Every pricing page in this category shows a monthly fee. Some show a revenue share. None shows the variable that actually determines whether live selling works for a given merchant: does the platform bring the buyers, or does the brand?
Marketplaces like Whatnot and TikTok Shop built discovery into every transaction. Their infrastructure reaches tens of millions of buyers who already show up to browse and spend. An embed tool works differently — it puts the live show on the brand's own domain, reaching the audience the brand already has: a mailing list, a loyal following, customers who already know the store. No algorithm surfaces it to strangers. No shared shelf. Just the brand's own people, in the brand's own experience.
One entry on this list, Cartcast, is a live-commerce SaaS codebase you purchase once and deploy as a multi-tenant platform for merchants under your own brand. Each merchant gets a lightweight embed script, isolated data, and in-video checkout via their own Stripe account. This page covers the full category, grouped by which audience model each platform uses — because that decision, made before anyone opens a pricing calculator, is the one that cannot be reversed mid-season.
Four questions before you compare plans
Before the pricing table, four questions determine which model fits. Does the merchant already have an audience, or do they need discovery? Who carries the infrastructure — the vendor, or you? What happens to the customer relationship after a purchase? And how does the cost structure compound as GMV scales — flat subscription, per-view meter, or a percentage of every sale? The answer to that last question looks very different in year two.
Group A: Marketplace model — the platform brings the buyers
On a marketplace, the platform supplies the audience. Sellers join and gain access to buyers who are already there and already spending. The tradeoff is structural: the marketplace owns the customer relationship, the first-party data, and the discovery algorithm.
Whatnot
Whatnot reported more than $8 billion in global GMV in 2025, roughly double its 2024 level, at an $11.5 billion valuation. Its fastest-growing categories that year included beauty, electronics, jewelry, and women's fashion. Its model is discovery-native: buyers browse live shows across sellers, encounter new brands through the Whatnot feed, and transact through Whatnot's own checkout. A seller who opens a new show on Whatnot can reach buyers who have never heard of their brand — that distribution advantage is real.
The honest limit, at owner level: Whatnot's buyer base, its seller reputation infrastructure, and its category-specific communities were built with years of investment. A brand deploying an embed tool on its own domain does not inherit any of that. The customer relationship, the first-party purchase data, and the terms of engagement belong to Whatnot. Merchants who need discovery belong here. Merchants who already have an audience are paying for distribution they do not need.
TikTok Shop
TikTok Shop brings shoppable live video into the TikTok algorithm — the same feed mechanism that surfaces content based on interest rather than following. Published aggregator estimates put global GMV at approximately $33 billion in 2025, with US operations expanding significantly. Brands selling through TikTok Shop reach users who encounter the brand through TikTok's surfacing logic, not through the brand's own mailing list or community.
The honest limit, at owner level: TikTok controls the algorithm, the first-party data, and the customer relationship. US regulatory risk surrounding the platform's ownership is public and documented. Brands building a commerce presence inside TikTok Shop are building inside infrastructure they do not control, on a platform whose standing in their primary market is unresolved. For brands already building a TikTok content presence and wanting checkout built in, TikTok Shop is the natural step. For brands whose primary concern is owning the customer relationship on stable infrastructure, it is not.
Group B: Hosted embed model — you bring the audience, the vendor runs the stack
Hosted embed tools put the live show on the merchant's own domain, where the merchant already has an audience. The brand keeps the customer relationship; the vendor runs the hosting, CDN, and streaming infrastructure. This is the model Channelize, Bambuser, LiveMeUp, and every other tool in this group share with Cartcast — the difference is who owns the technology underlying it.
Bambuser
Bambuser embeds live shows, shoppable video-on-demand, and in-video add-to-cart into the brand's existing site. Published pricing (bambuser.com/pricing, as of 2026-08-07): $0/mo free tier (250 views/month), $79/mo Essential (2,000 views/month, billed annually at $948), $249/mo Pro (adds white labeling, Mobile SDK, and SSO, billed annually at $2,988), and Enterprise at custom pricing. No GMV commission is stated on the pricing page. The entry price is genuinely accessible — $0 to start, $79 at the first paid tier. The cost curve is where the arithmetic changes: at ten shows per month with 500 viewers each, every view past the 2,000-view allowance runs at $0.25, and a real cadence of shows can push overage costs well past the base subscription.
