Peer-to-peer marketplace guide: How to launch, grow, and scale successfully

Peer-to-peer marketplaces are exploding in popularity. In 2023, the global sharing economy was valued at $287 billion and is projected to grow to a staggering $1.4 trillion by 2030. This includes the peer-to-peer marketplace sector, which is expected to grow from $1.5 billion in 2024 to $6.27 billion in 2032.

It’s easy to see why peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplaces have such huge potential.

For consumers, these platforms are an affordable, convenient, and environmentally friendly alternative to traditional consumption.

For aspiring entrepreneurs, marketplace businesses are an attractive business model that makes it possible to start scalable, game-changing businesses with limited resources.

At Sharetribe, we’ve worked with successful P2P marketplaces for over a decade (check out our customer gallery for some inspiring examples!). This practical guide is based on the lessons we’ve learned along the way. We hope it helps you turn your idea into a thriving peer-to-peer marketplace.

A peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace is a platform that connects people who own products or offer services with people who want to buy or rent them. Airbnb is a classic example: hosts list their properties, travelers book them, and Airbnb facilitates the transaction without owning a single hotel room.

Unlike traditional e-commerce businesses, P2P marketplaces don't hold inventory. The platform's role is to help buyers and sellers find each other, transact safely, and build trust. The marketplace earns revenue by taking a commission on each transaction or charging fees for premium features.

In addition to Airbnb, famous examples include the product-selling website Etsy and the ridesharing app Uber. Almost any product or service can be sold through a P2P platform. Sharetribe customers have built marketplace sites for everything from selling pre-loved children’s stuff to private swimming pool rentals.

Plus, the second-hand economy is booming, with big brands like Lego, Shein, Zara, and Ikea entering a market traditionally dominated by thrift stores and small resellers. Fashion resale platforms, in particular, are flourishing—ThredUp was valued at $1.3 billion in its IPO in 2021 and has partnered with major retailers like Gap.

Let’s look at three peer-to-peer marketplace types and examples more closely: peer-to-peer rentals, products, and services.

Peer-to-peer rental marketplaces let consumers rent items from other consumers. Famous examples include Airbnb, Turo, and Vrbo. These platforms help consumers find each other, trust one another, and make secure payments.

Opportunities for these kinds of marketplaces are everywhere. For example, Sharetribe customers have built sites for swimming pools, cars, sporting equipment, and much more.

You can find inspiration for peer-to-peer rental marketplaces in our Customer Gallery, where you can browse marketplaces by type and sales model.

Etsy is an example of a tremendously successful peer-to-peer product marketplace. On Etsy, anyone can sell handmade items to other consumers—the marketplace helps connect buyers and sellers and facilitates their transactions.

Secondhand sites like Poshmark and Vinted are another common example of peer-to-peer selling. And as marketplace technology becomes more accessible, many marketplace founders have started thriving businesses by focusing on serving a clearly defined niche. For example, our customer, The Octopus Club, is a thriving community of like-minded parents buying and selling second-hand children’s clothes and items. Lumikha is a fast-growing marketplace by cosplayers, for cosplayers.

Our customer gallery has a whole slew of inspiring peer-to-peer product marketplace examples.

Peer-to-peer service marketplaces connect consumers who want to buy services from other consumers. Uber and Lyft are famous examples, but the opportunities are endless!

How about a marketplace to find a local tour guide for your next vacation? A website where home cooks can sell the extra food they make in their neighborhood? A platform where hobbyists can offer live online classes in their specific skills?

Check out some more P2P service marketplace examples in our Customer Gallery.

As you can see, almost any niche and industry can be fertile ground for a thriving peer-to-peer marketplace. In addition, the marketplace model can bring significant benefits to a business. The next section discusses those and some key challenges founders need to solve.

In practice, peer-to-peer (P2P) and customer-to-customer (C2C) marketplaces mean the same thing. Both connect private individuals who want to exchange value.

Some people use "P2P" to describe platforms focused on sharing and rentals (like Airbnb or Turo), while "C2C" describes platforms for buying and selling products (like Etsy or eBay). (Here's our complete C2C marketplace guide written with this distinction in mind.) But this distinction isn't universal. Most marketplaces use the terms interchangeably.

