Finance
Take rate
The percentage of Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) flowing through a marketplace or platform that the operator captures as revenue.
In plain English
For every $100 transacted on your platform, how much do you keep? The single most important number for marketplace founders, and the one investors stress-test most aggressively.
Example
Marketplace processes $2M GMV in a month; platform revenue is $200k. Take rate = 10%. Benchmarks: payment processors 0.5-2%, vertical SaaS-enabled marketplaces 5-15%, social commerce 10-30%, app stores 15-30%, talent marketplaces 20-30%, food delivery 25-30%.
Formula
Take rate = Platform revenue / GMV × 100
Why it matters
Take rate sets the upper bound on a marketplace's revenue at any GMV scale, and it's notoriously hard to raise once set. Marketplaces that launched with a too-low take rate (because they prioritised supply-side acquisition) often can't recover — competitors anchor to the rate, and supply will leave the moment you raise. Conversely, marketplaces that took too high a rate get disrupted by lower-fee competitors. Founders should price take rate against the value the platform creates: matching efficiency, trust mechanisms, payment handling, dispute resolution. The higher the value-add, the higher the defensible take rate.
Common mistakes
- Confusing take rate with margin — gross margin is take-rate revenue minus payment processing, hosting, support cost
- Reporting only on transacted GMV (ignoring leaked off-platform transactions in marketplaces with disintermediation risk)
- Setting take rate symmetrically on both sides of a two-sided market; usually one side bears more of the fee than the other