Worked Numbers
Etsy Fee Calculator: What Etsy Actually Takes, Worked Through
For a US seller, Etsy takes a $0.20 listing fee, a 6.5% transaction fee on the item price plus shipping, and a payment processing fee of 3% + $0.25. On an $18.00 item with no shipping charge that comes to $2.16, and you keep $15.84. But the headline percentages hide the important part: because two of those fees are flat, the share Etsy takes is not a fixed percentage. It is a curve, and it is steepest on cheap items - 18.5% of a $5.00 sale against 10.1% of a $75.00 one.
The Etsy fee formula
Every percentage fee is charged on the gross order - the item price plus whatever you charge for shipping (and gift wrap). The two flat fees ride on top:
total fees = $0.20 + gross x 6.5% + gross x 3% + $0.25
= gross x 9.5% + $0.45
effective take rate = 9.5% + $0.45 / gross
That last line is the whole story. The 9.5% part is constant. The $0.45 part is divided by the order size, so it is large on a small order and close to nothing on a big one. No price ever gets you below 9.5%, and no price is safe from the flat part entirely.
These are the US numbers from Etsy’s own Fees & Payments Policy and Etsy Payments Policy, checked on October 13, 2026. Etsy changes its fees from time to time, so confirm against those pages before you rely on any figure here.
Worked example: one $18.00 order
An illustrative item priced at $18.00, with free shipping and no Offsite Ads:
| Fee | How it is charged | On this order |
|---|---|---|
| Listing | $0.20 flat | $0.20 |
| Transaction | 6.5% of item + shipping | $1.17 |
| Payment processing | 3% of the order + $0.25 | $0.79 |
| Total | $2.16 | |
| You keep | $15.84 (12.0% taken) |
Of the $2.16 in fees, the two flat fees are 21%. That share is what moves as the price moves.
The take rate is a curve
Same fee schedule, same formula, only the price changes (no shipping charged, no ads):
| Price | Total fees | You keep | Effective take rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| $5.00 | $0.93 | $4.07 | 18.5% |
| $10.00 | $1.40 | $8.60 | 14.0% |
| $18.00 | $2.16 | $15.84 | 12.0% |
| $25.00 | $2.83 | $22.17 | 11.3% |
| $40.00 | $4.25 | $35.75 | 10.6% |
| $75.00 | $7.58 | $67.42 | 10.1% |
On the $5.00 item the flat fees are 49% of everything Etsy takes - nearly half. On the $75.00 item they are 6%. The percentage fees scale with you; the flat ones punish the small sale.
Where does it stop hurting? Because the take rate is 9.5% plus $0.45 divided by the price, you can solve for any target. At $45.00 the take rate is 10.5% - within one point of the floor. Above that, raising the price barely changes your percentage. Below it, every dollar of price you drop makes Etsy’s share noticeably bigger.
This is the arithmetic behind a common decision: a shop full of cheap items pays a much higher effective rate than a shop with fewer, dearer ones, on the same nominal fees. For a marketplace that also ships the order, the Amazon FBA fees post works through a per-unit fee stack.
Etsy fees for digital products
Digital downloads pay the same fees - listing, transaction and payment processing - just with no shipping in the gross. That makes them the extreme case of the curve, because digital items are often cheap. A $5.00 printable pays $0.93 in fees and you keep $4.07: a 18.5% take rate.
Two practical consequences:
- If you list a digital file with more than one in stock, Etsy renews the listing after each sale and charges the $0.20 again. So the listing fee is effectively per sale, which is how the table treats it.
- To work backward to a price, do not just divide by one minus the percentage. To keep $10.00, dividing by one minus 9.5% gives $11.05, which actually leaves you $9.55 - the flat fees eat the difference. The right formula is (target + $0.45) / (1 - 9.5%), which gives $11.55.
Does free shipping cost more in fees?
No - and this one is worth testing, because the opposite is widely repeated. Take an illustrative $20.00 item with $5.00 postage:
| Charge shipping separately | Free shipping, built into price | |
|---|---|---|
| Item price | $20.00 | $25.00 |
| Shipping charged | $5.00 | none |
| Total fees | $2.83 | $2.83 |
The difference is $0.00. Etsy charges the 6.5% transaction fee on shipping as well as the item, and payment processing on the whole order, so the gross and every fee are identical either way. The reverse advice - “charge shipping separately to avoid the 6.5%” - is wrong for the same reason; the $0.33 it claims to save is charged regardless. Decide free shipping on how buyers and search respond, not on fees.
What is extra, and only sometimes
Offsite Ads. If a buyer reaches your shop through one of Etsy’s external ads and orders within the attribution window, Etsy charges 15% of the whole order including shipping - or 12% once your shop has made $10,000 in sales over the prior year, capped at $100 per order (a cap that only binds on orders above $666.67 at the 15% rate). On the $18.00 example, an Offsite Ads order costs $4.86 in fees, leaves $13.14, and takes the rate to 27.0% (24.0% at the lower rate). You would need about 21% more orders to net the same money, so it is worth knowing which of your sales carry it.
Currency conversion. If you list in a currency other than your payment account currency, Etsy charges 2.5% of the sale to convert. On the $18.00 order that lifts total fees to $2.61, or 14.5%. Listing in your own currency avoids it.
Other countries. Payment processing rates depend on where your bank account is, some countries add a regulatory operating fee, and outside the US the transaction fee also applies to taxes included in the price. If you do not sell from the US, use your own country’s row from the Etsy Payments Policy - the formula above still holds with your numbers.
Not included anywhere above: Etsy Ads (the on-site ads you set a daily budget for), optional subscriptions, any one-time shop set-up fee, and the cost of renewing listings that expire unsold every four months.
How these were calculated
Fees were taken from Etsy’s Fees & Payments Policy and Etsy Payments Policy (US seller, Etsy Payments, checked October 13, 2026) and applied to the gross order: item price plus shipping. Sales tax is left out; in the US the transaction fee does not apply to sales tax, but the payment processing fee is charged on the gross order including tax where tax is collected, so a taxed order pays slightly more than shown. Every figure on this page was computed twice - once by the code behind the products below and once by an independent implementation written from Etsy’s published schedule - and the two agree to the cent; the build also refuses to run if the product’s fee constants stop matching the official ones. Prices are illustrative, not typical. This is not financial, legal or tax advice.
If you want this run on your own prices, postage, materials and ad mix - including what you earn per hour once fees are out - the spreadsheet and the worked kit below do exactly this arithmetic.