Etsy Fees Explained — What You Actually Pay in 2026
Understand US Etsy listing, transaction, processing, Offsite Ads, and refund fees. Official sources and a worked order example show what you keep in 2026.
The short answer
Etsy charges $0.20 per listing, 6.5% of the total order, and 3% + $0.25 to process the payment on the US rate. The detail most sellers miss is that the 6.5% applies to the shipping you charge the buyer, not just the item price — so a $30 item with $6 shipping costs $3.87 in fees, a 10.8% take rate, not the 6.5% the headline suggests.
What Etsy actually charges
Etsy’s headline number is 6.5%. Your real take rate is closer to 11% before advertising, and it can pass 25% on an order that comes through Offsite Ads. The gap is not hidden — it is just spread across five separate charges that arrive at different moments, so it never shows up as one line on a statement.
Here is every fee that touches a standard US Etsy order in 2026, in the order you encounter it.
1. Listing fee — $0.20 per item
You pay $0.20 when you create a listing, and again when it renews. A listing lasts four months or until it sells, whichever comes first. On a multi-quantity listing the fee applies to each unit sold, so a listing with ten units in stock will cost you $0.20 ten times as they sell through.
This is the one fee you pay whether or not anything sells. Slow-moving inventory quietly accumulates listing-fee drag: fifty listings renewing every four months is $30 a year before a single sale.
2. Transaction fee — 6.5% of the whole order
When an order comes in, Etsy takes 6.5% of the total order amount. That total includes the item price, the shipping you charge, and gift wrapping — not just the item.
This is the single most common miscalculation in Etsy pricing, and it works against exactly the sellers who try hardest to compete on postage. Offering free shipping does not dodge it: you have moved the shipping cost into the item price, and the item price is part of the same base.
3. Payment processing — 3% + $0.25 in the US
Etsy Payments charges 3% plus $0.25 per order in the United States, also calculated on the order total including shipping. Both the percentage and the flat amount vary by country, so a seller in the UK or Germany should check their own rate rather than assuming the US figure.
The flat $0.25 is what makes low-priced items brutal. On a $5 sticker, the fixed portion alone is 5% of revenue before any percentage fee applies.
4. Offsite Ads — 15% or 12% of attributed orders
Etsy advertises listings on Google, Facebook, Instagram, and elsewhere. When a sale is attributed to one of those ads, Offsite Ads takes a further cut of that order:
- 15% if your shop has made less than $10,000 in any consecutive 365-day period
- 12% if it has made $10,000 or more
Shops under the threshold can opt out. Shops that have ever crossed it since 20 February 2019 cannot — participation is permanent, even if revenue later falls back below $10,000. The fee is capped at $100 per order.
Our calculator estimates the tier from annualized scenario revenue and cannot see your historical shop status. If you previously crossed the threshold, check your permanent 12% terms even when the scenario has lower sales.
The rate reduction is real but modest consolation: crossing $10,000 moves you from an optional 15% to a compulsory 12%.
5. Refunds — cheaper than you would guess, but not free
When you issue a refund yourself, Etsy credits the transaction fee and the payment processing fee back to your payment account proportionally. The listing fee comes back only if you also cancel the transaction. When Etsy covers a refund itself — through its Purchase Protection programme, for instance — those fees are not credited back to you.
So a refund costs you the revenue, the goods, and the shipping you already paid for, but usually not the platform’s cut. That makes your refund rate a cost of goods problem rather than a fee problem, which is a useful thing to know when you are deciding whether to fight a return or approve it.
A real order, end to end
Take a $30 handmade item with $6 of shipping charged to the buyer. Materials cost $10, and postage and packaging cost you $7.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Item price | $30.00 |
| Shipping charged | $6.00 |
| Order total | $36.00 |
| Listing fee | −$0.20 |
| Transaction fee (6.5% of $36) | −$2.34 |
| Payment processing (3% of $36 + $0.25) | −$1.33 |
| Etsy fees | −$3.87 |
| Materials | −$10.00 |
| Postage and packaging | −$7.00 |
| Net profit | $15.13 |
That is a 42.0% net margin and a 10.8% take rate — well above the 6.5% headline, and worth knowing before you price.
Now put the same order through Offsite Ads at the 15% rate. The fee adds $5.40, Etsy’s cut becomes $9.27, and your profit falls to $9.73 — a 27.0% margin. The order is still profitable, which is the point: Offsite Ads are not a disaster, they are a 15-point margin event you should be pricing for rather than discovering afterwards.
The example assumes no sales tax, refunds or other overhead. Etsy Payments also charges its percentage on applicable sales tax; our calculator currently excludes that extra processing amount.
Fees that only apply to some sellers
- Shop setup — a one-time, non-refundable fee may apply; the amount is shown during onboarding and varies by location.
- Etsy Plus — an optional monthly subscription with extra listing credits and shop customisation. Model it as a fixed monthly cost, not a per-order one.
- Regulatory operating fee — charged in some countries, including the UK, France, Italy, Spain, and Turkey, as a percentage of the order total. Rates differ by country, so check Etsy’s own schedule for yours.
- Currency conversion — Etsy charges 2.5% when your listing currency differs from your payment account currency. A foreign buyer alone does not trigger that seller fee.
Our calculator models the US fee structure and does not yet include the regulatory operating fee or currency conversion, both of which vary by country. If either applies to you, treat the calculator’s output as a ceiling.
Pricing against these fees
Two numbers are worth knowing for every product you sell.
Your break-even price is the price at which an order nets exactly zero after fees, materials, postage, and your share of ad spend. It is not your cost plus a percentage: because Etsy’s percentage fees scale with the price, the break-even calculation has to solve for the price rather than add a markup to it.
Your target price works the other way around: name the margin you want to keep and solve for the price that delivers it. A 40% margin on the order above needs a higher price than most sellers guess, because the fee base grows alongside the price.
The Etsy fee calculator does both, models Offsite Ads at your attribution rate, and separates per-order economics from monthly costs like Etsy Plus. Every fee it applies links to Etsy’s own published schedule with the date we last checked it, and every rate change is logged in our fee changelog.
Sources
All rates on this page were verified against Etsy’s published policies on 11 September 2026:
- Etsy Fees & Payments Policy — listing, transaction, and Offsite Ads fees
- Payment processing fees — the US rate and how it varies by country
- How Etsy’s Offsite Ads work — rate tiers, the $10,000 threshold, and the per-order cap
- Fees and taxes for selling on Etsy — what happens to fees on a refund