Sell a $19.99 T-shirt from Printful on your own Shopify store, with free shipping, and about $2.24 is left after the shirt, the postage and the card fee. Sell a $19.99 jigsaw puzzle that was made in bulk and shipped by Amazon, and our estimate leaves about $7.57. The puzzle needs about $948 up front to test; the shirt needs nothing. That trade, a small margin with no stock against a bigger one with stock, is the real choice between print on demand, dropshipping and private label. This page works through it with published prices, read on 10 November 2026.
What we have measured, and what we have not
Of the 18 businesses we research, 17 are private label and one makes its own product. None is a print-on-demand or dropshipping business. So the print-on-demand and dropshipping figures on this page are list prices from each company's own page, worked into what one sale would leave. They are not the results of a real business, and they leave out returns, ads and your time. The private-label figures come from a business we have researched, and they are estimates too.
The three models in brief
- Print on demand (POD). You upload a design. When a customer orders, a print company such as Printful or Printify prints it on a blank product and ships it. You hold no stock and choose from the printer's catalogue.
- Dropshipping. You list a product someone else already makes and stocks. When it sells, the supplier ships it to your customer. You hold no stock and do not change the product.
- Private label. You have a factory make your own product in bulk, store it, and ship it yourself or through a service like Amazon FBA. You pay for the stock first.
Print on demand is a kind of dropshipping: in both, someone else ships after the sale. The difference is that a POD product carries your design, so no one else sells exactly the same item.
Print on demand: what one T-shirt sale leaves
Prices from Printful and its shipping page, Printify's pricing page, Shopify's pricing page and Shopify's own card-fee guide (22 October 2026). The shirt sells for $19.99 with free shipping on a Shopify store using Shopify Payments.
| Printful | Printify | |
|---|---|---|
| Shirt | Bella+Canvas 3001, from $11.92, one print included | Unisex Jersey Short Sleeve Tee, $8.77 in its profit calculator |
| Shipping to the US, one shirt | $4.95 (+$2.20 each extra shirt) | Varies by print provider; not on the pricing page |
| Card fee (2.9% + 30¢) | $0.88 | $0.88 |
| Left from $19.99 | $2.24 | $10.34, before shipping |
Some details change the result:
- Holiday surcharge. Both companies add $0.40 to every US order from 15 October 2026 to 17 January 2027. That brings the Printful shirt down to $1.84.
- Printify's shipping. Its $8.77 excludes shipping, and its shipping page sends you to each print provider's own rates. We do not guess a figure, so the $10.34 has postage still to come out of it.
- Plans. Printful's free plan has no monthly fee; its Growth plan is $24.99 a month and free once you reach $12,000 a year in sales. Printify is free, or $39 a month for Premium ($24.99 billed yearly), which gives up to 20% off all products.
- The store. Shopify's Basic plan is $39 a month on monthly billing. Across 100 sales a month, that is $0.39 a sale.
- Extras. A second print costs $5.95 more at Printful, and a printed inside label $0.99.
Print on demand on Amazon: Merch on Demand
Amazon runs its own print-on-demand programme. Amazon prints, ships and handles customer service, and pays you a royalty. From its royalty page, a standard T-shirt at $19.99 in the US pays:
| Royalty group | Who qualifies | Royalty on a $19.99 shirt |
|---|---|---|
| Creator | Everyone | $2.44 |
| Plus (2x Creator) | At least 15% of unit sales from traffic you drive, and 10+ units a month | $4.88 |
| Premium (2.16x Creator) | At least 35% of unit sales from traffic you drive, and 10+ units a month | $5.27 |
The royalty is what is left after Amazon's costs, which its page lists as materials, production, fulfilment, customer service and returns. So there is nothing more to subtract, except any ads you pay for to drive that traffic. At a $15.99 price the Creator royalty falls to $0.96.
Dropshipping: what one sale leaves
On a $19.99 sale through Shopify Payments, $19.11 is left after the card fee. Out of that comes the supplier's price, the supplier's shipping, any app you use to connect the supplier, and your ads.