The honest limit, at owner level: Bambuser's managed streaming infrastructure, its 240-country CDN network, its Mobile SDK, and the enterprise support organization serving 250+ brands across 240 countries took years to build. An operator running a newly deployed embed platform does not inherit any of that. Bambuser's Pro tier explicitly includes white labeling — an operator can resell live-shopping capabilities under their own brand through Bambuser without writing code, managing servers, or purchasing any other platform. That is a documented, legitimate competing path.
Channelize.io
Channelize.io is the closest technical match to Cartcast in the hosted market: it embeds on the brand's own domain, supports live shows and shoppable video, and charges no GMV commission. It also acquired LiveScale in December 2025, consolidating the hosted-embed cohort. Published pricing (pricing.channelize.io/plans, as of 2026-08-07): free tier (4 events/month, 20-minute limit, 50 concurrent viewers), Start at $97/mo ($81 annual), Grow at $297/mo ($248 annual), Pro at $497/mo ($414 annual), with a 14-day trial available. Its viewing-minute overage rate is not displayed on the plans page.
The honest limit, at owner level: Channelize runs the hosting, CDN, and streaming infrastructure — zero servers to provision or monitor. An operator who does not want to own a streaming stack will find this model materially simpler than the alternative. Channelize also built its customer base, support infrastructure, and technical track record over time. A new own-the-code deployment starts without any of it.
LiveMeUp
A Shopify-native live shopping app. Published pricing (apps.shopify.com/livemeup, as of 2026-08-07): free (30 minutes of streaming), Grow at $89/mo (4 hours), Scale at $249/mo (12 hours), Enterprise at $399/mo (25+ hours). No GMV commission stated. Rated 5.0 from 89 reviews on the Shopify App Store.
The honest limit, at owner level: LiveMeUp's Shopify App Store distribution and its review record took real customer deployments to earn. A new Cartcast deployment has neither. LiveMeUp also works only with Shopify merchants — a Cartcast deployment serves Shopify, WooCommerce, and custom storefronts interchangeably via the embed script.
CommentSold
Built for social live selling: the show streams simultaneously to Facebook, Instagram, and CommentSold's own buyer-facing app, with orders managed via viewer comments. Published pricing (try.commentsold.com/get-started/pricing, as of 2026-08-07): Starter $149/mo plus 6% of sales, Small Business $499/mo plus 5%, Large Business $999/mo plus 4%. A 15-day trial is available. Note: whether the percentage applies to live-attributed sales or all sales is not stated on the pricing page; the help article on commission calculation was not accessible during research.
The honest limit, at owner level: CommentSold's multi-channel distribution — simultaneous Facebook Live, Instagram Live, and its own app with comment-purchasing — is the primary differentiator. A Cartcast deployment reaches merchants' own-site audience only.
TalkShopLive
A live-shopping network with an existing viewer base built through celebrity and brand partnerships. Published pricing (talkshop.live/features/pricing, as of 2026-08-07): no setup or monthly fees, 10.25% plus $0.30 per item sold. TalkShopLive's existing viewer network and its celebrity distribution infrastructure are the product itself — joining gives a merchant access to that audience, much as a marketplace does, and TalkShopLive's audience dynamics sit closer to the marketplace model than to a standalone brand-site embed. A newly deployed alternative does not inherit any of that existing network.
Firework
Shoppable video for brand pages and publisher sites. Firework's distinguishing feature is its publisher network: shoppable video can run on third-party editorial and news sites, not only on the brand's own domain. No base prices are published (firework.com/pricing, as of 2026-08-07) — Starter and Growth show feature limits without prices; Pro and Enterprise are contact-sales. Usage overages: $10 per 1,000 views on Starter, $5 on Growth. Firework's publisher network took years of enterprise deals to assemble; a new own-the-code deployment does not have that distribution, and for brands whose goal is shoppable video on third-party publisher sites, Firework's model serves a fundamentally different purpose.
Smartzer
Interactive and shoppable video for Shopify, with a focus on clickable hotspot overlays and product tagging on pre-recorded video more than on live broadcasting. Published pricing (apps.shopify.com/interactive-content, as of 2026-08-07): Pay As You Go free to install at $0.001 per second watched; Smartzer Plus at $1,999/mo including 3,000,000 viewing seconds ($0.0005 per additional second). No GMV commission. Smartzer's primary category is interactive pre-recorded video — hotspots, branching content, shoppable tags — and its Shopify App Store position took real merchant deployments to establish.
