Which categories yield higher take rate?
№ 034 · Take rate by category
Definition
MetricGross take rate split by product or service category
Unit% of category GMV
Bar chart of take rate per vertical or category. Variance reveals pricing power differences across product types. Build by aggregating revenue and GMV per category and dividing. Higher take rate categories deserve more supply investment. Example: Beauty 18%, Apparel 12%, Electronics 6% (electronics is the competitive vertical).
- GMV
- Gross merchandise value. Total value of goods sold through the platform before returns, discounts and take rate.
Benchmarks
| Bottom 30% | Median | Top 30% |
|---|---|---|
| blended take dragged down by fast growth in categories below 8% without a strategic reason (payments attach, logistics monetization) | consumer goods categories 10-20%; services 15-25%; B2B and commoditized goods 3-8%; blended book near 15% | portfolio where the highest-take categories (services, digital goods) are growing share; category rates of 20-30% at the top of the book |
cross-marketplace public fee data 2021-2026; category defined by what is transacted, with rates set by value added, ticket size, supplier margin and disintermediation risk · Category ranges overlap heavily across sources; the drivers (thin supplier margins, high ticket sizes and disintermediation risk compress rates) are more stable than the point estimates. A blended rate hides low-margin categories, so this chart exists precisely to prevent that.
| Category | Bottom 30% | Median | Top 30% |
|---|---|---|---|
| B2B and commoditized physical goods | below 3% | 3-8% | 8%+ |
| Consumer physical goods | below 10% | 10-20% | 20%+ |
| Services and managed categories | below 15% | 15-25% | 30% |
| Food delivery (list commission vs blended) | below 10% net | blended 13-14% net of subsidies | premium tiers 25-30% list |
When it looks bad
The category bars show one or two tall bars shrinking as a share of GMV while short bars grow, so blended take declines even though no single category was repriced.
Services at 24% take falls from 30% to 18% of GMV while a 6% commodity category grows to 45% of GMV; blended take drops 2.4 points with zero pricing changes.
What to do about it
- Set category-level take floors tied to category cost-to-serve (returns, disputes, logistics), and require a monetization attach plan before launching any category below the floor.
- Merchandise high-take categories into cross-sell surfaces for buyers acquired via low-take categories; track the migration rate of buyers from low-take to high-take categories per cohort.
- Price by value-add per category rather than one blended commission: raise take where the platform funds demand generation, trust or fulfillment, hold it where the platform is a listings board, per the standard dispersion drivers.
- Report blended take alongside constant-mix take every month so leadership can see whether pricing or mix is moving the number.
Sources
- Lenny's Newsletter approx 40 platform take rates; rate dispersion explained by value added and alternatives per side lennysnewsletter.com ↗
- Reforge take rates typically 10-30%; exclusivity of demand access supports the top of the range reforge.com ↗
- Everything Marketplaces (Marketplace Capital) B2B 3-8% vs consumer 10-20%; category selection fixes the unit economics ceiling more than go-to-market everythingmarketplaces.com ↗
- Tidemark Capital net take dispersion by platform type; document processors and payments at the bottom, full-stack managed platforms at the top tidemarkcap.com ↗
- Mostly Metrics (CJ Gustafson) public comps: managed and high-trust categories sustain premium rates; add-on services raise category take over time mostlymetrics.com ↗
- Origami Marketplace corroboration: approx 5% industrial to 25% services origami-marketplace.com ↗
- Revenue Map corroboration: approx 5% commoditized goods to 30%+ high-value services, most consumer marketplaces 10-20% revenuemap.app ↗