Unlike print on demand, there is no standard product with a published price to plug in. Every dropshipped product has its own supplier price and shipping cost, and we have no dropshipping business in our data to show which numbers are typical, so we do not invent one. What we can give you are the fixed costs from the companies' own pages:
- Shopify Basic: $39 a month on monthly billing, and 2.9% + 30¢ per card sale.
- Supplier apps: DSers has a free Basic plan and paid plans from $19.90 a month. Spocket starts at $39.99 a month.
The arithmetic is the same as for POD: whatever the supplier charges for the product and its delivery, less than $19.11 is left for ads and profit. If a supplier charges $14 delivered, $5.11 is left before ads. Dropshipping on Amazon is allowed only under Amazon's drop shipping policy, which makes you the seller of record and responsible for returns; we cover those rules in private label vs wholesale vs dropshipping on Amazon.
The third option: a private-label product from our data
White Mountain Puzzles sells 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles at $19.99, the same price as the shirts above, on Amazon and on its own store. Here is one Amazon sale, using the figures in our profile:
| Line | Per puzzle |
|---|---|
| Price | $19.99 |
| Amazon referral fee (15%, Toys and Games) | $3.00 |
| FBA fee, non-peak (holiday peak $6.37) | $6.02 |
| Puzzle landed in the US, our estimate | $3.40 |
| Left before ads | $7.57 ($7.22 in the holiday peak) |
The $3.40 is our cost model, not the company's own figure. It is $1.26 to make, averaged from three Alibaba suppliers' lowest prices, plus $2.14 of sea freight priced from the puzzle's carton size. White Mountain says it makes its puzzles in America, so its real cost may differ. Across all its channels and after ads, our profile puts it at about $7.61 left from an average $19.52 sale.
The catch is the money up front. Our estimate of a first test of a puzzle like this is $948: $680 for a 200-unit first order and $268 of launch ads. A new seller adds $790 to $2,420 of fixed costs for a selling plan, trademark, samples, photos and packaging. See how much Amazon FBA costs to start for the same figures across 15 businesses.
Print on demand vs dropshipping vs private label, side by side
| POD (Printful + Shopify) | POD (Amazon Merch) | Dropshipping (Shopify) | Private label (Amazon FBA) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $19.99 shirt | $19.99 shirt | $19.99 | $19.99 puzzle |
| Left per sale, before ads | $2.24 | $2.44 to $5.27 | $19.11 minus the supplier's price | $7.57 (estimate) |
| Stock up front | None | None | None | $948 to test, plus setup |
| Who ships | Printful | Amazon | The supplier | Amazon (FBA) |
| Can others sell the same item? | Not your design | Not your design | Yes | No |
| Measured in our data | No | No | No | Yes, 17 businesses |
What the margin means for ads
The margin per sale decides how much you can pay to win that sale. Divide the price by what is left and you get the return on ad spend at which ads only break even:
- Printful shirt: $19.99 / $2.24 = a ROAS of about 8.9. Every $1 of ads has to bring in about $8.90 of sales just to break even.
- Private-label puzzle: $19.99 / $7.57 = a ROAS of about 2.6.
That is why print on demand on your own store usually depends on traffic you do not pay for, such as an audience you already have or organic search, and why Amazon's Merch royalties rise for creators who bring their own traffic. Run your own numbers in the ROAS calculator.
Which one makes more per sale?
On these list prices, private label leaves the most per sale. Of the no-stock models, Merch on Demand's Creator royalty leaves slightly more than a Printful shirt on Shopify, but you set no part of the cost. Printify could leave more than Printful once you know your print provider's shipping, and dropshipping depends entirely on the supplier's price.
Making more per sale is not the same as being the better start. Print on demand and dropshipping cost almost nothing to try, so a design or product that does not sell costs you little. Private label costs about $948 or more to test in our data, and in return you own a product no one else sells. Of the 17 private-label businesses we have measured, estimated margins run from 21.1% to 58.7%; see is Amazon FBA still profitable. To check what Amazon's fees would leave on a product of your own, use the Amazon FBA calculator.