More importantly, whether you make the distinction between P2P and C2C or not, the underlying business model is identical. So it's far more important to understand the business model well—and where founders face the biggest benefits and challenges.

There are many reasons why a p2p marketplace platofrm can be a tremendously successful business. Let's look more closely at its key benefits.

One of the primary advantages of the p2p business model is that it is relatively fast and inexpensive to set up.

In most industries, investing in inventory is the biggest startup expense. But marketplace businesses don’t have to pay for inventory—suppliers create it for them. 

Consider a marketplace like Airbnb. The top five hotel chains in the world have about 4 million rooms combined. Meanwhile, Airbnb has over 7.7 million listings worldwide—all without owning a single hotel.

How is this possible? Instead of buying real estate, Airbnb operates a peer-to-peer rental model: its platform has millions of listings, enthusiastically provided by hosts worldwide.

Peer-to-peer websites focusing on products or services are similar. Building a website like Etsy doesn’t require manufacturing products. Uber doesn’t own cars. 

Not investing a five-figure sum in platform technology or inventory makes it much easier to start a business. Instead, founders can spend their budget on growing their marketplace. 

One of the biggest advantages of the peer-to-peer business model is its ability to scale without the traditional barriers of inventory or linear operational growth.

In a the P2P business model, supply and demand grow together, and the platform acts as the facilitator, not the owner, of goods or services. As your user base grows, your marketplace becomes more valuable—you almost never need to expand warehouses, hire more service providers, or purchase new assets.

With the right systems, such as built-in payment processing, trust mechanisms, and user management tools, you can scale sustainably and efficiently. P2P marketplace software like Sharetribe are designed to support this flexible, compounding growth from day one.

Peer-to-peer marketplaces offer a variety of ways to earn revenue, so you get the flexibility to tailor your business model to your niche and users’ needs. The most common approach is charging a commission fee for each transaction, which is ideal for platforms that want to align revenue growth directly with user activity.

Subscription models, where providers pay a recurring fee to access the platform or premium features, can create more predictable income once you’ve validated supply and demand. Listing fees offer a simple way to monetize without taking a cut of transactions, while value-added services like insurance, verification, or promoted listings unlock additional revenue streams.

As your marketplace matures, you can combine multiple models to optimize both growth and profitability. For example, Etsy uses the following revenue streams in peer-to-peer selling:

• Commission fees: 6.5% transaction fee on each sale
• Listing fees: $0.20 fee for sellers to list an item for four months
• Value-added services: Paid advertising options and payment processing

The P2P business model creates an opportunity for powerful built-in network effects. If each new user (buyer or seller) increases the overall value of the platform, then the business has network effects.

Businesses with network effects often scale much quicker than those without. More customers mean more demand, which brings in more suppliers. More suppliers mean more selection, which creates a better customer experience and brings in more customers. 

If done right, this creates a flywheel effect, where the marketplace grows exponentially through the power of network effects. 

For a long time, the primary barrier to developing a peer-to-peer website was the complexity of building a site that could handle both buyers and sellers. Development was costly and time-consuming, and the process required a team of highly skilled developers. Platforms focusing on peer-to-peer rentals or services were a particular challenge.

But marketplace technology has advanced rapidly. You no longer need to code a platform from scratch. At Sharetribe, for example, we help entrepreneurs launch a p2p marketplace platform faster. Sharetribe is ideal for founders who want to launch fast without coding. It lets you quickly launch a no-code marketplace and extend your platform by developing a unique marketplace on top of our APIs.

In addition to using dedicated P2P software, many alternatives fit all skill levels and budgets. If you decide to use marketplace software, we also have articles that help you compare Sharetribe alternatives.

There are a few common challenges that you might face in your entrepreneurial journey. Here are the biggest challenges and our recommendations for solving them. 

Before making significant time and financial commitments, you must validate your idea first. Focus on launching the first version of your marketplace as soon as possible. Get feedback from early users to develop your marketplace further.

Another common challenge is finding the right niche. At first, it makes sense to focus on a small niche and vertical. While it’s great to dream big, a lack of focus can hamper your business, especially in the early days. Focus on finding product-market fit, then scale to other markets and categories.

