Is Etsy or Gumroad better for digital products?
Updated
The short answer
Etsy is a marketplace: it has shoppers already searching, and it charges for them through several stacked fees. Gumroad is a storefront: it takes less per sale but sends you nobody. Choose Etsy if you need discovery, Gumroad if you already have an audience to sell to.
They are different kinds of tool, not competing versions of the same one.
Where Etsy wins
Discovery. Shoppers arrive searching for printables, planners, invitations and cut files, and a good listing gets found without you posting anywhere.
It also carries trust. Buyers who would hesitate at an unknown checkout will buy on Etsy without thinking. The price of that trust is its rules: etsy’s Creativity Standards sit under all of it: the design must be your own, or made under your creative direction, and any use of AI has to be disclosed in the listing. Etsy deactivates listings that break either rule.
Where Gumroad wins
Cost per sale, control of your own page, and the ability to sell anything rather than only what fits a browsing category.
You can also contact your buyers, which Etsy largely prevents. That list is the thing that compounds.
The honest recommendation
Use Etsy as a discovery channel and a storefront as the place you own. Many sellers run both, with the same files listed in each.
If you only pick one: no audience, choose the marketplace. Any audience at all, choose the storefront.