attention - supplier vetting, pricing discipline, order handling - that actually decides whether a dropshipping shop works, and Amazon’s fee structure and account-health rules need their own dedicated attention.
Can Amazon suspend my account even with a good performance score?
Yes. Amazon’s Account Health Rating and its Order Defect Rate limit operate independently - a seller can carry a strong Account Health score and still be suspended for breaching the 1% Order Defect Rate ceiling, since the two systems are checked separately rather than combined into one number.
Is Amazon or eBay cheaper for a low-volume dropshipping test?
eBay, almost always. Amazon’s £25 monthly Professional plan is charged regardless of sales volume, so a slow month of testing a new product still costs £25 before fees. eBay only charges once something actually sells, which suits testing new products far better.
Who handles returns on Amazon versus eBay?
On eBay, the seller sets the returns policy and approves or manages each return directly. Amazon’s process is more standardised and often more automatic in the buyer’s favour, which can leave a dropshipper refunding a sale with no way to recover the item’s cost if their supplier will not accept the return.