Group C: Own-the-code model — you bring the audience AND own the infrastructure
Cartcast
Cartcast is a live shopping platform sold as source code: a live-commerce SaaS codebase you purchase once at $249 and deploy self-hosted as a multi-tenant, white-label platform for merchants under your own brand. Merchants you sign up receive a lightweight embed script they drop into their existing Shopify, WooCommerce, or custom store. The shopper watches, adds to a session cart, and pays through the merchant's own Stripe Connect account — without leaving the merchant's site. Live broadcasts, in-video checkout, shoppable VOD replays, real-time chat and engagement, per-show analytics, and a programmatic API are all included. You configure the commission rate per plan tier, and you set your own subscription pricing.
The honest cost is load-bearing. Cartcast charges a commission on live and VOD-attributed merchant sales: 4% on Starter, 2.5% on Growth, 1.5% on Scale. At $200,000 per year in live-attributed GMV on the Growth plan, the combined subscription and commission total roughly $9,788 per year. Channelize Grow (annual) and LiveMeUp Scale (annual) both total under $3,000 per year at that same volume, with no percentage of sales. Cartcast's commission schedule runs against its economics at volume relative to flat-subscription alternatives, and that fact is the most important number on this page for any operator running a scenario model. The commission rate is a variable you configure per plan tier — a zero-commission deployment is technically possible — but as shipped, the default schedule means more in combined platform fees than most flat-subscription alternatives at the merchant level.
You also operate the streaming stack. Cartcast's self-hosted configuration requires a VPS running OME and Bunny CDN, which means provisioning decisions, infrastructure monitoring, and streaming-reliability ownership that do not exist when a hosted vendor manages it all. A new Cartcast deployment also starts with no existing merchant base, no App Store listing, and no distribution channel — all of that comes from you.
What Cartcast offers that no hosted vendor provides: source code you own and can audit, the ability to fork for a specific merchant vertical, a pricing and commission schedule that no vendor can unilaterally change, and data that lives in your own infrastructure under your own project credentials. See https://cartcast.saascode.ai to evaluate the platform before purchasing at https://saascode.ai/products/cartcast.
Group D: Build from scratch
Building live-commerce infrastructure from scratch means assembling: a low-latency streaming stack (LL-HLS, sub-5-second target latency for flash-offer viability), inventory locking to prevent overselling under simultaneous rush on a single SKU, anonymous session-scoped checkout, Stripe Connect per merchant tenant, an embeddable cross-origin widget, and shoppable VOD with timed product timestamps. Months of engineering, not weeks, and the resulting system requires permanent infrastructure ownership. This path wins only when the requirements are genuinely unusual — a proprietary fulfillment integration, a category-specific mechanic — and no off-the-shelf platform satisfies them.
How to choose
| Your situation | Best fit |
|---|---|
| Your merchant needs discovery; they do not have an existing audience | Whatnot or TikTok Shop |
| You are already creating TikTok content and want commerce built into that presence | TikTok Shop |
| You want fully managed infrastructure, no GMV commission | Channelize.io or LiveMeUp |
| You are on Shopify, want App Store simplicity, flat monthly fee | LiveMeUp ($89–$399/mo) |
| You want to resell live shopping under your brand without owning a streaming stack | Bambuser Pro ($249/mo — white labeling included) |
| Your merchants sell across Facebook and Instagram Live | CommentSold |
| You want shoppable video reaching audiences through third-party publisher sites | Firework |
| You want brand-owned embed with recognized name, no GMV commission, self-serve | Bambuser ($0–$249/mo) |
| You want to own the code, control pricing, fork for a vertical | Cartcast ($249) |
| Your requirements are genuinely unusual and no platform fits | Build from scratch |
The honest verdict
Live commerce in the West has scaled in two places: marketplaces like Whatnot, whose GMV roughly doubled in 2025, and social platforms like TikTok Shop, where the algorithm supplies discovery at scale. Brand-owned-site live commerce — the model every embedded tool on this list shares with Cartcast — has not followed the same trajectory. eMarketer measured US livestream e-commerce at approximately $14.6 billion in 2025, roughly 1.2% of US retail e-commerce, with forecasts reaching only 1.9% by 2029. The category's most prominent hosted-embed vendor, Bambuser, reported annual recurring revenue down 12% year over year for 2025. Any platform decision that starts from a "live commerce is booming" premise is starting from a number that does not describe this specific shape of the market.
