What do Etsy fees actually cost you? On a typical US order of $24.99 plus $4.99 shipping, Etsy takes $3.30, or about 11% of the money the buyer paid. That is the listing fee, the 6.5% transaction fee, and payment processing added together. Turn on Offsite Ads and a single attributed order can cost you 26% instead.
The 6.5% number gets quoted everywhere, and it is the one that misleads people, because it is never the only fee on the invoice. Here is the whole stack, checked against Etsy's own Fees & Payments Policy, with the arithmetic done out loud.
The fees on every sale
Three charges hit almost every order. The rest depend on where you bank, what you advertise, and how you list.
| Fee | Amount | Charged on |
|---|---|---|
| Listing fee | $0.20 USD | Publishing or renewing a listing, whether or not it sells |
| Transaction fee | 6.5% | Item price plus shipping plus gift wrap (not US sales tax) |
| Payment processing | 3% + $0.25 in the US | The total sale, including shipping and tax |
Two details in that table cost sellers real money and almost nobody reads them.
The transaction fee applies to shipping. If you charge $6 for shipping, Etsy takes 6.5% of that $6 too. Free shipping does not dodge it either, because you have folded the cost into the item price, which is also charged at 6.5%. There is no arrangement where shipping revenue escapes the fee.
Listings expire after four months and renew automatically at $0.20 unless you switch the listing to manual. If you list multiples of the same item, the listing renews at $0.20 after each unit sells. A shop with 400 listings that never sell anything still spends $80 every four months just staying open.
A $25 sale, all the way down
Take a shirt priced at $24.99 with $4.99 shipping, sold by a US seller to a US buyer. The order total is $29.98.
| Line | Math | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Order total | $24.99 + $4.99 | $29.98 |
| Listing fee | flat | -$0.20 |
| Transaction fee | 6.5% of $29.98 | -$1.95 |
| Payment processing | 3% of $29.98 + $0.25 | -$1.15 |
| Etsy total | 11.0% of the order | -$3.30 |
| Left before costs | $26.68 |
Now the part Etsy does not charge you for but you still pay: the blank, the printing, and the label. A printed shirt from a print on demand partner usually lands somewhere between $9 and $14 delivered, depending on the garment and where it ships. Call it $11.
That leaves roughly $15.68 on a $29.98 order. Not bad. It is also the best case, because it assumes the order arrived through free search traffic.
Offsite Ads is the fee that changes the answer
Etsy buys advertising for your listings on Google, Meta and elsewhere. If a buyer clicks one of those ads and then orders from your shop within 30 days, you pay an advertising fee on that order:
15% if your shop has made less than $10,000 USD in the prior 365 days.
12% once you cross $10,000, and 12% for the lifetime of the shop after that.
Capped at $100 USD per order, with no cap on how many orders can be charged.
Under $10,000 in annual sales you can opt out. Once you cross that threshold, participation is mandatory, permanently, even if your sales drop back below it later. Crossing $10,000 is the moment the fee stops being optional and starts being a cost of doing business.
Run the same $29.98 order as an attributed Offsite Ads sale at 15%:
$3.30 in standard fees + $4.50 in Offsite Ads = $7.80, which is 26% of the order.
After the $11 product cost, you keep $11.18 instead of $15.68. The order is still profitable. A $12 order at the same 26% often is not, which is the real argument for pricing above the cheap end of your category rather than under it.
The fees people forget
Currency conversion, 2.5%. If you list in a currency other than your payment account currency, Etsy charges 2.5% on the sale amount to move the funds. Sellers outside the US who list in USD because "that is where the buyers are" pay this on every single order. List in your payout currency and the fee disappears.
Payment processing is not 3% + $0.25 everywhere. That rate is for US bank accounts. A few others, straight from Etsy's table:
| Bank account location | Processing fee |
|---|---|
| United States | 3% + $0.25 USD |
| United Kingdom | 4% + £0.20 GBP |
| Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands (and most of the eurozone) | 4% + €0.30 EUR |
| Canada (domestic or US orders) | 3% + $0.25 CAD |
| Australia (domestic orders) | 3% + $0.25 AUD |
| Türkiye | 6.5% + 14 TRY |
A seller banking in Türkiye pays 6.5% processing on top of the 6.5% transaction fee. Same listing, same buyer, roughly double the cut a US seller gives up. That is worth knowing before you model your margins on a blog post written for a US shop.
Regulatory operating fees. Sellers in certain countries pay an extra fixed percentage on the item plus shipping. The list and the rates are country specific and Etsy publishes them separately.
VAT on the fees themselves. Every number above is quoted before VAT. Depending on your location and business status, Etsy adds VAT to what it charges you.
Subscriptions. Etsy Plus is $10 per month and includes 15 listing credits and $5 of Etsy Ads credits, which expire monthly. Etsy states plainly that subscribing to Etsy Plus does not influence where your listings appear in search. Pattern is a separate $15 per month after a 30 day trial.
What this should change about your prices
Work backwards instead of forwards. Pick the profit you want per order, then add product cost, then divide by the fee multiplier.
For a US seller not running Offsite Ads, keeping about 89% of the order total, the arithmetic is:
(product cost + target profit) ÷ 0.89 = the price the buyer needs to pay, shipping included.
An $11 product with a $10 target profit needs an order total of about $23.60. If you want that same $10 to survive an Offsite Ads order at 15%, the total has to be about $28.40. Pricing at the top of that range and treating the difference as insurance is a lot less painful than discovering in December that a quarter of your holiday orders came through Offsite Ads.
Three habits do most of the work here:
Price the order, not the item. Fees apply to shipping, so the shipping charge is part of what you are pricing.
Watch the $10,000 line. Before you cross it, Offsite Ads is a choice. After it, it is permanent, and your prices should already assume it.
List in your payout currency unless you have a specific reason not to. It is a free 2.5%.
Key takeaways
A typical US order costs about 11% in Etsy fees: $0.20 listing, 6.5% transaction, 3% + $0.25 processing.
The transaction fee applies to shipping and gift wrap, not just the item price.
Offsite Ads is 15% under $10,000 in annual sales and 12% after, capped at $100 per order, and it becomes mandatory once you cross the threshold.
Processing fees vary a lot by country. Check your own rate before copying anyone's margin math.
Listing in a currency other than your payout currency costs an extra 2.5% per sale.
Fees are the easy half of profit because they are knowable. The harder half is charging enough to absorb them, which starts with a listing good enough that nobody is comparing you only on price. Our guide to writing Etsy titles that rank is a decent place to start on that.
