A marketplace referral fee can reach twenty-seven per cent of the sale price. A UAE payment gateway charges under three. If that were the whole comparison, nobody would ever list on a marketplace, and yet almost every established UAE brand eventually does.
The reason is the thing the fee comparison leaves out. A marketplace sells you demand. Your own store sells you control and gives you nobody. This article sets out what each actually costs, using the platforms' own published rate cards, and covers the one genuinely UAE-specific question that most sellers get to too late: who accounts for the VAT.
Everything below was read from official sources in August 2026. Both marketplaces revise their fees, so treat percentages as pointers to the live page.
What Amazon.ae charges
Amazon publishes a referral fee per category. Most sit between 4.5 and 16 per cent, with a minimum referral fee of AED 1 per item on most categories, though grocery and pet products show a zero minimum [1]. Some worked examples from the published card: apparel at 15 per cent, automotive at 12 per cent, and a tiered structure across baby, beauty, health and personal care, personal care appliances and pet products at 8 per cent up to AED 50 and 15 per cent above [1].
On the monthly selling plan, Amazon's page showed no monthly fee as an explicitly time-limited promotion when we read it, and did not show a standing rate. We are therefore not quoting one, and neither should anyone else. Check it at signup.
Fulfilment is priced separately, with storage published at AED 2 per cubic foot per month [1]. Amazon also references a long-term storage charge for stock held beyond a year, without showing the rate on the page we could read.
What noon charges
noon publishes a referral fee card running from around 5 to 27 per cent by category, with the same AED 1 per item minimum, and states that its fees are exclusive of VAT [3][4]. The same referral rates apply whether you fulfil orders yourself or noon does [3][4].
The top of that range is the number worth pausing on. Fashion apparel and footwear sit at 27 per cent [3]. Watches are tiered at 15 per cent up to AED 5,000 and 5 per cent above [3].
noon's storage is published at AED 1.5 per cubic foot per month [4]. Its circumstantial fees are worth reading before you list rather than after: a return administration fee of the lesser of AED 15 or 20 per cent of the referral fee for return reasons within the seller's control, an order cancellation fee equal to the category's referral fee, and an inventory removal fee starting at AED 15 per request plus per-unit handling and per-kilogram delivery [3][4].
noon's published schedules list referral, fulfilment and circumstantial fees with no subscription line item. That suggests there is no standing monthly fee, but noon does not say so explicitly, so treat it as an inference from an absence rather than a stated fact.
The comparison people actually need
Amazon is cheaper than noon in most categories, and the gap is widest in fashion, where apparel is 15 per cent against noon's 27. Side by side:
| Amazon.ae | noon | |
|---|---|---|
| Referral fee range | About 4.5 to 16 per cent | About 5 to 27 per cent |
| Minimum referral fee | AED 1 per item, zero on grocery and pet products | AED 1 per item |
| Apparel | 15 per cent | 27 per cent |
| Fulfilment storage | AED 2 per cubic foot per month | AED 1.5 per cubic foot per month |
| Fees quoted | Not stated as exclusive of VAT on the page read | Exclusive of VAT |
Figures read from each marketplace's own published rate card, August 2026 [1][3][4]. A twelve-point difference on apparel is not a rounding error, it is most of a fashion brand's margin. Look up your own category on both cards rather than trusting any range, including this one.
What you have to have before you can sell
A valid UAE trade licence, on both platforms, stated on their own seller pages [2][5]. UAE law now explicitly treats digital marketplaces as a regulated commercial channel [7], so selling through someone else's storefront does not remove the business formation requirements that apply to any other retail operation.
VAT registration follows the ordinary thresholds: mandatory once taxable supplies and imports exceed AED 375,000 over the previous twelve months or are expected to within thirty days, with voluntary registration from AED 187,500 [8]. noon supports both VAT-registered and non-VAT-registered sellers explicitly [5]. We could not confirm Amazon's position at the point of registration, so check that directly rather than assuming it matches.
