Allegro or your own store: when to sell in both channels

Do you sell on Allegro and are thinking about your own store, or the other way round? The question “Allegro or your own store” sounds like a choice between two options, but in practice it is about something else: how much you keep from a single order in each channel and how much it costs to bring in a customer.

I show how to calculate this on one product, when two channels at once make sense, and what is happening with the Allegro agreement with InPost. I describe the situation as of 26 October 2026, based on Allegro’s price list and announcements. This is not legal or tax advice, and before you decide, check the rates in your seller panel.

Allegro or your own store: how they differ

In short: on Allegro you pay on sales, and in your own store you pay for traffic before anyone buys anything.

What selling on Allegro costs in 2026

Listing an offer on Allegro is free, and the only basic fee is the commission on sales. The rate depends on the category and is quoted net, meaning VAT is added to it. Examples from Allegro’s fee description:

• Electronics: 2.5–8%,
• Home and garden: 4.5–11%,
• Automotive: 4.5–16%,
• Other and accessories: 13–17%.

Allegro calculates the commission on the price including the delivery cost. Every offer promotion adds an extra commission equal to 0.75 of the category rate. At a 10% rate, that is an extra 7.5 percentage points on the promoted sales, plus a fee for the promotion itself (PLN 19.90 for 10 days as standard).

Two changes from 2026 are worth knowing:

1. Maximum commission amounts. Since 2 March 2026, the commission in selected categories has an upper limit. Examples from Allegro’s announcement: pressure washers and air conditioners 4.5% net, but no more than PLN 250 net; winter sports 8.5%, no more than PLN 140 net. In addition, from 1 September 2026 to 31 March 2027, in selected categories of the Sport and Tourism department, the commission on products costing more than PLN 1,500 does not exceed PLN 147.60 gross.
2. Smart! fees that depend on order value. Since 2 March 2026, the seller contributes to Smart! delivery an amount that depends on the order value and the delivery method. A buyer who activated Smart! from that day gets free delivery from PLN 49.90 at a single seller (for earlier activations, from PLN 45 to lockers and pickup points, and from PLN 65 by courier).

An excerpt of the table for business accounts from Allegro’s help center on Smart!:

Allegro’s help center doesn’t say whether these are net or gross amounts. A courier costs more: from PLN 1.79 to PLN 11.29 in Allegro Delivery. Advertising comes on top of that. In Allegro Ads, the minimum cost-per-click rates in the results list went up on 16 February 2026, for example in Electronics from PLN 0.65 to PLN 0.75.

The easiest way to work this out is the fee and commission calculator in Allegro Sales Center. Since 1 September 2026 it takes into account the delivery method and delivery costs below the Smart! threshold, and it also lets you calculate the margin on an offer.

What an order costs in your own store

There is no sales commission in your own store, but there are other costs:

• store: a platform subscription, or hosting and technical maintenance,
• payments: the operator’s commission on every transaction (I compared the operators in the guide on payment gateways for a store),
• shipping: your own contract with InPost or a courier, without Allegro surcharges,
• traffic: Google ads, SEO, social media, newsletter.

The last item decides everything, because you have to bring customers to the store. That is why I calculate the cost of acquiring an order: monthly ad spend divided by the number of orders from those ads.

Calculate the margin on one product

Take the product you sell most often and calculate it in both channels. The price, commission rate and ad costs below are examples, and the Smart! surcharge comes from Allegro’s table.

Assumptions: the customer pays PLN 200, the commission rate in the category is 10% net, and you ship through Allegro Delivery lockers under Smart!.

On Allegro you give up the following from one order:

• the commission: 10% of PLN 200, i.e. PLN 20 net,
• the Smart! surcharge for an order of PLN 150 or more: PLN 7.99,
• about PLN 28 in total, before any ads or promotions.

In your own store, that PLN 28 is your budget for payment, shipping and acquiring the customer. If payment and shipping eat half of it, about PLN 14 per order is left for advertising. Now work out the advertising: if a click costs PLN 1 and every fiftieth visitor buys, an order from ads costs PLN 50. In that setup, Allegro comes out clearly cheaper.

The math flips in three situations:

1. The customer comes back. A second and third order from a newsletter or a browser bookmark costs no advertising, while on Allegro you pay the commission again on each one.
2. You have traffic you don’t pay per click for. Free Google results, including free product listings from Merchant Center, your business profile, referrals, a brick-and-mortar store.
3. The product is expensive and the category has no commission cap. At a 10% rate and a price of PLN 3,000, the commission is PLN 300 net on a single order. That is an amount for which, in many industries, you can buy quite a lot of clicks.

When selling in both channels pays off

Two channels at once make sense when you meet most of these conditions:

• your margin can absorb the commission in your category, along with the Smart! surcharge and advertising,
• you have products customers come back for, for example consumables, cosmetics, pet food, parts,
• stock levels update automatically in both places, so you won’t sell the same item twice,
• you have the time or a person to handle orders, returns and questions from two sources.

The simplest approach is to split the roles: Allegro brings in new customers and sells products searched for by name and model, while your own store serves returning customers, bundles and the full range.

It is better to stay with one channel when you don’t meet these conditions or mainly sell services. Since 2 March 2026, for example, online courses and repair-shop services can be listed on Allegro only as paid classified ads, not as sales offers.

Allegro and InPost: the situation as of 26 October 2026

On 18 June 2026, Allegro and InPost signed a non-binding letter of intent. According to Allegro’s current report No. 16/2026, the parties want to negotiate a new framework agreement for deliveries to lockers and pickup points, with lower delivery prices and a new price indexation formula, valid until 31 December 2031. For the duration of the talks, the parties suspended the arbitration proceedings.

On 17 September 2026, Allegro’s CEO said at a press conference that negotiations were ongoing. As of 25 October 2026, Allegro had not published a current report on the signing of a new agreement.

What this means for you:

• Allegro Paczkomaty InPost work on Allegro as before, but under Smart! the surcharge for them is higher than for Allegro Delivery lockers (see the table above).
• In your own store, your contract with InPost is separate, and Allegro’s talks don’t change it.

Don’t count on reductions in your budget until Allegro publishes a new fee table. Allegro announces price list changes in advance (it announced the ones from 2 March 2026 on 28 January), and I found no announcements of changes to commissions or Smart! surcharges for November and December 2026.

How to run two channels without chaos

1. One product database. You keep products, prices and stock levels in the store, and they reach Allegro through an integration. Orders from Allegro land in the same panel.
2. Deliberate prices in each channel. You can raise the price on Allegro by the cost of the commission, or leave it the same and treat the commission as a customer acquisition cost.
3. Fair boundaries. Allegro moderators write that encouraging buyers to purchase outside the platform breaches the terms and conditions, so don’t put flyers with a code for your store into Allegro parcels. Win customers for your store in Google, on social media and in your newsletter.
4. A shared promotions calendar. Before 11.11 and Black Friday (27 November), decide in advance which product you promote in which channel.
5. A report once a month. For each channel: revenue, selling costs, cost of acquiring an order and the share of returning customers.

Summary

Selling in both channels pays off when your margin can absorb the commission, customers come back and stock levels synchronize on their own.

If you want to work this out on your own products, write to me. I build online stores from PLN 5,900 net, I do the Allegro integration from PLN 1,490 net, and online payments in the store are already included in the price. I reply within 24 hours.