You sell a $24.99 t-shirt, the buyer pays $4.99 for shipping, and the payout in your Etsy payment account is well short of $29.98. The gap is a handful of fees, each with its own rule about what it is charged on, and a couple of them only show up on some orders.
This guide lists every fee Etsy charges a seller at the time of writing (2026), shows what each one is calculated on, and walks through one US order line by line, to the cent. Then it covers the costs that are not Etsy's at all, your print-on-demand provider and its shipping, and what an Offsite Ads sale does to the money you keep.
Fees change, and some depend on the country your shop is in. Treat the numbers here as a snapshot and confirm the current figures on Etsy's fees and payments policy before you set prices.
Every Etsy fee at a glance
Five fees cover almost every sale a US print-on-demand shop makes. Here is what each one is charged on and the rate at the time of writing.
| Fee | What it is charged on | Rate (US shop, 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Listing fee | Each listing you publish, then again each time a unit sells, because the listing auto-renews | US$0.20 |
| Transaction fee | The order total: item price plus shipping charged plus gift wrap | 6.5% |
| Payment processing | Each order paid through Etsy Payments | 3% + $0.25 per order |
| Offsite Ads fee | The order total, only when the sale came through an Offsite Ad | 15%, or 12% for shops over US$10,000 in the last 12 months; capped at US$100 per order |
| Currency conversion | Sales where your listing currency differs from your payout currency | 2.5% |
Two more costs depend on where your shop is based. Some countries add a regulatory operating fee, and sales tax and VAT rules differ by country. Those vary too much to quote here, so check the fees page for yours.
How each fee works
Listing fee: $0.20, and again after every sale
Publishing a listing costs US$0.20, and an unsold listing renews for another $0.20 every four months if auto-renew is on. The part that matters for pricing: each time an item sells, the listing renews automatically and you pay $0.20 again. Two of the same shirt in one order means two renewals, or $0.40. So count $0.20 per unit sold as a cost of the sale.
Transaction fee: 6.5% of the whole order
The transaction fee is 6.5% of the order total, which includes the item price, the shipping you charge and any gift wrap. Shipping is not fee-free: charge $4.99 for shipping and Etsy takes 6.5% of that too. It also means that folding shipping into the item price and offering free shipping changes nothing about this fee, as long as the total the buyer pays stays the same.
Payment processing: 3% + $0.25 per order in the US
Etsy Payments charges a percentage plus a fixed amount on each order. The fixed part is per order, not per item, so a buyer who puts three stickers in one order triggers one $0.25, not three. In the US the percentage also applies to any sales tax the buyer pays, so the line on your statement can be a few cents higher than a calculation that leaves tax out. Rates in other countries at the time of writing:
- United Kingdom: 4% + £0.20
- Canada: 3% + C$0.25
- Australia: 3% + A$0.25
- Germany and the EU: 4% + €0.30
Offsite Ads: 15% or 12%, only on ad-driven sales
Etsy promotes listings with ads on other websites and apps. When a buyer clicks one and then buys from your shop within Etsy's attribution window, you pay an Offsite Ads fee on that order: 15% of the order total, or 12% if your shop made more than US$10,000 in the last 12 months. Shops over that line cannot opt out; smaller shops can. The fee is capped at US$100 per order, and you pay nothing for ads that do not lead to a sale.
Currency conversion: 2.5% when currencies do not match
If your listings are priced in one currency and your payment account pays out in another, Etsy charges 2.5% to convert. A Canadian shop that lists in US dollars and is paid in Canadian dollars pays it on every sale. Listing in your payout currency avoids it.
A worked example: one $24.99 t-shirt order
Here is one order, an example with made-up but typical numbers for a print-on-demand shirt. The shop is in the US, lists and is paid in US dollars, and the sale did not come from an Offsite Ad. Sales tax is left out, and each fee is rounded to the cent.
- Order total. Item price $24.99 plus shipping charged $4.99 = $29.98. No gift wrap.
- Listing fee. One unit sold, so one auto-renewal: $0.20.
- Transaction fee. 6.5% of $29.98 = $1.9487, rounded to $1.95.
- Payment processing. 3% of $29.98 = $0.8994, plus $0.25 = $1.1494, rounded to $1.15.
- Total Etsy fees. $0.20 + $1.95 + $1.15 = $3.30, which is 11.0% of the order.
- What reaches your payment account. $29.98 minus $3.30 = $26.68.
If the same order had come through an Offsite Ad at 15%, add 15% of $29.98 = $4.497, or $4.50. Total fees would jump from $3.30 to $7.80 and the payout would drop to $22.18. You can rerun this with your own price, shipping, quantity and country in the free Etsy fees calculator, which runs in your browser, puts each fee on its own line and lets you switch Offsite Ads and currency conversion on or off.
