What event photo platforms really take from your sales

You sell a race photo for $7.99. How much of it reaches you?

On one well-known race marketplace, by its own example, it's $5.00. FlashFrame's page for photographers works it through: a $7.99 base price, netting you $5.00, after a 31% commission and the card processor's fee.

That isn't a scandal. A marketplace processes the card, delivers the file, runs the servers and sometimes brings you the buyers, and the commission pays for all of that. The real question is whether that price still makes sense as your sales grow, because a percentage grows with you and a flat fee doesn't.

This piece lays out what the main event, sports and school platforms charge, works the numbers at three sales levels, and is honest about when a commission is the better deal.

Disclosure: we make sellphotos.online, one of the platforms in the tables below. Every other number links to the vendor's own page.

Three ways platforms charge

Almost every photo-selling platform uses one of three models.

1. Commission on every sale. No monthly fee, but the platform keeps a percentage of each order, and usually passes on card fees too.
2. A plan plus a commission. A monthly or yearly fee, and a smaller percentage on top.
3. A flat plan, 0% commission. You pay a fixed fee, and every sale is yours apart from whatever your payment provider charges.

Card fees sit on top of the first two. When a platform takes card payments through a processor like Stripe, the US rate quoted in these sources is usually 2.9% + $0.30 per order. On a $25 order, that's another $1.03.

What they charge, from their own pages

These are the rates each platform publishes for selling photos (checked November 2026). Plans change, so check their pricing page before you decide.

The numbers at $2,000, $5,000 and $15,000 a year

Here is what each model costs at three levels of yearly sales. These are worked examples, not anyone's real results.

Assumptions: digital downloads only, an average order of $25, so $2,000 is 80 orders, $5,000 is 200 orders and $15,000 is 600 orders. Card fees are added at 2.9% + $0.30 per order wherever the platform's own page says it charges them. Where a page mentions card fees without a rate, the table says "+ card fees".

GeoSnapShot's 30% is taken after tax and transaction fees come off, so its real figure depends on those; "about" is as close as the public page allows.

Two things stand out.

The spread gets wide fast. At $5,000 a year, the same 200 orders cost anywhere from $99 to $1,755 depending on where you sell. At $15,000, a 31% marketplace keeps about $5,265, which is more than a third of what your buyers paid.

Low volume narrows the gap. At $2,000, PhotoDay costs $282 and a flat plan $99. That's a real difference, but it's $183, not thousands, and PhotoDay processes the cards and delivers the files for that money.

The sellphotos.online column has one footnote of its own: buyers pay you directly, so whatever your payment method charges still applies. In India, UPI and most bank transfers cost the person receiving the money nothing. In the US, Zelle is usually free, while PayPal and Venmo business payments can carry their own fees. Check yours.

What the flat fee costs you in other ways

A flat fee is cheaper on paper as soon as you sell a little. It also comes with trade-offs, and it would be unfair to leave them out. Here are ours.

• You check payments yourself. On sellphotos.online the buyer pays you and uploads a screenshot. You approve the order once the money shows in your account, and only then do the originals unlock. At 600 orders a year, that's 600 checks. Never approve on a screenshot alone.
• There's no free tier. $99 is $99 even in a year you sell nothing. Against a 10% commission, the flat Starter plan only wins once you sell more than about $990 a year. Against 30%, it wins above about $330.
• Checkouts are capped. Starter includes 250 approved orders a year, Plus 1,000, Pro 2,000 and Max 10,000. That's why the $15,000 example needs Plus: 600 orders don't fit in Starter.
• There's no print lab. We sell digital downloads. No prints, packages or picture-day pre-pay.
• There's no bib search. Guests find photos by selfie or by scrolling, not by race number.
• You're the seller. The buyer pays you, so any sales tax or GST on the sale is yours to handle, just as it would be for a cash sale.

When a commission platform is the better deal

Commission isn't the wrong choice. It's the right one in several common situations.

You sell under about $1,000 a year. If photo sales are occasional, a percentage of a small number is smaller than any yearly plan.

You want card checkout with automatic delivery. Marketplaces like PhotoDay, GeoSnapShot and FlashFrame process the card and deliver the file the moment it's paid. No screenshots and no manual approval. At high volume, that saved time is worth paying for.

You sell prints, packages or picture-day pre-pay. School and volume studios live on these. PhotoDay, GotPhoto and Zenfolio are built around them.

You shoot races and need bib search. GeoSnapShot (face, bib and time), Photohawk (selfie and bib) and FlashFrame (bib, face, location, time and shirt colour) tag by race number. Helmeted cyclists and runners shot from behind are hard to match by face.

You want to start for free. Pixieset, ShootProof, GeoSnapShot and PhotoDay all let you start at $0.

You want someone else to deal with tax and payments. When the platform takes the payment, ask how it handles sales tax for you. When buyers pay you directly, it's yours.

You want the marketplace's brand and network. A large race marketplace may bring organisers and buyers you don't have yet. That reach is part of what the commission pays for.

A checklist before you choose

• Estimate your yearly sales and your average order. Multiply by each platform's percentage, then add card fees per order.
• Count your orders, not just your revenue. Per-order card fees and checkout caps both scale with the number of orders.
• Decide whether you can check payments yourself, or need a platform to take cards for you.
• Do you sell prints, packages or pre-pay? If so, you need a lab-connected platform.
• Do guests need bib search, or will a selfie find most of them?
• Do you need guests to find their own photos? Some gallery platforms have no guest face search at all.
• Who handles sales tax or GST: you, or the platform?
• Re-read the pricing page on the day you sign up. Rates change; Photohawk's changed on 1 November 2026.

If the numbers point to a flat fee

If you sell more than a few hundred orders a year, can check payments yourself, and mostly sell downloads, a flat yearly plan usually keeps more of the money with you. Compare the four plans, or open the sample gallery to see what your guests would get.

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About sellphotos.online: we make it. It's an online store for event photos where guests find their photos with a selfie and pay you directly, with no commission and plans from $99 a year.