Worked example: a $38 handmade necklace
You list a necklace at $38 with $6 shipping, so the buyer pays $44. Etsy takes $0.20 for the listing, $2.86 as the 6.5% transaction fee (charged on the full $44, shipping included), and $1.57 for payment processing (3% + $0.25). That is $4.63 in platform fees — a 10.5% effective take rate. Your materials cost $8 and postage plus a padded mailer runs $5, leaving $26.37 net on a $44 order: a 60% margin on gross, which is healthy for handmade.
- • Now assume the same sale came through Offsite Ads at 12%: add $5.28 in fees and net drops to $21.09 — a 20% cut to your take-home on one checkbox you cannot opt out of once you pass $10k in annual sales.
- • Under-pricing shipping is the most common Etsy margin leak: charging $6 while paying $9 in postage silently converts a 60% margin into a 53% one.
- • Digital downloads skip COGS and shipping entirely, so the same fee stack leaves roughly 87–90% of the sale price.
Which Etsy fees are optional and which are not
Listing ($0.20 per listing, renewed every four months or on each sale), transaction (6.5%), and payment processing are unavoidable for US sellers. Offsite Ads are mandatory once your shop crosses $10,000 in trailing-twelve-month sales — but capped at $100 per order. Etsy Ads (on-site) and Etsy Plus are genuinely optional. Regulatory operating fees apply in some countries and stack on top of the fees above.
- • Sellers under $10k/year can opt out of Offsite Ads entirely in Shop Manager → Marketing.
- • Renewal fees are easy to miss: a listing that has not sold in a year has quietly cost you $0.60 in renewals.
- • Currency conversion adds roughly 2.5% when your bank currency differs from your listing currency.
Pricing so fees do not eat the shop
Work backwards from the margin you need rather than marking up costs. If you want a 50% net margin on a product with $11 of COGS and $7 of shipping cost, you need roughly $44–48 of gross order value once Etsy's ~11% take rate and the fixed $0.45 of per-order fees are covered. The break-even figure in the results above does exactly this math for your inputs — anything below it loses money on every sale.
Related guides
Long-form playbooks on the same topic, written by the RevenueLab editorial team.
Amazon FBA Fees Explained: A Sellers' Guide to Real Unit Economics in 2026
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Read the guideAmazon FBA Profit Guide 2026: Real Margins After Referral, FBA Fees, PPC, and Returns
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Read the guideFAQ
How much does Etsy take from a $100 sale?
For a US seller with no Offsite Ads: $0.20 listing + $6.50 transaction (6.5%) + $3.25 payment processing (3% + $0.25) = about $9.95, so you keep roughly $90 before your own costs. If the sale came through Offsite Ads at 12%, add $12 and you keep about $78.
Does Etsy charge fees on shipping?
Yes. The 6.5% transaction fee and payment processing both apply to the full order total including shipping and gift-wrap charges, which is why under-charging for shipping hurts twice.
Can I avoid the Offsite Ads fee?
Only if your shop has made less than $10,000 in the trailing twelve months — those sellers can opt out in Shop Manager. Above that threshold participation is mandatory, though the fee is capped at $100 per order and is only charged when a buyer actually clicks an Etsy-purchased ad and buys within 30 days.
What is a good profit margin on Etsy?
Handmade sellers who price properly usually land at 40–60% net margin after fees, materials, and shipping. Print-on-demand typically runs 20–35% because the fulfillment partner takes most of the item cost. Under 20% leaves no room for ads, returns, or a bad shipping month.
Is the Etsy listing fee charged again when an item sells?
Yes if you have auto-renew on — a sold listing renews for another $0.20. Multi-quantity listings renew for each unit sold.
How this calculator is built
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Written by Sam Doshi and the RevenueLab editorial team. We don't sell the data feeds this tool is built on.
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