noon and Amazon vs your own store: the real cost of renting demand

Within a year of launching, every Gulf brand hits the same fork: list on noon and Amazon, where the demand already sits, or pay to bring that demand to a store you own. The usual answer, own your audience, is a slogan rather than a number. So here are the published fee schedules of both marketplaces as they stand in 2026, the real cost stack of your own checkout, and the one asset no fee table prices.

Where Gulf demand actually sits

GCC ecommerce was worth roughly USD 584.8 billion in 2025 on IMARC's sizing. Read that as an order of magnitude rather than a budget line, because definitions of ecommerce vary widely between research houses. What is not in doubt is how concentrated the shelf is. Amazon runs amazon.ae and amazon.sa. noon, the regional challenger, posted sales of USD 1,874 million in 2025 according to ECDB, up 25 to 30% on the year before, with 52% of that generated in Saudi Arabia.

Concentration is the appeal and the trap at the same time. A listing drops your product in front of buyers who are already in a buying session, with a payment method saved and a delivery promise you did not have to build. You rent all of that by the order, forever, and the rent is published. Our GCC ecommerce report covers the demand side country by country. This one is about what reaches your bank account.

amazon.ae and amazon.sa: the published numbers

Amazon publishes its Gulf fee schedules in full, which makes them easy to model. Both marketplaces currently waive the professional selling plan subscription, described on each pricing page as a limited time offer, so the cost falls per order rather than per month.

Amazon.sa also runs a new seller programme that is worth reading as a modelling warning rather than a discount: a 30% reduction on referral fees across all categories for the first 60 days of selling, applicable on up to SAR 150,000 of sales, valid until 31 December 2026. Incentives are front loaded. Build the P&L on the standing rate card, because that is the rate you will be paying in month four.

noon: the same model, with a steeper ceiling

noon's structure mirrors Amazon's. A category referral fee, a per unit outbound fee under Fulfilled by noon that is calculated from the item's dimensions, shipping weight and sale price, and a monthly storage fee per cubic foot. There is no monthly subscription, and noon's Saudi schedule applies a minimum referral fee of SAR 1 on every item sold.

The ceiling is what founders underestimate. On noon's UAE schedule, apparel and footwear carry a 27% referral fee. Fragrance sits at 15%, and colour cosmetics is charged at 15% for generic brands and 10% for everyone else. Watches are tiered, 15% on the portion of the sale price up to SAR 5,000 and 5% above it. Long term storage in Saudi Arabia is charged at SAR 25 per cubic foot. Both rate cards are quoted before VAT.

The referral fee is not the fee

The rate card is the floor, not the total. Marketplace Pulse, which builds its estimates from a sample of seller P&Ls, puts the typical Amazon seller at a 15% referral fee, 20 to 35% in fulfilment and storage, and up to 15% on advertising, concluding that Amazon collects more than 50% of seller revenue, up from 40% five years ago. That sample is US heavy and the Gulf ad auction is cheaper, so treat the top of the range as a warning rather than a forecast. The mechanism is identical in Dubai and Riyadh: sponsored placements stop being optional the moment your category fills up, and the fee nobody planned for is the one that moves.

Put rough numbers on a single AED 200 apparel order sold through FBA in the UAE. This is an illustration, not a benchmark.

• Referral fee at 15%: AED 30.
• Fulfilment: AED 14, inside the published AED 7.2 to 21.5 band for a standard parcel.
• Sponsored products at 10% of sales: AED 20.

That is AED 64 on a AED 200 order, 32% gone before you pay for the product itself, before returns and before VAT. The same calculation on noon fashion starts from a 27% referral fee instead of 15%, and every point of it comes out of the same gross margin.

The cost stack on your own checkout

Now the other side, with prices that are equally public. Shopify's Basic plan, as priced for UAE merchants, is USD 32 per month billed monthly, or USD 24 per month on annual billing, and adds a 2% fee if you use a third party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments. Stripe charges 2.9% plus AED 1.00 per successful transaction in the UAE, with 1% more on international cards and another 1% when currency conversion is required. In Saudi Arabia, Salla and Zid change the platform arithmetic, which our platform comparison covers in detail.