Who accounts for the VAT, and why nobody can answer it for you
This is the most useful and most misunderstood part of selling through a marketplace in the UAE.
The Federal Tax Authority's e-commerce VAT guide sets out the test [6]. Where an intermediary acts as a disclosed agent, on behalf and in the name of a principal, the supply is treated as made directly by the supplier to the recipient. Where it acts as an undisclosed agent in its own name, there are two supplies rather than one: supplier to intermediary, and intermediary to customer [6].
Those two outcomes put the VAT obligation in different places. Which one applies depends on the actual contractual relationship, and here is the part that matters: the FTA's guide does not classify noon or Amazon. It gives the test, not the answer.
One more caveat belongs here. The FTA's e-commerce guide is dated August 2020, and we did not confirm it against the executive regulation amendments made since, which is a further reason to treat it as a framework rather than a current ruling. So the honest instruction is to put your own seller agreement in front of a UAE tax adviser and get your position confirmed, before volume makes a mistake expensive. Anyone who tells you the answer without reading your contract is guessing. Our VAT-compliant e-commerce guide covers the wider registration and invoicing picture.
Fulfilling it yourself or letting them do it
Both marketplaces let you ship orders yourself or send stock into their warehouses, and the choice changes your cost structure more than it changes your fee.
Fulfilling yourself keeps your stock in one place, which matters if you also sell through your own store and do not want inventory split across buildings. You keep control of packaging, which is most of what a brand experience amounts to in a parcel. You also keep the work: picking, packing, courier bookings and returns handling all stay with you, and they scale with volume in a way that eventually needs a person.
Marketplace fulfilment converts that operation into a per-unit cost. Storage is published per cubic foot per month on both platforms, at AED 2 on Amazon and AED 1.5 on noon when we checked [1][4]. Picking, packing and delivery are charged per order against published tables. The operational appeal is real: your orders ship without anyone in your business touching them, and returns are handled at the warehouse.
Two costs deserve attention before you commit stock. The first is slow-moving inventory, because per-cubic-foot storage compounds quietly on lines that do not sell, and Amazon references an additional long-term charge for stock held beyond a year [1]. The second is getting stock out again: noon publishes a removal fee starting at AED 15 per request plus per-unit handling and per-kilogram delivery [4]. Neither number is large. Both make stranded inventory a decision with a price rather than something to postpone.
The practical answer for most UAE sellers starting out is to fulfil yourself while volume is low enough to absorb the work, and move to marketplace fulfilment when the picking and packing starts consuming a person's week. Deciding that on volume rather than on principle keeps the cost visible.
The economics, done properly
The fee comparison that circulates is marketplace commission against gateway rate, and it is close to meaningless. A UAE gateway charges roughly two and a half to two point nine per cent, as set out in our payment gateway comparison. A marketplace charges several times that. On percentages alone your own store wins by a distance.
The comparison that means something is contribution per order.
On a marketplace, subtract the referral fee for your specific category, the fulfilment cost per unit, and your realistic returns cost including the administration fees above. What remains is your contribution, and the traffic was free.
On your own store, subtract the gateway fee, your own fulfilment cost, and what you actually spend on marketing to produce one order. That last figure is the one businesses leave out, and it is usually the largest number in the calculation. A store with no acquisition cost only exists in a spreadsheet.
Run both honestly and the answer is frequently that the marketplace is cheaper per order for a brand nobody is searching for, and the own store is cheaper per order for a brand people already know. That is not a platform question. It is a question about how much demand you already own.
A pattern we see. A UAE brand builds a beautiful store, launches, and sells almost nothing for three months because no one knows it exists. They then list on a marketplace, sell steadily, and conclude the store was a waste. It was not. It was built in the wrong order. The marketplace found out whether the product sells. The store is where the customers it produced should eventually be retained.
