Etsy fees explained: what Etsy takes per sale

Listing fee                          $0.20
Transaction fee   (6.5% × $30.00)    $1.95
Processing        (3% × $30.00 + 25¢) $1.15
──────────────────────────────────────────
Total Etsy fees                      $3.30   → 11.0% of the order

Etsy’s fees are not high by marketplace standards, but they are unusually easy to misread, because the three core fees are charged on three different bases. Sellers who assume “6.5% plus a bit” routinely under-price. Here is each fee, the exact base it applies to, and a full worked example — all figures current as of June 2026 for US sellers.

The three fees on every sale

Listing fee — $0.20 per unit

A flat $0.20 is charged for each unit sold. Sell three of the same item in one order and you pay $0.60, because each unit consumes (and auto-renews) a listing. The same $0.20 also recurs every four months when an unsold listing renews — more on that below.

Transaction fee — 6.5% of item + shipping

6.5% of the item price plus buyer-paid shipping plus any gift-wrap charge, in effect since April 11, 2022. It excludes marketplace-collected sales tax. On the $30 order above: 6.5% × $30.00 = $1.95.

Because shipping is in the base, charging $5 for shipping doesn’t dodge the fee — and offering “free shipping” doesn’t either, since the cost simply migrates into the item price.

Payment processing — 3% + $0.25 per order

Etsy Payments (mandatory for US sellers) charges 3% of the full amount the buyer pays — including sales tax — plus $0.25 per order. Note the different base: the transaction fee excludes tax, but processing includes it.

No tax: 3% × $30.00 + $0.25 = $1.15. With 8% sales tax the buyer pays $32.40, so processing becomes 3% × $32.40 + $0.25 = $1.22 — seven cents of fee on $2.40 of tax you never keep. Small per order, but it is a fee on money that passes straight through to the state.

US sellers pay no regulatory operating fee and no currency conversion fee (USD to USD) — those apply only to sellers in certain other countries.

Offsite Ads: the fourth fee, sometimes

When Etsy advertises your listing on Google, Facebook, Pinterest, and similar platforms and a buyer clicks through and orders within 30 days, an Offsite Ads fee applies to that order:

• 15% — the standard rate, and enrollment is optional.
• 12% — once your shop passes $10,000 in sales over the trailing 365 days, enrollment becomes mandatory for the life of the shop, at this reduced rate.

The base is item + shipping + gift wrap (tax excluded), capped at $100 per order — the cap binds only above roughly $667 (at 15%) or $833 (at 12%) per order. On the $30 example: $4.50 at 15%, $3.60 at 12%. It applies only to ad-attributed orders, which is why the calculator below treats it as a toggle rather than a blanket rate.

A full worked example

The same $25 + $5 sale, now with real costs: $8.00 in materials and a $4.50 shipping label. No sales tax, not ad-attributed.

Margin — net profit divided by item price — is $14.20 ÷ $25 = 56.8%. If this exact order had come from an Offsite Ad at 15%, fees rise to $7.80, net profit falls to $9.70, and margin drops to 38.8%. One attribution flag removes eighteen points of margin.

With $12.50 of real costs, the breakeven item price in this example is $9.31: every dollar of fixed cost needs about $1.10 of price to cover, because only 90.5 cents of each dollar survives the 6.5% + 3% percentage fees.

The fees people forget

• Listing fees scale with units, and renew without sales. Each unit sold costs $0.20, and every unsold listing re-charges $0.20 when it auto-renews after four months. A 200-listing shop with slow turnover pays $40 per cycle just to stay listed.
• Offsite Ads become mandatory — permanently. Cross $10,000 in trailing-365-day sales once and you can never opt out again, even if revenue later falls. The consolation is the lower 12% rate.
• Processing is charged on sales tax. The 3% applies to the tax-inclusive buyer total, so your processing fee is slightly larger than 3% of what you actually receive.
• Fixed fees crush cheap items. On an $8 item with $4 shipping, the three core fees total $1.59 — 13.25% of the order, versus 11% on the $30 order. The $0.45 of flat fees ($0.20 + $0.25) is why low-priced listings need disproportionately higher margins.

Run your own numbers

Prefer the full page? The standalone Etsy fee calculator runs the same math — each fee line, total fees, net profit, margin, effective fee rate, and the breakeven item price for your costs.

When Etsy is still worth it

An 11% baseline take (before ads) is competitive: eBay’s total take on a comparable order is higher once its final value fee on the tax-inclusive total is counted — see the eBay profit calculator. Poshmark charges a flat commission that is simpler but steeper on most price points (Poshmark fee breakdown), and Mercari’s structure has changed repeatedly in recent years (Mercari fee breakdown).

Etsy’s real cost question is usually not the 11% — it’s whether your shop will cross $10,000 and carry a 12% Offsite Ads surcharge on a slice of orders forever. For handmade and vintage goods with healthy margins, the marketplace’s buyer traffic generally earns its keep; for thin-margin, mass-produced items, the fixed fees and ad exposure deserve a hard look in the calculator first.

Go deeper:

• Etsy fee calculator — the standalone version of the calculator above.
• eBay profit margin: the fees most resellers miss — same exercise for eBay’s fee stack.
• Mercari fees and Poshmark fees — side-by-side alternatives for the same item.

Educational content, not financial advice. Fee rates verified for US sellers as of June 10, 2026; Etsy revises its fee schedule periodically — check your seller dashboard for the rates applied to your shop.