There are several different marketplace business models. To find one that’s sustainable and scalable, start by understanding how value flows through your platform. Ask yourself, who benefits the most, and where does money change hands?

Then test pricing with early users and make sure it works for your sellers, buyers, and business needs. As you grow, revisit your model to ensure it still aligns with user behavior and platform goals.

At first, the idea of sleeping in a stranger’s apartment seemed terrifying. But now, millions of people stay in Airbnbs across the globe every night.

As consumers, we implicitly trust the brands we know. As a new business, you won’t have that level of brand strength; trust is built over time. Fortunately, there are many proven strategies for building marketplace trust. 

As you develop your peer-to-peer business, watch out for these challenges. But be confident in your ability to deal with them. There are things you can do to mitigate the risks when you build your business with an iterative mindset. Understanding the essentials you need—and building upon them step by step—helps you create a profitable business without taking on too much risk.

Legal compliance isn’t the most exciting part of building a marketplace, but overlooking it can create serious risks later on.

Peer-to-peer marketplaces must navigate regulations around:

• Payments
• Taxes
• User data protection (like GDPR or CCPA)
• Regional business laws

These requirements vary widely depending on your target audience and operating regions, which makes compliance a little tricky.

To be prepared from the start, consult legal experts, choose a marketplace solution and a payment provider that will take care of a lot of your regulatory obligations, and set clear terms of service. These precautions will help protect your marketplace as it grows. Take compliance seriously at the beginning to build the foundation for long-term success and trust.

In P2P marketplaces, the platform doesn’t control the product or service quality—the users do. This makes maintaining a great user experience more challenging, but also more critical.

Strong trust systems are essential, so build in user ratings and reviews, offer identity verification options, and provide responsive support when problems arise. Clear community guidelines and proactive moderation can also help set expectations early. When users trust that your marketplace consistently delivers quality, they’re more likely to return and recommend it to others, which will fuel your platform’s long-term growth.

P2P websites demand a distinct set of features compared to other e-commerce businesses. That's why generic online store builders like Shopify, Magento, or WooCommerce rarely work for marketplaces. And developing a peer-to-peer marketplace from scratch can set you back several months and tens of thousands of dollars.

The good news is that the essential marketplace website features form a solid foundation for your business, whether your idea is about peer-to-peer rentals, products, or services. That's why dedicated marketplace builders can offer an affordable way to get started.

Here are the features that the majority of peer-to-peer platforms need from day one:

• User profiles
• Listing pages and listing creation
• Website navigation and search
• Online payments
• Reviews
• Messaging and notifications
• Admin features

Let's look at each of these features and functionalities a bit more closely. You'll find an image of how each one looks in Sharetribe's no-code marketplace builder.

In addition to the essentials listed above, there are other features you might want to consider, depending on the needs of your users:

• Booking calendars and availability management if you’re dealing with peer-to-peer rentals or services.
• Integrated maps if your marketplace is location-based and your users need to meet face-to-face.
• Shipping might be required if your marketplace deals with peer-to-peer product selling. 
• Identity verification protocols are useful for trust-intensive markets, like peer-to-peer apartment rentals, babysitting, or the like.

Sharetribe supports all of the marketplace essentials out of the box, and you can easily expand the offering with third-party integrations or through custom development.

The technology you choose to build your marketplace determines how fast you can launch, how much you spend, and how easily you scale.

Most successful P2P marketplaces today start with marketplace software rather than building from scratch.

Let's look at the three most common approaches.

1. No-code marketplace builders (fastest, lowest cost)

• Launch in days/weeks without technical skills
• Built-in features for payments, listings, bookings, reviews
• Examples: Sharetribe, Kreezalid, My Marketplace Builder
• Cost: $0-$300/month
• Best for: Founders who want to validate quickly and focus on growing their community
• Extensible no-code platforms (like Sharetribe and Kreezalid) combine the best of both worlds: they let you launch fast without coding and expand with custom code later, wihtout rebuilding your entire marketplace.

