Etsy Fees Explained (2026): What You Really Pay per Sale

On a typical US print-on-demand (POD) sale, Etsy’s standard fees come to about 11% of the order: a $0.20 listing fee, a 6.5% transaction fee and 3% + $0.25 for payment processing. If the sale came from an Offsite Ad, add another 12–15%. Those fees look small one at a time, but on a POD sale, where your provider already takes a big slice for the product and the postage, they decide whether a $24.99 t-shirt earns you about $8.60 or less than $5. Many new sellers only notice when their first payout is thinner than they expected.

This guide covers every fee Etsy charges a POD seller in 2026, what each one is calculated on, and a worked example with illustrative numbers, so you can set prices that still make money when every fee lands on the same order. If you’re a small shop pricing your first products, it’s the one page worth reading before you publish.

Every Etsy fee at a glance

Here’s the full list for a US-based seller at the time of writing. Most POD sales only trigger the first three; the rest depend on how the sale happened and where you live.

Two things surprise most new POD sellers. First, fees are charged on shipping too, not just the item price. Second, the listing fee isn’t a one-off: on a POD listing it’s charged again every time the item sells. Let’s take each fee in turn.

The $0.20 listing fee

Every listing costs $0.20 to publish and stays active for four months or until the item sells. POD listings usually carry a large quantity (your provider can print as many as you sell), so when one sells, Etsy automatically renews the listing and charges another $0.20. If a buyer orders several of the same item, you pay $0.20 for each additional quantity too. In practice, budget $0.20 per item sold, on top of the fee you paid to publish.

The good news for POD is that variations are free. One t-shirt listing with six sizes and eight colors is still one listing and one $0.20 fee.

The fee to watch is auto-renew. If it’s on, every listing that hasn’t sold renews every four months for another $0.20. That’s nothing on ten listings, but a 500-listing shop spends $100 every four months, or $300 a year, just keeping unsold listings live. A few habits keep this in check:

• Review before renewal. A listing with almost no views after two renewal cycles usually needs a new title, new tags or a better first photo, or it needs to go. Your Etsy stats show which listings those are.
• Don’t publish duplicates to test. Every publish from your provider creates a new $0.20 listing on Etsy.
• Publish on purpose. Fifty well-researched listings usually beat 500 random ones, and they cost far less to keep alive.

The 6.5% transaction fee

Etsy charges 6.5% of what the buyer pays for the item (including any personalization charge), plus what you charge for shipping and gift wrap. It isn’t charged on the sales tax Etsy collects. On a $24.99 t-shirt with free shipping, that’s $1.62.

Because shipping is included, moving money between your item price and your shipping price doesn’t change your fees. These two listings pay exactly the same transaction fee:

• $24.99 with free shipping: 6.5% of $24.99 = $1.62
• $19.99 plus $5.00 shipping: 6.5% of $24.99 = $1.62

So choose your shipping setup for buyers and search, not to dodge fees. Etsy has long given US listings with free shipping priority in US search, and from October 2024 it also began favoring US listings with domestic shipping under $6. That’s one reason POD sellers often build shipping into the item price (our guide to Etsy shipping profiles for POD walks through the setup).

Discounts need the same care. A 25% off sale on a $24.99 tee removes $6.25 from your revenue, but your provider still charges full price for the shirt and the postage. In our example below, that sale cuts profit from $8.62 to under $3. Run the numbers before you join a sitewide sale event; our Black Friday playbook for POD has a discount table.

Payment processing fees

Every order paid through Etsy Payments also carries a processing fee. In the US it’s 3% + $0.25 per order, calculated on everything the buyer pays: item, shipping and sales tax. Rates differ by country; UK sellers, for example, pay 4% + £0.20 at the time of writing.

Two details matter for POD sellers:

• It’s per order, not per item. A buyer who orders two shirts in one checkout pays one $0.25 flat fee, which is one small reason multi-item orders are more profitable.
• Sales tax counts. If a buyer’s state adds $2.00 of tax to a $24.99 order, processing is 3% of $26.99 plus $0.25, or about $1.06 instead of $1.00. Etsy collects and remits US sales tax for you, but the processing fee still applies to it.

Offsite Ads: the fee that surprises new sellers

Etsy advertises listings on other sites, such as Google, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. If a shopper clicks one of those ads and then buys from your shop within 30 days, you pay an Offsite Ads fee on that order.

The fee applies to the order total, including shipping and gift wrap but not sales tax. There’s nothing to pay upfront; you only pay when an ad leads to a sale. The catch is the size of the bite. On our $24.99 t-shirt, a 15% fee is $3.75, which takes more than 40% of the profit from that sale.

Once your shop has made $10,000 or more in any consecutive 365-day period, Offsite Ads become mandatory at the 12% rate, and under Etsy’s current rules they stay mandatory even if your sales later dip. Below that threshold, you can opt out from your Shop Manager.

