Shopee and Lazada Fees Explained: How Much You Really Pay — and How to Stay Profitable

Most brands that sell on Shopee or Lazada in Thailand believe they know their margin. They look at their revenue, subtract the cost of goods, and feel reasonably confident about the number.

Then I sit down with them and open their seller dashboard together. And the number changes, sometimes dramatically.

The reason is simple: Shopee and Lazada charge sellers in more ways than most people realise. Some fees are visible. Many are not. And the ones that are hardest to see are often the most expensive.

This article explains every fee category you will encounter as a seller on Shopee or Lazada in Thailand, and how to calculate your real margin per order.

The Fees Most Sellers Know About

Platform Commission

Both Shopee and Lazada charge a commission on every completed sale. This is calculated as a percentage of the selling price and varies by product category. Rates change regularly as both platforms have increased fees multiple times since 2022.

As of May 2026, Lazada marketplace sellers pay between 5% and 8% depending on category. LazMall sellers pay between 6% and 10%. Shopee non-mall sellers pay approximately 5.35% for most categories including fashion, FMCG and lifestyle products. Always check your current rate in your Seller Centre dashboard as these figures are updated regularly.

These commission rates are the fee most sellers account for. They are not the only fee.

Payment Gateway Fee

On top of platform commission, both Shopee and Lazada charge a payment processing fee on every completed transaction. This fee applies regardless of which payment method the buyer uses. Check your current rate in Seller Centre as this varies by platform and has been subject to recent updates.

So before you account for any marketing costs, you are already paying a meaningful percentage of revenue in platform fees on every order.

The Fees That Surprise Most Sellers

Free Shipping: Paid by You, Not the Platform

This is the one that catches almost every brand I work with.

When you enable free shipping on your Shopee or Lazada store, you are not getting free shipping from the platform. You are subsidising the shipping cost yourself, and in most cases this comes in the form of an additional commission charge on every order.

Most sellers enable free shipping because the platform recommends it, because competitors offer it, or because it improves conversion rate, which it does. But they do not realise they are paying for it out of their margin on every single order.

Platform Vouchers and Coupons

Every time a buyer uses a platform voucher on your product, whether a Shopee coin cashback, a Lazada voucher, or a category discount, that cost is deducted from your payout.

The platform does not fund these vouchers. You do.

This is the detail that generates the biggest reaction when I show it to brands for the first time. They see a promotion running, they see orders coming in, and they assume it is working. When we export the actual payout data and calculate real revenue per order after voucher deductions, the number is often 15 to 25% lower than what they assumed.

Platform Promotions and Flash Sales

When you join a platform promotion such as an 11.11 campaign or a flash sale, you are typically required to offer a discount. On Lazada's LazFlash program, your campaign price must be lower than your lowest price in the previous 90 days.

If you join every promotion the platform recommends without checking your margin first, you can end up selling at a price that covers your cost of goods but leaves almost nothing after platform fees.

Affiliate Commissions

If you have enabled affiliate marketing on Shopee or Lazada, meaning influencers and content creators can promote your products in exchange for a commission, that commission comes out of your revenue on every sale they generate.

On Shopee, the base affiliate commission is set by the platform and ranges from approximately 4% to 13% depending on product category. Sellers can choose to add an additional seller commission on top of this, to attract more affiliates. On Lazada, the minimum affiliate commission starts from around 4% depending on category, with sellers able to offer more to attract higher-follower creators.

The total affiliate cost per order depends on what commission rate you have set and how many of your orders are coming through affiliate links. This is why it is important to track which of your sales are affiliate-driven and calculate what that channel is actually costing you per order.

Advertising Costs

If you are running paid ads through Shopee Ads or Lazada Sponsored Solutions, your ad spend is charged separately from all the fees above. You pay per click, regardless of whether the click converts to a sale. A campaign with a low ROAS means your ad cost per order is high, which further reduces your real margin.

What Your Real Margin Per Order Looks Like

Here is a simple example using approximate figures for a product sold at 500 THB on Lazada as a local seller in a standard category. The commission rate used is 6% as an illustrative figure for May 2026.

Now add advertising. If you spent 50 THB in Sponsored Solutions to generate that order:

That may still look reasonable in this example. But many sellers are in categories with higher commission rates, have enabled more aggressive vouchers, and are running less efficient ad campaigns. In those cases effective margin can drop below 15% or into single digits.

The only way to know your real number is to calculate it using the actual figures from your seller dashboard, not estimates.

How to Calculate Your Real Margin

Export your sales data from Seller Centre. For each order you need the selling price, the actual payout amount after all platform deductions, and your cost of goods.

Real margin per order = (Payout minus Cost of Goods) divided by Selling Price, multiplied by 100

Do this for your top ten products. The results will tell you which products are genuinely profitable and which ones are generating volume at the expense of margin.

Three Decisions That Protect Your Margin

Choose Promotions Deliberately

Not every platform promotion is worth joining. Before you register for any campaign, calculate your margin at the required discount level. If you cannot be profitable at that price, do not join.

Set Voucher Minimums Strategically

If you offer vouchers, set a minimum spend threshold that pushes buyers to add more items to their cart rather than simply discounting a single-item order. A voucher with a minimum spend of 10% above your average order value increases basket size without simply giving away margin.

Review Your Free Shipping Settings by Product

Free shipping makes sense for high-margin products where the additional commission is absorbed comfortably. For low-margin products, free shipping can turn a marginal order into a loss. Review which products have free shipping enabled and whether each one can actually support it.

The Honest Summary

Shopee and Lazada are excellent marketplaces with real revenue potential for brands in Thailand. But they are not free to sell on, and the total cost of selling is significantly higher than the platform commission alone.

The brands that grow profitably on these platforms are the ones who know their real numbers and make every promotion, voucher, and advertising decision based on data rather than platform recommendations.

If you want help calculating your real margin per order and identifying where your store is leaking profit, iBoost Online offers ecommerce store audits that do exactly this.

You can also learn to do this yourself through the iBoost Online 10-hour ecommerce data and planning course.