2. Marketplace plugins or generic no-code tools (moderate speed, moderate cost)

• Add marketplace functionality to existing platforms like WordPress or Shopify or build with a combination of tools (e.g. Webflow + Airtable + Typeform + Calendly + Zapier + MailChimp)
• Examples: Dokan, WooCommerce + marketplace extensions
• Cost: $100-$5,000 upfront + hosting
• Limitations: Not built specifically for marketplaces, can hit scaling issues

3. Custom development (slowest, highest cost)

• Build from scratch with developers
• Complete control over every feature
• Cost: $50,000-$500,000+
• Best for: Unique concepts where the technology itself is your competitive advantage
• Vibecoding can make the work of experienced developers faster but we don't recommend it for non-technical founders.
• Visual coding tools like Bubble let you build from scratch without coding skills, but the time investment is considerable.

For most peer-to-peer marketplace founders, no-code builders are the best starting point. They get you to market fastest, cost the least, and let you focus on what matters: building trust between your users and growing your community.

The key is choosing the best solution for your marketplace type, budget, and future plans.

For most P2P marketplace founders, no-code builders are the best starting point. The three main options for early-stage founders are:

Sharetribe

• Best for: Rentals, services, C2C product marketplaces, combination platforms (e.g. both rentals and product-selling), unique concepts.
• Unique advantage: Launch no-code, extend with custom development later, no rebuild needed.
• Stand out feature: Continue making no-code changes even after adding custom code.

Kreezalid

• Best for: Founders who want multiple visual themes out of the box.
• Limitation: To add custom features, you'll need to rebuild your frontend on their API.
• Stand out feature: Theme store with multiple pre-built visual styles.

My Marketplace Builder

• Best for: Single-type marketplaces (products OR rentals OR services—not combined).
• Limitation: Limited customization (enterprise option, need to be done by theri team.
• Stand out feature: Most affordable white-label no-code plan

There are also enterprise solutions (like Arcadier) and visual programming platforms (like Bubble), but these require either significant budget or technical skills.

For a complete comparison of all options for each different marketplace type, see our marketplace software guide.

Now that you understand your technology options, let's walk through the complete process of launching your peer-to-peer website—from validating your idea to getting your first customers.

Building a successful peer-to-marketplace business doesn’t have to be a months-long, expensive project. Instead, treat it as a process of learning and iteration.

Great businesses take time to build. In a nutshell, there are a few main steps to getting your marketplace up and running:

1. Find and validate a great peer-to-peer marketplace idea
2. Find the right business model
3. Start small and grow your niche
4. Build your Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
5. Launch early and learn from your audience

We’ll cover them briefly here, but for a more detailed breakdown of each step, check out our complete guide to how to create a marketplace.

All great businesses start with a great idea.

At first, it can be difficult to tell whether your idea is worth pursuing. You might think it’s great, and the potential users you interview might also think so. Who wouldn’t want to see more peer-to-peer rentals and second-hand purchases in the world?

But what really matters is whether people will like it enough to pay to use it. 

At their core, successful businesses solve problems for their customers. Founders often start companies in response to their own problems. The idea for Airbnb came when the founders were having trouble making rent.

Marketplaces have an extra layer of complexity: you need to solve problems for two groups—prospective buyers and prospective sellers. A great idea must attract enough supply and enough demand to function.

For example, for a peer-to-peer rental business, you need to identify an asset that:

• Many people own
• Is underused or idle much of the time
• Could be rented instead of bought

A great example is expensive items to buy and/or maintain. People who already own them are likely willing to cover some of the costs by renting rather than letting the asset sit idle. And customers may want to rent the asset when they need it rather than make an expensive investment in owning it.

Once your idea passes this test, validate it with potential users. Talk to them and challenge your assumptions. But ultimately, you won’t truly know if you’re solving a real problem until you launch your marketplace business.

Our advice is to launch fast and launch cheap. The most valuable insights come from live users paying to use your service. 

As an inspiring example of this approach, check out the story of Raphaëlle de Monteynard, founder of Swimmy. She had an idea for a peer-to-peer rental marketplace that lets people share private swimming pools. To get started, she did extensive research on the market. Soon, she realized the best thing she could do was to launch her business quickly for the summer season and see how it went.

“Everything doesn’t have to be perfect when you start a business. The most important thing is to learn if your idea will work, and you don’t need a lot for that,” she says. 

Today, Swimmy has over 45,000 users.