Within the embedded cohort, Channelize.io and LiveMeUp are the honest first choices for most merchants who want live shows on their own sites: fully managed, no GMV commission, established track records. Bambuser provides genuine self-serve access — $0 to start, $79 at the first paid tier — and its cost variable to model is the view overage curve, not the entry price. CommentSold wins for retailers whose sales motion runs through social Live. None of these gives the operator code ownership, pricing control, or the ability to fork for a specific vertical.
Cartcast earns its place on this list for a specific profile: an operator who has or can build a merchant roster, who is prepared to run a streaming stack, and for whom the margin architecture — owning the pricing schedule, the data, and the codebase — is worth more than the operational simplicity of a hosted subscription. The commission schedule is the central honesty concession here, and it is worth stating plainly: at most volumes where live commerce is generating meaningful revenue, the total platform cost under Cartcast's default commission model runs higher than it would under the flat-subscription alternatives in Group B. An operator who buys Cartcast as a shortcut to Channelize's outcome will arrive at a more expensive one. An operator who buys it because they want the code and the control will get exactly that.
FAQ
Does live shopping actually work in the United States?
Live commerce works in the US in two shapes: marketplaces and social platforms. eMarketer measured US livestream e-commerce at approximately $14.6 billion in 2025 — roughly 1.2% of US retail e-commerce — with forecasts reaching only 1.9% by 2029. Whatnot and TikTok Shop are growing fast within that total. Brand-owned-site live commerce, the shape this guide's embedded tools are built for, has been flat to declining — Bambuser, the category's recognized leader in that segment, reported ARR down 12% year over year in 2025. Live commerce on a brand's own site works for merchants with an existing engaged audience. It does not substitute for marketplace discovery.
Which live shopping platforms take a percentage of GMV?
Three platforms in this guide charge a revenue share: CommentSold at 4–6% of sales (as of 2026-08-07, try.commentsold.com/get-started/pricing), TalkShopLive at 10.25% plus $0.30 per item sold (as of 2026-08-07, talkshop.live/features/pricing), and Cartcast at 1.5–4% on live and VOD-attributed sales only, depending on the plan tier. Bambuser, Channelize.io, LiveMeUp, Firework, and Smartzer publish no GMV commission on their pricing pages as of 2026-08-07.
What is the difference between a live shopping marketplace and an embed?
A marketplace brings its own audience: buyers come to the platform to browse and discover new sellers. Whatnot and TikTok Shop are marketplaces. An embed puts the live show on the merchant's own domain, reaching the audience the merchant already has — no cross-brand discovery, no shared shelf, and the brand keeps the customer relationship. Bambuser, Channelize.io, LiveMeUp, and Cartcast are all embed tools. The decision between models is primarily about whether the merchant needs discovery (marketplace wins) or already has an audience and wants to keep the customer relationship on their own infrastructure (embed wins).
Is there a live shopping platform with no revenue share?
Several platforms in this category publish no GMV commission: Bambuser ($0–$249/mo self-serve as of 2026-08-07), Channelize.io ($97–$497/mo as of 2026-08-07), LiveMeUp ($89–$399/mo as of 2026-08-07), Firework (no public pricing), and Smartzer ($0.001 per second or $1,999/mo). If the goal is to own the codebase and set your own commission schedule — including charging no commission at all — Cartcast is the only entry on this list with that option.
Why did Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon exit live shopping?
Facebook shut down Live Shopping in October 2022. Instagram ended Live Shopping in March 2023. Amazon discontinued Inspire in February 2025. All three exits coincided with Whatnot and TikTok Shop gaining scale. The pattern suggests live commerce works as a native experience on purpose-built discovery platforms, and does not transplant well as a feature added to a platform with a different primary purpose.
Can I run a live shopping show on my own website without a marketplace?
Yes. Bambuser, Channelize.io, LiveMeUp, CommentSold, Firework, Smartzer, and Cartcast all embed live shopping on a brand's existing website without marketplace membership. The key distinction is whether you rent the infrastructure — managed and priced by the vendor — or own it. Bambuser through Smartzer are rented: the vendor operates the streaming stack, and the pricing schedule is the vendor's to change. Cartcast is the own-the-code option: you purchase it once, deploy it on your own infrastructure, and set the pricing and commission schedule yourself.