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A ceramic mug sells on Etsy for $50 with $6 shipping. The buyer pays $56. Etsy takes $5.77 of it before the money reaches you, and if the buyer came from an ad Etsy ran on your behalf, another $8.40 on top.
That second number is the one that ends arguments about Etsy fees, so we’ll get to it. First the fees every sale pays.
The figures below are from Etsy’s fees policy, updated 13 February 2026, and its Etsy Payments policy. Etsy’s site refuses automated readers, so where we’ve leaned on a third-party breakdown we say which.
Three fees on every sale
Listing: 20 cents. Charged when you publish, again when the listing renews after four months, and again each time an item sells and relists. A listing with five in stock that sells all five costs $1.00 in listing fees, not 20 cents.
Transaction: 6.5%. Etsy’s wording is “6.5% of the price you display for each listing plus the amount you charge for shipping and gift wrapping”. On the $50 mug with $6 shipping, that’s 6.5% of $56, or $3.64. The shipping you charge is fee-bearing income, not a pass-through.
Payment processing: 3% plus 25 cents for US sellers, on the total including shipping and any tax. On the mug, with tax left aside, $1.68 plus the 25 cents. This is the rate widely documented for US shops; Etsy’s own payments policy is the place to confirm it for your country.
Add them up: $0.20 + $3.64 + $1.93 = $5.77 on a $56 order, or 10.3%. Etsy’s headline fee is 6.5%. The fee you pay is closer to 10%.
Offsite Ads, the one you may not be able to refuse
Etsy runs ads for your listings on Google, Meta and elsewhere, and charges you when a buyer who clicked one buys within 30 days. The rate is 15% of the order if your shop made under $10,000 in the past 12 months, and 12% once it has made $10,000 or more. The fee is capped at $100 per order.
Under $10,000 you can turn Offsite Ads off. Cross $10,000 in any rolling 365-day period and enrolment becomes mandatory for the life of the shop, even if your sales fall back below the line later. Craftybase’s May 2026 breakdown puts it plainly: you’d need at least a 25–30% gross margin to come out ahead on an Offsite Ads sale after Etsy’s other fees.
On the mug, an attributed order at 15% is $8.40 more, taking Etsy’s share of that one sale to $14.17, or a quarter of what the buyer paid. It only applies to orders Etsy’s ads brought in, and for many shops that’s a small fraction. But the seller doesn’t choose which orders, and can’t see it coming.
That’s the case against. The case for Etsy is that the mug found a buyer at all, and that 6.5% is lower than eBay’s 13.6% or Amazon’s 15% on the same mug. Etsy’s fee is the price of a marketplace that already has the buyer looking for handmade ceramics.
The smaller ones
- Etsy Plus: an optional subscription with credits and customisation. Optional means optional; it doesn’t change the fees above.
- Currency conversion: if your listings are in a different currency from your payment account, Etsy converts at its rate and adds 2.5%.
- Regulatory operating fee: a small percentage added in some countries, not the US. Your country’s rate is on the fees page.
- Refunds: the transaction fee and processing fee are refunded in proportion to what you return to the buyer. The listing fee isn’t.
The worked example
Same $50 mug, $6 shipping, tax handled by Etsy.
| Ordinary sale | Sale from an Offsite Ad (shop under $10k) | |
|---|---|---|
| Listing fee | $0.20 | $0.20 |
| Transaction fee, 6.5% of $56 | $3.64 | $3.64 |
| Payment processing, 3% + $0.25 | $1.93 | $1.93 |
| Offsite Ads, 15% of $56 | $0 | $8.40 |
| Total Etsy fees | $5.77 | $14.17 |
| You keep (before postage and clay) | $50.23 | $41.83 |
Where this meets your other shops
If the mug is also listed on your own site, or on TikTok Shop, the fee maths is the easy part. The hard part is the last mug. Etsy doesn’t announce a sale; we ask it every five minutes, then correct every other shop within seconds. TikTok tells us instantly, so an Etsy count drops the moment a TikTok buyer pays. Either way, you don’t ship a mug you’ve already sold.
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The short version
- Every sale pays 20 cents to list, 6.5% of price plus shipping, and about 3% plus 25 cents to process. Call it 10%.
- Offsite Ads add 15% (12% over $10,000 a year) to orders Etsy’s ads brought in, capped at $100. Mandatory for life once you pass $10,000.
- Shipping you charge is inside the fee base. Price it that way.
- Refunds return the percentage fees, never the listing fee.
If Etsy is one of the places you sell, we keep the stock count matched across all of them. Start 14-day trial, no credit card.