Failing to validate a business idea is a common mistake for founders. It’s all too easy to get excited and throw yourself into building a platform. But before you do that, make sure people are actually interested in using your platform.

If your idea fails, it’ll fail fast. You’ll have time to pivot to a new idea, and you won’t have wasted months and thousands of dollars developing a complex website that nobody wants to use. But if you see signs of initial traction, it’s go time. 

As you build your marketplace, consider your business model. At first, it might make sense to keep costs low to attract more users. But ultimately, the revenue model must finance the business’s operations. 

The majority of peer-to-peer marketplaces use commission-based models.

With this model, the business takes a commission on every transaction made on the platform, either as a percentage cut or as a fixed fee. A significant benefit of the model is that it works regardless of marketplace type, whether your idea is to sell services, products, or peer-to-peer rentals. The most successful marketplaces—Airbnb, Etsy, Uber—all built their businesses on a commission structure. 

Check out this guide for information on other marketplace business models.

Pros

• Low barrier to entry for providers: Sellers aren’t charged upfront, so they only pay when they successfully make a sale. This makes attracting and onboarding initial supply easier, which is critical for early marketplace traction.
• Revenue aligns with platform growth: As more transactions occur, revenue increases automatically without needing a major pricing overhaul. The model naturally scales alongside your user base.
• Built-in incentive alignment: Providers are motivated to succeed because their fees are tied to their sales, and the marketplace is motivated to help sellers succeed to earn commissions.
• Flexible for different business stages: You can start with a simple flat commission and introduce tiered or variable commissions later as your marketplace matures and diversifies.

Cons

• Risk of platform leakage: If your marketplace doesn’t deliver enough value relative to the commission fee, users may complete transactions off-platform, causing you to lose revenue. Strong value propositions and trust-building features help prevent marketplace leakage.
• Complex payment infrastructure: It would be very difficult to build a payment infrastructure from scratch that accurately applies commissions to every transaction while staying compliant with global payment regulations. Marketplace builders with pre-built, compliant payment integrations (like Sharetribe, which comes with a built-in integration to Stripe Connect) can simplify this process.

While commission-based models are the most common, many successful marketplaces combine multiple monetization strategies as they grow. You can learn more about how successful marketplaces monetize in our in-depth study. 

Here are a few other P2P business model options to consider:

Subscription fees

Subscription models charge users (usually sellers) a recurring monthly or annual fee to access the platform or unlock premium features. They provide predictable, recurring revenue and can help filter for higher-quality, more committed suppliers.

However, they may create a barrier to entry for new users, so they work best once you’ve validated demand or as part of a tiered (freemium-to-paid) approach.

Premium listings

Premium listings allow users to pay to “boost” or feature their offerings for better visibility in search results or homepage placements. This option gives sellers a way to stand out in competitive categories while generating additional revenue without charging every user.

Premium placements work best when your marketplace already has enough inventory and traffic, and they should be implemented carefully to avoid harming the user experience. Often, premium listings are used as a supplementary revenue stream, in addition to commission or subscription fees.

Paid advertising

Paid advertising models offer display or native ad space on your platform, either to your own users (like sellers promoting products) or third-party advertisers. Ads scale well with traffic and provide another layer of monetization, especially for content-heavy or high-traffic marketplaces.

However, you should be thoughtful when introducing advertising. Overuse or poor targeting can dilute user trust and damage the platform’s brand.

Launching a successful marketplace starts by solving a very specific problem for a narrow group of users.

Focus on a vertical niche or a small geographic area to reduce complexity, concentrate supply and demand in one space, and build momentum faster. It also helps you overcome the chicken and egg problem, one of the biggest early challenges for marketplaces. 

A small, focused launch lets you gather user feedback quickly, iterate on your offering, and grow sustainably. Sharetribe’s MVP approach is designed exactly for this: launch fast, learn fast, and scale from a strong foundation.

Here are some examples of successful peer-to-peer marketplaces that started in specific niches and grew:

• Drive Lah: Peer-to-peer car sharing in Singapore
• Swimmy: Private swimming pool rentals in France
• PaulCamper: Campervan rentals in Germany
• Curtsy: Second-hand fashion for young women
• Shortboxed: Marketplace for collectible comic books

A Minimum Viable Product, or MVP, is the earliest iteration of your platform that you share with customers. Even when you’re launching quickly, don’t rush—it’s vital to offer even your earliest users a great experience. 

