Selling on Walmart vs Amazon: Which Marketplace Wins for Ecommerce Sellers in 2025?

Selling on Walmart vs Amazon is one of the biggest decisions new e-commerce sellers face in 2025. Both platforms offer a lot of opportunities, but the differences in cost, competition, and visibility can shape whether your business fails or succeeds.

Amazon remains the largest e-commerce platform on the planet, with more than 310 million active customers and billions of monthly visits. But that reach comes at a price. Extreme competition, higher fees, and ad costs that can destroy your margins. Walmart, on the other hand, is a smaller marketplace with much less competition. Its 200,000 marketplace sellers share a growing audience of 120–400 million monthly visitors, with lower selling costs and easier visibility for new products.

In this post, I’ll compare both marketplaces head-to-head, from fees and fulfillment to advertising and brand tools. If you’re just getting started with e-commerce or thinking about expanding your business, this guide will give you the clarity to pick the platform that matches your goals.

Walmart Marketplace vs Amazon: A Quick Overview

Before we dive into the specifics, let’s take a look at the big picture. Amazon and Walmart Marketplace each come with their own strengths and weaknesses, and the table below highlights what I think are the most important differences for e-commerce sellers in 2025.

We’ll cover a lot of these topics in more detail, but for now, this quick comparison will give you a sense of where each platform stands when it comes to customer reach, competition, costs, fulfillment, and brand control.

I think the short summary here is that Amazon clearly remains the #1 destination for online shoppers in 2025. This means access to the most traffic, but also the most competition and generally higher costs. Walmart is more affordable and less crowded, though its tools and audience are smaller. As you read on, you’ll see how these differences play out in fees, fulfillment, advertising, and long-term strategy.

Customer Reach and Traffic: Which Platform Has the Shoppers?

With more than 310 million active customers worldwide and roughly 220 million Prime members, Amazon dominates online shopping in both scale and customer loyalty. U.S. traffic alone is staggering, averaging 2.8 billion monthly visits in 2025. More than half of American shoppers start their product searches on Amazon, which shows how ingrained it is as the default online shopping destination. Prime members, in particular, spend more than double what non-members do, giving sellers access to a highly engaged audience.

Unfortunately, access to tens of millions of shoppers comes at a tradeoff. Amazon’s 1.9 million active sellers compete across millions of listings, so visibility per seller is limited. On average, each seller has access to just under 3,000 monthly visits, which means new sellers often need to spend heavily on ads just to get noticed. We’ll discuss advertising in more detail later, but in my opinion, launching a new Amazon business in 2025 without an ad budget is a recipe for failure. The platform is simply too competitive.

Walmart, while much smaller in online traffic, is growing quickly. Walmart.com attracts between 120 and 400 million visits each month, and its 59 million Walmart+ members show that the platform is building customer loyalty. Walmart’s strength lies in its hybrid model: with over 4,600 U.S. stores, customers can shop online and pick up in person. That convenience helps drive a lot of traffic, especially in categories like groceries and household essentials.

While the raw number of site visits is far fewer than Amazon’s, on a per-seller basis, Walmart provides significantly more traffic, often giving new listings a chance to rank without big ad budgets.

Competition: Is It Easier to Stand Out on Walmart or Amazon?

Amazon is the largest e-commerce platform in the world. With that said, it should be no surprise that the platform is extremely competitive. As of 2025, there are currently 1.9 million active sellers on Amazon, which is almost 10 times more than on Walmart Marketplace. With every major category being highly saturated, gaining a foothold as a new seller can be very tough. Established sellers hold strong positions, and data shows that only about 20% of new Amazon sellers end up profitable long-term.

To get an idea of the drastic difference in competition, I searched for “hiking backpack” on both Amazon and Walmart. In each case, I used the same address and used the same shipping settings. The search on Walmart led to just over 1000 results; this same search on Amazon resulted in over 60,000 results.

This is one of the main reasons that so many sellers have started considering Walmart as a possible alternative to Amazon. With roughly 200,000 active sellers, it’s far less crowded than Amazon. Walmart has said it doesn’t plan to open the gates to millions of sellers, and that quality-over-quantity approach means there’s still plenty of room in many categories. Walmart’s stricter application process also filters out low-quality entrants, creating a more curated environment. And while competition is rising, especially from international sellers, the overall marketplace still feels approachable compared to Amazon’s crowded arena.

If you’re just starting out, Amazon provides the biggest audience but also the most competition. Walmart may not have the same traffic, but with far fewer competitors, it becomes a much easier platform to get a foothold in.

Selling Costs and Fees on Walmart vs Amazon

One of the most important questions I get asked by sellers deciding between selling on Walmart vs Amazon is “which one is cheaper?” The answer is that selling on Amazon comes with higher startup costs. In order to get the most out of Amazon, you’ll need a Professional Seller Plan, which costs $39.99 per month. You’ll also need to factor in referral fees, which tend to average between 8-15% for most products. If you’re using FBA, you also need to factor in the monthly storage fees and the cost of fulfilling your orders.