What a listing actually needs
A listing needs three things that take real work: correct category-specific product data, images built to each platform's specification, and stock synchronised with wherever else you sell. The operational side is consistently underestimated, and it is where marketplace projects stall rather than at the commercial decision.
Each platform has its own product data requirements: category-specific attributes, size and variant structures, barcodes, and rules about what may appear in a title. Getting these wrong does not usually produce an error message. It produces a listing that exists and never appears in a search, which is a much harder problem to notice.
Images are the second cost. Each marketplace publishes its own specifications and rejects listings that miss them, which means the set you shot for your own store frequently cannot be reused as-is. Budget for that rather than discovering it mid-launch. Our product photography guide covers what the platforms require and what a shoot costs.
The third is stock synchronisation, and it is the one that causes actual damage. If your marketplace listing and your own store draw on the same physical inventory without a connection between them, you will eventually sell the same unit twice. Cancelling a marketplace order because you no longer have the stock is exactly the kind of event that affects your standing on the platform, and on noon an order cancellation carries a fee equal to the category's referral fee [3]. Connecting stock across channels is an integration job, and it belongs in the launch budget rather than in the recovery from a bad month.
What you give up
You do not get the customer relationship. Customer data, direct marketing, and control over how your product appears next to competitors generally stay with the platform. Reviews and ranking accrue to their listing, not to your brand, and do not transfer if you leave.
You also inherit their rules and their judgement. If your seller account is suspended, that revenue stops the same day and you have no independent route to those customers. We are not quoting performance thresholds for either platform, because the only sources we found for those were consultancies selling reinstatement services. Read your seller agreement instead.
None of this is an argument against selling on marketplaces. It is an argument against making one your only channel, which is a different and much more defensible claim.
Running both without making a mess
Most established UAE brands end up on both, and the failure mode is operational rather than strategic. Stock counts drift apart, prices differ across channels, and delivery promises do not match, so a customer who sees you in two places forms a worse impression than one who saw you in one.
One practical point beyond the listing work above. If you are considering Saudi Arabia, treat it as a separate market with its own registration and logistics rather than an extension of your UAE listing. Our Saudi e-commerce guide covers that properly.
What your own store costs
A focused business website starts from around AED 3,500 with us, with an e-commerce build costing more depending on catalogue size, payment methods and integrations. These are our own figures rather than a market survey. Our e-commerce development guide covers the build and our platform comparison covers hosted against custom.
The structural point is that a store is a one-off cost against a permanent percentage. On enough volume, in a high-fee category, the build pays for itself against commission alone. In a low-fee category with no existing audience, it may never do so, and listing is simply the better decision. Both of those are real answers and neither is a failure.
Before you list anything
- Look up your exact category on both published rate cards, not a range from an article
- Model your margin after referral fee, fulfilment, returns and, on noon, VAT on the fees
- Confirm your trade licence covers what you intend to sell
- Put your seller agreement in front of a tax adviser and settle who accounts for VAT
- Decide what your own store is for, even if you are listing first
- Budget for channel-specific product images rather than one set for everything
- Work out your acquisition cost per order before concluding the marketplace fee is expensive
The last one is the whole exercise. A marketplace fee looks outrageous next to a gateway rate and reasonable next to what it actually costs to make a stranger want your product.
If you are weighing marketplace against own store and want the arithmetic done with your real numbers rather than a template, contact us.
References
[1] Amazon.ae, Selling fees and pricing. sell.amazon.ae
[2] Amazon.ae, Seller registration requirements. sell.amazon.ae
[3] noon, Fulfilled by Partner fee schedule. support.noon.partners
[4] noon, Fulfilled by noon fee schedule. support.noon.partners
[5] noon, Seller registration and account setup. helpcenter.noon.partners
[6] UAE Federal Tax Authority, VAT Guide: E-Commerce (VATGEC1), August 2020. tax.gov.ae
[7] The Official Portal of the UAE Government, E-commerce and digital marketplaces. u.ae
[8] UAE Federal Tax Authority, VAT registration. tax.gov.ae