Before you launch an MVP, your marketplace should be functional. Users should be able to accomplish the basic goal of what your marketplace promises to do. The essential features outlined in the previous section form a solid foundation for your MVP. And depending on your marketplace type, you may need to set up secure payment processing and consider insurance options to protect your users.

Once you've chosen your marketplace software (as discussed in the previous section), focus on launching as quickly as possible. Invest most of your time and initial budget in growing your audience, building your brand, and learning about your users—not on building custom features yet.

Once your MVP is ready, it’s time to launch. You've chosen your technology, validated your concept and identified a strong business model and first niche, and built your initial platform. Now, you need to get real users transaction on it.

While it’s tempting to jump in at the deep end, your launch should be a thoughtful process. Marketplaces are challenging businesses to build. You need to develop both supply and demand – no easy feat.

Begin by recruiting an initial group of providers to seed your marketplace with. Finding the right vendors can be challenging, and how you recruit them depends on the business you’re in. To start, contact providers on other marketplaces, search on Google, and reach out to forums and Facebook Groups. 

At this stage, it’s fine to do things that don’t scale—the first hundred or so providers are the lifeblood of your platform. Make sure your new providers are comfortable using your platform, understand the benefits you offer, and see the potential in the marketplace.  

As you approach your launch date, consider doing a product launch before your big marketing launch. This lets you onboard a small initial group of users on the platform to iron out any bugs before your big launch.

After launching, the real work begins. Give users your MVP, watch how they interact with it, identify bottlenecks, and collect feedback to improve. Some effective tactics include:

• Founder-led onboarding: Personally guide early users through your platform to learn where they struggle or need more support.
• Surveys: Regularly ask your users for feedback about their experience, features they want, and areas of friction.
• Analytics: Establish key marketplace metrics that offer genuine insight into the traction of your platform. Track user behavior to identify friction points and opportunities for improvement.

As you scale, conduct growth experiments to determine the optimal ways to build your business. Our guides on scaling your marketplace, double-blind reviews, and helping customers find the right product or service can guide your next steps.

Peer-to-peer marketplaces can grow slowly—it took Airbnb four years to see real traction. It’s critical to experiment with different growth channels and perfect your strategy for each one.

Don’t forget to learn from other founders who’ve been in your shoes. The Two-Sided podcast features in-depth interviews with successful marketplace entrepreneurs who share real-world lessons on how they launched, overcame early challenges, and grew their platforms sustainably. One example is focusing on just one city at a time to build traction before expanding further.

Once your marketplace grows, you have more resources to develop it further. You’ve also learned a lot about your audience and know what kinds of custom features and additional tools bring the biggest boost to user experience—and the biggest return on investment for you. 

Sharetribe allows you to launch completely no-code and extend your design and feature set infinitely with code, all without changing platforms or migrating data. Our headless marketplace approach is ideal for entrepreneurs who want to take their businesses to the next level. Sharetribe offers all essential features and management tools off the shelf and allows marketplace owners to custom-develop a unique user interface on web or mobile on top of the Sharetribe-powered backend.

If you don’t have a developer on your team, Sharetribe’s Expert Network is here to help you find the right developer to build your platform. Check out our guide to finding a marketplace developer.

You can build custom features and add integrations to third-party tools like marketing and email software. Yet, you won’t have to invest in building the marketplace essentials; updates, maintenance, and security compliance are also handled for you.

The best way to understand peer-to-peer marketplaces is to see them in action. Below are examples ranging from billion-dollar platforms like Airbnb to thriving businesses marketplaces built by Sharetribe customers serving specific communities.

You can find more Sharetribe examples and inspiration in our customer gallery and founder stories.