On the same AED 200 order, card processing costs AED 6.80, about 3.4%, and the platform fee is a fixed monthly cost that becomes rounding at any serious volume. Against 32% on the marketplace, that looks like an easy win. It is not, because two lines are missing: delivery, which you now run yourself, and acquisition, which the marketplace was providing. Our logistics playbook prices the first, and if a slice of your orders is cash on delivery, our COD report prices the refusals.

The difference that matters is not the size of the two numbers, it is their shape. A marketplace fee is a variable tax on every order you will ever ship, including the tenth order from the same loyal customer. Acquisition spend on your own store is an investment that pays back only if you keep that customer, and pays back several times over if you do.

The line no rate card shows: the customer

Amazon's acceptable use policy is explicit. Sellers may not use personally identifiable information about customers for any purpose other than merchant fulfilled shipping or legal and tax requirements, and may not target Amazon customers for product marketing using data retrieved through its APIs. Marketplace buyers are the marketplace's buyers. You can win them again and again, but you pay the referral fee every time, and you cannot email them, message them or build a lookalike audience from them.

How to decide, per SKU and per market

Then three tests before any listing goes live. First, margin: if contribution margin after product cost, delivery and returns is thinner than the category referral fee plus a realistic ad load, the listing loses money on every order and volume only makes it worse. Second, control: you will not set your own delivery promise, your own refund rules or, in practice, your own price. Third, concentration: decide in advance what share of revenue you are willing to source from a channel whose rate card is revised on its owner's timetable, not yours. If you are building in Saudi Arabia, our operator's guide covers registration, payments and logistics on the DTC route.

Why most agencies never run this calculation

Ask an agency paid a percentage of ad spend whether you should push volume through a marketplace or build your own store, then notice what the answer is worth to them. Their fee grows with the budget either way, and nothing in their contract changes if 32% of every order disappears into referral and fulfilment fees. A fixed retainer is no better aligned. It arrives in full in the month your marketplace margin went negative, and a 30 day notice clause means the relationship can end before the year's honest numbers are visible. Where your demand comes from, and who owns the customer afterwards, is the most consequential line in a Gulf ecommerce P&L, and the standard agency contract is indifferent to it.

BIMO is paid a share of the profit plus a minority equity stake, set after an audit. That makes channel mix our problem too, because a brand that rents all of its demand has no profit to share and no equity worth holding. Across 16 brands we own and 36 client brands, that is the calculation we run before anything gets listed. The Growth Partner programme is built on it, and the Saudi version covers the market where marketplace gravity is strongest.

Questions founders ask us

How much does noon charge sellers?

noon charges a category referral fee with a minimum of SAR 1 per item in Saudi Arabia, plus a per unit outbound fee and monthly storage under Fulfilled by noon. Published rates reach 27% on apparel and footwear in the UAE and 15% on fragrance, and there is no monthly subscription.

What are Amazon.sa seller fees in 2026?

Referral fees run 5 to 15% by category with a minimum of SAR 1, FBA fulfilment on a standard parcel runs SAR 7.2 to 19, and storage is SAR 3 per cubic foot per month. The professional plan subscription is currently waived, and new sellers get a 30% referral reduction for 60 days on up to SAR 150,000 of sales, valid until 31 December 2026.

Is it cheaper to sell on my own store?

On fees alone, usually yes. Card processing at 2.9% plus AED 1.00 compares with roughly 32% in our illustrative marketplace example. But your store pays for acquisition and delivery, which the marketplace was providing, so the comparison is decided by repeat purchase rather than by the fee line.

Can I email customers who bought from me on Amazon?

No. Amazon's acceptable use policy limits the use of customer personal data to merchant fulfilled shipping and legal or tax requirements, and prohibits targeting Amazon customers for product marketing with data retrieved through its APIs. The customer file stays with the marketplace.

Should a new Gulf brand launch on a marketplace or DTC?

Follow the category. Searched, comparison driven products with low referral fees can start on a marketplace to buy trial. Beauty, fragrance and fashion, where referral fees reach 27% and repeat purchase is the model, should start on a store you own and use marketplaces as a trial channel with a narrow SKU list.