Every "sell on Amazon/Flipkart" guide quotes the headline commission percentage and stops there. The two platforms' own fee pages tell a more complete story, and the numbers are dated enough to check yourself.
Amazon: 0% referral fee is real, but it is not the only fee
Amazon's official fee page (sell.amazon.in/fees-and-pricing) now leads with "ZERO referral fee on over 12.5 crore products" — true for products priced up to ₹1,000 across 1,800+ categories. But every order still carries two more fees on top:
- Closing fee: starts at ₹2, and Amazon just revised it upward again — the page says: "Due to an increase in logistics costs, we are updating our closing fees, effective September 7, 2026."
- Weight handling fee: starts at ₹37 per item shipped, scaling with weight and distance.
A seller who reads only the "0% referral fee" banner can under-budget by a meaningful margin once closing and weight-handling fees are added in.
Flipkart: 0% commission under ₹1,000, but the fixed fee is tier-based
Flipkart's own fee page (seller.flipkart.com/fees-and-commission) confirms: "We offer a 0% commission on all products priced below ₹1,000, regardless of category," plus 0% commission on the entire Fashion category at any price.
What it does not waive: the fixed (closing) fee, which is set by your seller tier under Flipkart's Darwin programme — Bronze sellers pay the base rate plus ₹10, while Platinum sellers pay the base rate minus up to ₹15. Every delivered order carries this fee regardless of the 0% commission.
Why this matters before you register
Both fee structures are genuinely seller-friendly at the entry tier. The step that actually trips people up isn't the fee math — it's the KYC and category-approval paperwork, where a rejected first attempt (wrong category, incomplete GST/PAN/bank docs) can cost weeks on either platform.
Disclosure: I work with ZoopCoder, which offers a fixed-price ₹5,499 Amazon Seller Account Setup and a fixed-price ₹5,499 Flipkart Seller Account Setup — account registration, KYC and category approval filed correctly the first time, in 4-5 working days. Neither service can guarantee approval (that decision is each platform's own review), and neither absorbs the platform fees above — those are always separate from our one-time setup fee.
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