These household-name platforms pioneered the P2P model and demonstrate its massive potential:

Airbnb (peer-to-peer rentals)

• Business model: charges a commission from both guests and hosts
• How they solved chicken-and-egg: Started by photographing hosts' homes themselves to improve listing quality, then focused on major events (like DNC 2008) where hotel inventory was scarce.
• Key differentiator: Trust mechanisms (reviews, verified photos, host guarantees) that made staying in strangers' homes feel safe
• Scale: 8+ million active listings worldwide (source)

Etsy (peer-to-peer products)

• Business model: listing fee, commission charged from sellersm possible payment processing fee
• How they solved chicken-and-egg: Focused exclusively on handmade and vintage items, attracting craft sellers who had no other online home.
• Key differentiator: Community and story: every product has a maker behind it.
• Scale: about 9 million active sellers and 95 million active buyers (source)

Uber (peer-to-peer services)

• Business model: Takes a commission from drivers for each ride and charges a service fee from customers.
• How they solved chicken-and-egg: Started hyperlocal in San Francisco, subsidized early rides, guaranteed minimum driver earnings
• Key differentiator: Real-time tracking, cashless payments, and two-way ratings
• Scale: 189 million users monthly in 2025 (source)

These examples show how P2P marketplaces can scale when they solve real problems and build trust between users. But you don't need billions in funding to build a successful peer-to-peer marketplace. Many thriving P2P platforms serve specific niches, like the examples below.

Rental platforms allow people to rent out tangible physical resources that belong to others. Some of our favorites include:

• What they do: Swimming pool rentals in France
• Key insight: Founder Raphaëlle de Monteynard launched quickly for summer season with Sharetribe's no-code builder and focused on learning, then iterated on the platform with custom code. "Everything doesn't have to be perfect when you start a business. The most important thing is to learn if your idea will work."

Check out Swimmy’s story and the Swimmy marketplace.

• What they do: Largest peer-to-peer car rental marketplace in Acia pacific
• Key insight: Even in a crowded market, there's an opportunity if you can make an bad experience better. The idea for Drive lah was born out of frustration with the existing alternatives to renting a car in Europe and Asia. “The best thing we did was getting Drive lah to market quickly. We spoke to our users all the time, ran experiments, made tweaks to the platform, and continued to improve.”

Check out Drive lah's story, listen to our podcast interview episode with co-founder Gaurav Singhal, and visit the Drive lah marketplace.

• What they do: Global peer-to-peer car rentals.
• Key insight: Offering insurance options that protect both car owners and renters removes the mental barrier to peer-to-peer rentals.

Product marketplaces let people buy products from independent sellers. Popular platforms focusing on peer-to-peer selling include:

• What they do: Second-hand marketplace for buying and selling children's clothing and items.
• Key insight: A community of like-minded people is a powerful growth driver. The Octopus Club grew mostly organically with little to no paid marketing to a community of 25,000 active members.

Check out The Octopus Club’s story.

• What they do: Denver-based online marketplace for vintage and pre-owned furniture and home goods.
• Key insight: A local marketplace has the advantage of combining online and offline creatively. Refound also offers the chance to shop by appointment at their Denver warehouse or attend a regular warehouse sale featuring local sellers, home goods, and more.

Check out the Refound marketplace

• What they do: Social marketplace for fashion resale
• Key insight: Unlike its main competitors, Vinted charges no seller fees. In a market where the quality and volume of supply is a key competitive advantage, the strategy has helped Vinted grow into a dominant player in Europe. For example, Vinted became France's biggest clothing retailer in 2025.

Services between consumers foster connection and allow peers to learn from one another.

• What they do: Connect female creators with music industry professionals seeking diverse talent.
• Key insight: In the peer-to-peer space, many concepts are a community before they are a marketplace. Gritty in Pink was first a community to fight for more female representation in the music industry. When founder Shira Yevin decided to turn the community into a marketplace, growth came mostly organically: “Our community loved what we were doing. (--) Since we started using Sharetribe, we’ve had sixteen straight months of month-over-month growth.”

Check out Gritty In Pink’s story and the INPINK marketplace.

• What they do: A free online community for writers and beta readers to connect.
• Key insight: A marketplace can reimagine how people can help each other. Beta readers, writing groups, critique partners, writer services... Individuals can provide valuable services to one another without being "certified professionals".

Check out the Storyfolk marketplace and community.

• What they do: Freelance services marketplace, especially for digital services
• Key insight: Fiverr originally focused on packaged services at a clear price point (originally all $5, now varied). This created an inspiring opportunity for more digitally-savvy individuals to think outside the box in terms of how they could make a quick buck online.

