Amazon.com, Inc. vs Etsy, Inc.: Strategic Comparison

This in-depth comparison examines Amazon.com, Inc. and Etsy, Inc. across revenue, market value, business model, competitive positioning, and long-term growth strategy. Whether you are researching Amazon.com, Inc. on its own, evaluating Etsy, Inc., or weighing the two companies side by side, the breakdown below highlights where each company leads and where the gap between Amazon.com, Inc. and Etsy, Inc. is widest.

On the headline numbers, annual revenue is $716.9B (FY2025) for Amazon.com, Inc. and $2.9B (FY2025) for Etsy, Inc., while their respective market capitalizations stand at $2.69T and $6.7B. Both Amazon.com, Inc. and Etsy, Inc. are headquartered in United States. Their local markets and applicable rules may still differ.

Amazon.com, Inc.: Amazon started as an online bookstore in 1994 and now runs four businesses of real scale: the world's largest e-commerce marketplace, a logistics network that carries most of its own parcels, AWS, and a $68.6B advertising operation. It also owns Whole Foods Market, Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, One Medical, and Amazon Leo, its low Earth orbit satellite network. The company reads more like infrastructure than retail: other businesses run on AWS, sell through its marketplace, ship through its fulfillment network, and buy its ads. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. The legendary "everything store" notoriously began in a small garage in Bellevue, Washington as a simple online bookseller before aggressively expanding into retail, cloud computing, and global logistics.

Etsy, Inc.: Etsy is a Brooklyn-based online marketplace for handmade, vintage and craft goods. It hosts millions of independent artisans and crafters who sell items such as custom-knit sweaters, personalized jewelry and vintage furniture. Its positioning is the opposite of mass-produced goods sold on large general marketplaces. The company is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York.

Amazon.com, Inc. and Etsy, Inc. pursue distinct approaches to generating revenue, and understanding how each company operates is the foundation of any fair comparison between Amazon.com, Inc. and Etsy, Inc..

Amazon.com, Inc. business model: Amazon runs a hybrid model: it buys inventory and sells it directly, and it rents its store, warehouses, and ad inventory to independent sellers. In FY2025 online stores produced $269.3B of net sales, third-party seller services $172.2B, advertising services $68.6B, subscription services $49.6B, physical stores $22.6B, and AWS $128.7B. Marketplace referral commissions typically run in the mid-teens as a share of the sale price, and sellers pay separately for Fulfillment by Amazon and for advertising placement. Retail earns thin margins but collects cash from customers before it pays suppliers, which funds expansion without borrowing. Profit sits in AWS, which turned $128.7B of net sales into $45.6B of operating income, and in advertising, where Amazon charges for placement against shopping queries.

Etsy, Inc. business model: Etsy operates a pure B2C and C2C two-sided marketplace model. They do not own warehouses or delivery trucks. They simply provide the software platform connecting buyers and sellers. The core revenue engine relies entirely on 'Take Rates'. The seller pays a fee just to list an item, and then Etsy takes a large cut (often over 6.5%) of the final sale price, plus payment processing fees. They also generate large, high-margin revenue through 'Etsy Ads', where sellers pay extra money to have their handmade products pushed to the top of the large search results.

The durability of a company's moat often decides long-term winners. Here is how the competitive advantages of Amazon.com, Inc. stack up against those of Etsy, Inc..

Amazon.com, Inc. competitive advantage: Amazon's advantages depend on scale rather than patents. It carried $534.1B of gross property and equipment at the end of FY2025, including $155.1B of land and buildings and $172.5B of servers and networking equipment, which pays for delivery speed and cloud capacity smaller rivals cannot fund. Prime, priced at $139 a year in the US, changes buying behavior by making each additional order feel free once the fee is paid, and Amazon delivered more than 13 billion items same day or next day in 2025. AWS holds the largest share of global cloud infrastructure spending, about 28% in the fourth quarter of 2025 according to Synergy Research, and customers face real migration cost once applications are built on AWS-specific services. Advertising is the hardest piece to copy, because the ads run against queries from shoppers who are already at the checkout.

Etsy, Inc. competitive advantage: Etsy's advantage is a recognizable brand and a two-sided network. Buyers come because the handmade and vintage sellers are there, and sellers list because the buyers are there. A new competitor would start with neither side, which makes the handmade category hard to enter.

Future prospects matter as much as current results. The growth strategies below explain how Amazon.com, Inc. and Etsy, Inc. each plan to expand from here.

Amazon.com, Inc. growth strategy: Amazon's growth now comes mostly from the higher-margin layers on top of its infrastructure. Advertising services grew from $56.2B in FY2024 to $68.6B in FY2025 as Amazon added inventory in Prime Video, grocery, and its demand-side platform. In AWS the company is spending on its own silicon and capacity: the Project Rainier cluster of roughly 500,000 Trainium2 chips, built with Anthropic, became fully operational in October 2025, and Amazon had put $8.0B into Anthropic convertible notes by the end of 2025. Retail growth is being pushed through grocery, pharmacy, and same-day delivery rather than new categories, and Amazon Leo, the satellite network previously called Project Kuiper, is being aimed at commercial connectivity contracts.

Etsy, Inc. growth strategy: With growth in its core market flat, Etsy is concentrating on search and on removing mass-produced goods. It has more than 100 million unique items, which makes searching hard, so it is investing in AI to improve search relevance. It is also removing sellers of cheap mass-produced items, often dropshipped from China and presented as handmade, to protect the brand's reputation for genuine handmade goods.

A closer look at the financial trajectory of Amazon.com, Inc. and Etsy, Inc. rounds out the comparison.

Amazon.com, Inc.: Amazon's headline revenue understates how concentrated its profit is. FY2025 net sales were $716.9B and operating income was $80.0B, of which AWS supplied $45.6B on $128.7B of sales. The North America segment turned $426.3B of sales into $29.6B of operating income, and International turned $161.9B into $4.8B. Advertising services, which Amazon reports inside the retail segments, grew from $56.2B in FY2024 to $68.6B in FY2025. Operating cash flow was $139.5B; $128.3B of net cash capital expenditures left $11.2B of free cash flow, down from $38.2B a year earlier. Amazon says most technology-infrastructure spending supports AWS, while fulfillment capacity also requires investment. See its FY2025 Form 10-K for the segment and cash-flow reconciliations.

Etsy, Inc.: Etsy earns money from fees on a marketplace it does not stock, so gross margin stays near 72% (FY2025 gross profit was $2.07B on $2.88B of revenue). The pandemic pulled demand forward: GMS more than doubled to $10.3B in 2020, then consolidated GMS declined from $13.3B in 2022 to $11.9B in 2025. Revenue held up only because the take rate rose from 22.3% to 24.2% as sellers paid more for advertising and payments. FY2025 net income fell 46.3% to $163.0M as operating expenses rose 8.8%. In 2026 the picture improved: Q2 revenue was $668M, adjusted EBITDA was $195M (a 29.2% margin), and Etsy guided to mid-single-digit full-year GMS growth. Etsy, Inc. is a major American e-commerce company focused on handmade and vintage items, maintaining a market valuation generally exceeding $7 billion.