Selling on Walmart Marketplace vs Amazon

1. The Question That Won't Go Away

Every few months the same cycle plays out. Walmart Marketplace gets some buzz, gurus launch new courses, and sellers start wondering if they should jump ship from Amazon or add Walmart to their stack.

I've been running an Amazon OA business at $100K+/month. I've looked at Walmart seriously, run the numbers, and watched this hype cycle repeat multiple times. Here's what actually matters.

2. The Raw Size Difference

Amazon pulls around 2.5 billion monthly visitors globally. Walmart.com gets around 400 million. That is not a slight gap.

Third-party seller GMV on Amazon is estimated at $400B+ annually. Walmart Marketplace sits somewhere around $30-40B. You're looking at roughly a 10x difference in the actual third-party seller opportunity.

More importantly, Amazon has trained its customers to buy from third-party sellers. They trust the platform and they're comfortable clicking "Sold by [random company]." Walmart shoppers still skew toward buying direct Walmart inventory. That conversion difference matters a lot when you're moving resale products.

3. Getting Approved: Amazon vs Walmart

Amazon setup is straightforward. You need a bank account, ID verification, and a credit card. Most legitimate sellers get approved within a few days.

Walmart Marketplace is application-based. They want to see an established business, a W-9, a US business address, and a track record of prior sales history. They are selective.

Getting rejected from Walmart is common for newer sellers. The practical sequence: you build your sales history on Amazon, and that history eventually gets you approved on Walmart. It's not really a choice between platforms. It's an order of operations.

New to the sourcing side of this business? My guide to online arbitrage for beginners covers how to build that foundation from zero.

4. Fee Comparison: Who Wins on Paper vs Reality

Walmart's referral fees run 6-15% depending on category. Amazon's run 8-15% in equivalent categories. So Walmart is genuinely cheaper by 1-3 percentage points in some categories.

But Amazon's FBA fees buy you the Prime badge, which converts at 3-4x the rate of non-Prime listings. That conversion premium covers the fee difference in most categories and then some.

Concrete example: a $40 product in a 15% referral fee category on Amazon nets around $8-11 after FBA fees depending on weight and dimensions. The same item on Walmart WFS at lower referral fees might net $9-12. But you're selling at a fraction of the velocity because the traffic isn't there.

Higher net per unit means nothing if inventory turns twice as slowly. For a real breakdown of how fees affect your sourcing decisions, read my Amazon FBA fees breakdown.

5. FBA vs WFS: What Actually Matters

FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) is the gold standard for e-commerce fulfillment. Amazon operates 110+ fulfillment centers across the US. Your products arrive in 1-2 days, carry the Prime badge, and benefit from Amazon's full customer service infrastructure.

WFS (Walmart Fulfillment Services) launched in 2020 and is still growing. You get a TwoDay delivery badge, which does lift conversion. But the fulfillment network is smaller, and the seller tools are nowhere near as mature as what you get with FBA.

WFS storage fees are sometimes lower than FBA, which helps if you're holding slower-moving inventory. For online arbitrage, though, you're targeting fast-turning products, so storage cost isn't the variable you're optimizing.

The bigger issue: there's no Keepa for Walmart. No SellerAmp. The data infrastructure that makes Amazon OA efficient simply does not exist on the Walmart side yet. You're making sourcing decisions with far less information.

6. Competition Levels in 2026

Amazon is competitive. But "competitive" means something specific: millions of products with real buyer demand, and thousands of sellers chasing each one. You win by finding the right products faster and sourcing them at better prices.

Walmart has less seller competition right now. Fewer listings, fewer gurus teaching it, and the tooling is less sophisticated. But less competition also means less buyer demand. A category with 50 Amazon sellers moving 500 units a month each is more attractive than a category with 5 Walmart sellers moving 10 units a month.

Less competition does not automatically mean more profit. It often means slower inventory turns, money sitting longer, and worse cash flow.

7. Walmart as a Sourcing Tool, Not a Selling Destination

Here's something most people miss in this debate. Walmart is already part of most serious OA sellers' workflows. Just not as a place to sell.