These are the most important considerations, but there are also other fees and charges to consider, like long-term storage penalties, a low-inventory fee, refunds, etc. For a more in-depth look at Amazon fees, check out our guide, How Much Are Amazon Seller Fees in 2025?

Walmart, by contrast, charges no monthly subscription fee. That alone makes it attractive for sellers working with a smaller startup budget. Referral fees are usually 6% to 20%, often a couple of points lower than Amazon’s in equivalent categories. Walmart has also been running promotions like fee discounts for new sellers, which can make the first year even more cost-efficient. Operational software costs also tend to be lower, partly because Walmart’s smaller marketplace doesn’t require the same level of complex automation tools. And unlike Amazon, Walmart gives sellers more control over returns, including the ability to set restocking fees.

The bottom line is that Walmart generally provides a lower cost of entry. Sellers can get started with less overhead and potentially keep a larger share of revenue per sale. Amazon, while offering higher sales volume, requires a higher startup budget.

Fulfillment and Shipping: Amazon FBA vs Walmart WFS

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) has been the backbone of e-commerce for nearly two decades. Sellers send inventory into Amazon’s network of 100+ U.S. fulfillment centers, and Amazon handles storage, shipping, customer service, and returns. The biggest advantage is Prime eligibility, which gives products the Prime badge and guarantees 1-2 day shipping speeds. This has several advantages for sellers, including higher conversion rates, easier buy-box wins, and a much lighter workload.

Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS) is Walmart’s version of FBA. The process is very similar to Amazon. Once accepted into the program, Walmart stores your products in its U.S. fulfillment centers and ships orders with the Two-Day delivery tag. Unlike Amazon, this speed is available to all U.S. customers, not just members. Walmart also leverages its 4,600+ stores for convenient in-store pickup and returns, giving it a hybrid advantage.

One major difference between FBA and WFS is how they handle inventory and branding. Amazon ships everything in Amazon-branded boxes, which limits a seller’s ability to build their own brand experience. WFS, on the other hand, ships in neutral packaging, allowing sellers to use inserts or focus on brand identity. Policies are also more forgiving: Walmart offers simpler storage limits, restocking fee options, and more flexibility on returns.

Advertising Tools: What Each Platform Offers to Boost Sales

When it comes to building an e-commerce business in 2025, advertising is simply part of the game. Amazon and Walmart both have dedicated ad platforms, but there are some key differences to keep in mind.

Amazon’s ad platform has been around since 2012 and has had many improvements over the years. It includes several campaign types like Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display Ads. Sellers can target keywords, products, or audiences, and use advanced tools like Amazon DSP to extend ads beyond Amazon itself. It offers in-depth reporting and a very detailed dashboard that makes it easy to manage and optimize your campaigns.

With Amazon being the largest e-commerce platform in the world, the reach is enormous, but so are the costs. CPCs can run several dollars per click in competitive categories, and most sellers end up spending 20–30% of their revenue on advertising. Ad auctions are extremely competitive, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s very easy to burn through your budget.

Walmart Connect, Walmart’s ad program, is relatively new, only truly launching in 2021, but it’s catching up fast. Sponsored Search Ads are the main format, appearing in search results, categories, and product pages. The platform also supports display ads and just recently launched its own version of Sponsored Brand ads. The platform doesn’t currently have the level of reporting and tools available on Amazon, but it is clear that Walmart is investing heavily to expand its capabilities.

The main reason to be excited for Walmart ads is that the costs are far lower than Amazon. From my own experience, CPCs are often 50-60% cheaper than Amazon, and ad spend averages around 10-20% of total revenue. This is largely due to lower competition. Not only does Walmart have far fewer sellers than Amazon, but the fraction of Walmart sellers that invest in advertising is also lower than on Amazon. This means that you can run very successful campaigns without a huge budget, something that is largely impossible on Amazon in 2025.

It’s also worth noting that Walmart offers sellers the ability to advertise their online products across their physical locations and kiosks. This is not something I’ve personally experimented with, but it could give your brand an omnichannel presence.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Final Verdict: Should You Sell on Amazon or Walmart in 2025?

When all is said and done, Amazon and Walmart each offer serious opportunities for the right kind of seller. If you want access to the largest customer base in the world and you have the budget to manage higher fees and ad costs, Amazon’s tools and Prime infrastructure make it hard to beat. On the other hand, if you want lower startup costs, less competition, and cheaper ad prices, Walmart might be a great choice for your business.

I often tell sellers that if you’re still figuring things out, start with Amazon. Despite its higher fees and intense competition, it remains the largest e-commerce platform in the world. It is the first place most online shoppers look when searching for a product, and it has a built-in audience that is simply impossible to beat.

If you’re already an established e-commerce seller, Walmart is definitely worth considering. In recent years, their platform has continued to grow, and they are constantly launching new programs that make it easier to grow and manage your business.

The truth is that no one platform is universally “the best.” The right choice depends on your product type, capital, business experience, and long-term goals. The best path for many is to master one, then grow into the other.