It’s never been easier to build a peer-to-peer marketplace business. There’s so much upside to the two-sided marketplace model, with unlimited potential for creativity and growth. With the right idea, marketplace builder, and a commitment to learning from your users, you can build something powerful and lasting.

You don’t need a big team or a massive upfront investment to create an online marketplace. With Sharetribe, you can launch quickly, validate your idea, and grow sustainably—all without writing a single line of code.

Sharetribe has everything you need to power your marketplace from day one: listings, profiles, bookings, payments, reviews, messaging, and admin tools. So you can focus on building supply and demand, learning from real transactions, and scaling at your own pace.

As you grow, you can customize your platform with code, connect external tools via APIs, or collaborate with one of our Expert developers. Whether you’re renting goods, selling products, or offering services, Sharetribe gives you the flexibility to adapt your marketplace as your vision evolves.

We’ve worked with peer-to-peer marketplaces for over a decade, and more than 1,000 marketplaces built on Sharetribe infrastructure are doing great things worldwide. If you’re interested in hearing more, our expert support team will be happy to help. Reach out to us at hello@sharetribe.com or visit our Help Center.

Get a free trial of Sharetribe and start building your peer-to-peer marketplace today.

Here are our answers to common questions about peer-to-peer marketplaces.

A peer-to-peer marketplace is a platform that connects people who own products or offer services with people who want to buy or rent them. Unlike traditional e-commerce, the marketplace doesn't own inventory—it facilitates transactions between individuals. Famous examples include Airbnb (rentals), Etsy (handmade products), and Uber (ride-sharing).

Peer-to-peer marketplaces typically make money by charging a commission fee on user transactions. Some also offer premium listings, subscription plans, or value-added services like insurance, verification, or payment protection. The monetization strategy often evolves as the marketplace grows to balance revenue generation with user trust and platform value.

There's no practical difference: peer-to-peer (P2P) and customer-to-customer (C2C) are interchangeable terms. Both describe platforms where private individuals exchange value with each other. Some people use "P2P" for sharing and rentals and "C2C" for buying and selling products, but this distinction isn't universal. Most founders and platforms use the terms synonymously.

The best platform depends on your marketplace type. For peer-to-peer rentals, services, C2C products, and combination or complex concepts, Sharetribe offers the strongest combination of no-code setup and extensibility. Youu can launch quickly and add custom features later without rebuilding. Kreezalid excels at visual customization with its theme store, while My Marketplace Builder offers affordable white-label options. For a detailed comparison, see our marketplace software guide.

Costs vary widely based on your approach. No-code marketplace builders like Sharetribe start at $0 for building and testing, with paid plans starting around $100-$400/month for live marketplaces. Marketplace plugins cost $100–$5,000 upfront plus hosting. Custom development from scratch typically requires $50,000–$500,000+ in development costs. Most founders start with no-code solutions to validate their idea before investing in custom features.

Peer-to-peer marketplaces must comply with payment regulations (see our complete guide to marketplace payments), data protection laws (like GDPR or CCPA), and tax reporting requirements (e.g. DAC7). You'll need proper terms of service, privacy policies, and depending on your region, may need to collect and remit taxes on transactions. Payment compliance is handled by your payment provider (like Stripe Connect), but you're responsible for user data protection and regional business laws. Consult legal experts familiar with marketplace regulations in your target markets.

Marketplaces can build trust through multiple mechanisms: user reviews and ratings that create reputation systems, identity verification to confirm users are real people, secure payment processing that protects both buyers and sellers, and clear dispute resolution processes. Many successful marketplaces also delay payouts until transactions are confirmed complete, offer insurance or guarantees, and maintain responsive customer support. The key is making both sides feel protected throughout the transaction.

The chicken-and-egg problem is the most common challenge: you need sellers to attract buyers, but you need buyers to attract sellers. Successful marketplaces solve this by starting small (focusing on one city or niche), personally recruiting initial supply, subsidizing early transactions, or creating value for one side even without the other side present. Airbnb focused on major events where hotels were full, Etsy attracted artisans who had no other online home, and Uber guaranteed driver earnings in early markets.