"Online Arbitrage is pretty much buying stuff on everyday websites such as walmart.com, ulta.com, walgreens.com, all those websites for less money and selling them for more money on Amazon. That's the business model."

Does Amazon FBA Work? | Amazon FBA Online Arbitrage Is a Scam, YouTube (Apr 3, 2024)

Buying from walmart.com and selling on Amazon is one of the most reliable OA models out there. Walmart runs clearance events, has consistent retail pricing, and their website is easy to work with when you're scanning for margin.

If you're doing OA, you're probably already using Walmart as a source. That's a completely different conversation from listing your own products on Walmart Marketplace as a third-party seller.

8. The Guru Hype Problem

"Over the last few days, I've seen a lot of gurus promoting Walmart courses. I'm going to tell you why you should not follow the hype and actually focus on your Amazon business right now. It's quite simple. The reason is that you still suck."

Walmart WFS is Going to Bankrupt Tons of Amazon FBA Sellers, YouTube (May 13, 2025)

Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes. The pattern is the same every time: a platform gets buzz, someone packages a course around it, and the course creates the exact competition that undercuts the students who bought it.

Chasing Walmart as a newer seller isn't a bad idea because Walmart is a bad platform. It's a bad idea because you need infrastructure you don't have yet: proven sourcing systems, volume to justify multi-channel logistics, and a base of Amazon revenue that makes the added complexity worth the overhead.

9. Push Your Amazon Business First

"You actually just keep going with your Amazon business and trying to push it all the way up. That's where you're going to get results. You should not try to get on Walmart right now because a lot of people are trying to sell you courses by telling you, 'Hey, right now is the time, okay? I'm going to close my program tonight at midnight.'"

Walmart WFS is Going to Bankrupt Tons of Amazon FBA Sellers, YouTube (May 13, 2025)

This is the core principle I teach inside The Scaling Society: add complexity only after you've mastered the basics. Amazon OA is already a real business model that generates real money. I do $100K+/month with it and I didn't need Walmart to get there.

Adding Walmart before your Amazon operation is optimized means splitting attention and getting mediocre results in two places instead of strong results in one. The full framework for building that Amazon base is at my guide to scaling Amazon FBA.

10. When Walmart Actually Makes Sense

Walmart Marketplace is worth testing when you're already doing $50K+ per month on Amazon and want to diversify revenue streams with systems already in place.

Specifically, it makes sense when: you're already approved as a Walmart seller, you have slow-moving Amazon inventory that might move faster on Walmart, or you consistently find products that are undersupplied on Walmart but available through your existing sources at the right margins.

At scale, multi-channel selling can add 10-20% to top-line revenue with marginal extra operational effort. That's a real number when your Amazon base is $100K/month. It's a distraction when you're at $5K/month.

Building toward that scale? My breakdown on hitting your first $10K month on Amazon covers the milestones that actually matter getting there.

11. My Honest Recommendation

If you're under $30K/month on Amazon, don't touch Walmart Marketplace yet. Fix your sourcing, tighten your ROI targets, and build the systems that let you scale. Join one of my free Thursday trainings first and watch me work through real sourcing decisions live before you add another platform to the mix.

If you're over $50K/month and looking to add Walmart as a secondary channel, it's worth testing. Start with 5-10 ASINs, use WFS, and track sell-through over 60 days before deciding if the operational overhead is worth it.

The platform itself is solid and growing fast. The problem is almost never the platform. It's the order of operations. Amazon first. Walmart later, maybe.

12. Next Steps

Before you look at any other platform, build the Amazon foundation right. Here's where to go next:

• How to Scale Your Amazon FBA Business - The full framework for going from $0 to $100K/month with online arbitrage.
• Online Arbitrage for Beginners - Where to source, what to look for, and how to evaluate your first real deals.
• Amazon FBA Fees Explained - Know your actual numbers before you source anything.
• How to Hit Your First $10K Month - The milestones that matter in the early stages of building.
• Amazon FBA Product Research - How to find products worth buying at volume.