The costs that are not Etsy's: your provider and shipping
The $26.68 is not profit. With print on demand, your provider bills you separately for each order, and those charges never appear on your Etsy statement. Two of them apply to every sale:
- Base cost. What the provider charges to make the product. It depends on the blank, the print method, the print area and often the size, since larger sizes such as 2XL and up tend to cost more.
- Provider shipping. What the provider charges to send the order to your buyer. You pay it whether you charge the buyer $4.99, nothing, or anything in between. The shipping price on your listing only decides how much of that cost the buyer covers directly.
Some providers also add sales tax or VAT to what they bill you, so check your provider's billing settings. Etsy Ads, the ads shown inside Etsy, are another cost outside the fee table: you pay per click from a daily budget, so divide a month's ad spend by that month's orders to get a cost per sale.
Back to the example. Say your provider charges $12.20 for the printed shirt and $4.75 to ship it, $16.95 in total. These are example figures; real provider prices vary by product and change over time.
$26.68 payout minus $16.95 to the provider leaves $9.73 profit, a margin of 32.5% of the $29.98 the buyer paid.
Etsy's share of that order was $3.30. The provider's was $16.95, more than five times as much, so when a margin feels thin, the provider's line is usually the bigger lever. The print-on-demand profit calculator puts base cost, provider shipping, ad spend and Etsy fees in one view, then shows your break-even price and the price you need for a target margin.
What Offsite Ads does to your margin
Offsite Ads is the fee that turns a healthy order into a thin one, because it is a percentage of the whole order and it lands on top of everything else. Here is the same example order three ways, with the same $16.95 provider cost:
| Scenario | Etsy fees | Profit | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| No Offsite Ad | $3.30 | $9.73 | 32.5% |
| Offsite Ad at 12% | $6.90 | $6.13 | 20.4% |
| Offsite Ad at 15% | $7.80 | $5.23 | 17.4% |
At 15%, one fee takes $4.50, which is 46% of the profit the order would otherwise have made. The rule of thumb is simple: if a product's margin before the ad fee is below 15%, every order that arrives through a 15% Offsite Ad loses money. What to do about it depends on your shop:
- Over US$10,000 in the last 12 months: Offsite Ads are mandatory. Your Etsy statement shows the fee on each order it applied to, so check how often it happens and price so an ad-driven order still makes money.
- Under US$10,000: opting out removes both the fee and the ads. Staying in brings orders you might not otherwise get, at a lower profit each. If the margin stays positive after a 15% fee, those orders still pay; if not, raise the price or opt out.
- Do not count on the cap. The US$100 limit only kicks in above about $667 at 15%, or $833 at 12%.
How to check the fees on your own orders
- Open one recent order in your Etsy payment account and write down each fee charged against it.
- Enter the same price, shipping, quantity and country into the fees calculator and compare line by line. A few cents more in processing usually means sales tax was part of the amount.
- Find the provider's charge for that order in its order history: base cost, shipping and any tax.
- Subtract the Etsy fees and the provider charge from the order total. That is the real profit of the sale. Repeat for one order of each product type you sell.
Fee mistakes that cost sellers money
- Counting the listing fee once. It is $0.20 for every unit sold, because each sale renews the listing.
- Leaving Offsite Ads out of the plan. A price that only works when no ad fee applies will lose money on some orders.
- Discounting without rechecking. A 20% sale cuts the fees a little, but your provider cost does not move at all, so profit falls much faster than the price.
- Using the US processing rate outside the US. The UK and EU rates are 4% plus a fixed amount, not 3%.
Fees are only one layer of a price. For the full method, from cost stack to target margin, read how to price print-on-demand products on Etsy.
FAQ
How much does Etsy take from a $20 sale?
For a US shop selling a $20 item with free shipping and no Offsite Ad, Etsy takes $0.20 for the listing renewal, $1.30 in transaction fees (6.5%) and $0.85 for processing (3% + $0.25), so $2.35 in total, or 11.8% of the sale. You would receive $17.65 before your provider's costs.
Does Etsy charge fees on shipping?
Yes. The 6.5% transaction fee applies to the order total, which includes the shipping you charge and any gift wrap, and processing is a percentage of the order too. Free shipping does not avoid it if you raise the item price to cover postage.
Can I turn off Etsy Offsite Ads?
Only if your shop made US$10,000 or less in the last 12 months. Above that, Offsite Ads are mandatory and the fee drops to 12%. Either way you only pay the fee on orders that came through one of the ads.
Why do Etsy fees take a bigger share of cheap items?
Two of the charges are fixed: the $0.20 listing fee and the $0.25 processing fee in the US. On a $10 item with free shipping the fees come to $1.40, or 14% of the sale, against 11.0% on the $29.98 order above.