Should you opt out? There’s no universal answer. The ads can bring buyers you wouldn’t reach on your own, and you never pay for clicks that don’t convert. But POD margins are thin. A practical rule: price every product so that an Offsite Ads sale still makes a profit, and if you can’t, either raise the price or opt out while you still can. If you’re getting close to $10,000 a year, plan your prices around the 12% scenario now, because opting out won’t be an option later.

Offsite Ads are separate from Etsy Ads, the pay-per-click ads you can buy inside Etsy search. Those are optional and have their own break-even math, covered in are Etsy Ads worth it for POD.

Currency conversion and country-specific fees

If you list in a currency that’s different from your payment account’s currency, Etsy charges 2.5% to convert each sale. The fix is simple: list in the same currency as your bank account. Etsy shows shoppers approximate prices in their own currency anyway, so a UK seller can list in pounds and still sell to US buyers.

Sellers outside the US have a few extra lines to watch:

• Different processing rates. Etsy Payments rates vary by country, so use the rate for yours rather than the US 3% + $0.25.
• VAT or similar taxes on fees. In the UK, the EU and some other countries, Etsy adds VAT or a similar tax to its seller fees.
• Regulatory operating fee. Sellers in some countries, including the UK, France, Italy, Spain and Turkey, pay a small extra percentage of each sale’s item and shipping total. The rate depends on the country.
• Your provider’s billing currency. If your POD provider bills you in US dollars and your card is in another currency, your bank may add its own conversion fee on every order.

If you sell from the UK, our guide to print-on-demand in the UK covers these fees alongside UK providers, VAT and shipping.

A worked example: one $24.99 POD t-shirt

Here’s a single sale for a US seller offering free shipping, first as a regular sale and then as a sale that came from an Offsite Ad. The product and shipping costs are illustrative; yours will depend on your provider, print partner and the buyer’s location.

Three things stand out:

• Etsy isn’t your biggest cost. Standard Etsy fees are $2.82, while the shirt and the postage are $13.55. Your provider’s prices and your own pricing matter more than any fee trick.
• Offsite Ads more than double your fees. The same sale drops from $8.62 to $4.87 in profit.
• Small price changes move profit a lot. Your costs are mostly fixed, so each extra dollar of price adds about 90 cents of profit.

Here’s the same shirt at three price points, with the same costs:

At $19.99, a sale from an Offsite Ad leaves you about a dollar. At $29.99, the same design has room for ads, discounts and the occasional reprint. A design that feels made for a specific buyer, rather than a generic slogan, is what gives you room to charge the higher price. Our pricing formula for POD products turns this into a price for any product, and how much you can make with print-on-demand runs the same math for hoodies, mugs and stickers.

Costs that aren’t Etsy fees (but still come out of your profit)

A fee calculator only shows Etsy’s side. For a true profit number, also count:

• Product and shipping from your provider, including higher costs for 2XL and larger sizes, and cheaper rates for additional items in the same order.
• Sales tax on your provider’s charges. Depending on where orders ship and whether you’ve given your provider a resale certificate, it may charge you sales tax on production costs. Check its tax settings, and see our overview of print-on-demand taxes.
• Provider subscriptions. Optional paid plans (such as Printify Premium) lower product costs and can pay for themselves once you’re selling regularly. Is Printify Premium worth it? has the break-even table.
• Reprints and refunds. Providers generally cover genuine misprints if you report them quickly with photos, but wrong-size orders and change-of-mind returns are usually on you.
• Samples, mockups and software, including any design or listing tool you pay for (ours included).
• Etsy Ads, if you pay to promote listings inside Etsy search.

Seven ways to keep more of each sale

1. Price from your costs up. Add product, shipping, Etsy fees and the profit you want, then check the Offsite Ads scenario before you publish.
2. Build shipping into the price if it lets you offer free or low-cost shipping. Your fees stay the same, and US search may favor the listing.
3. Decide on Offsite Ads deliberately while you’re under $10,000 a year, rather than finding out from your statement.
4. List in your payment account’s currency to avoid the 2.5% conversion fee.
5. Prune or refresh dead listings before they auto-renew again.
6. Use Share & Save for traffic you send yourself. Once you enroll, Etsy credits back 4% of eligible orders (at the time of writing) placed within 30 days of a shopper clicking a link you shared, for example from your social media, your newsletter or a low-effort Pinterest plan.
7. Encourage multi-item orders with coordinated designs and matching products. You pay one processing flat fee, and additional items usually ship for less.

Fee mistakes that quietly eat POD profit

• Pricing from competitors down. With the costs in our example, a $14.99 shirt loses money on every sale once fees and postage land.
• Forgetting the renewal on each sale. The $0.20 listing fee isn’t a one-off on POD listings.
• Ignoring Offsite Ads until the statement arrives. By then, the sales that made you nothing have already happened.
• Listing in the wrong currency. An extra 2.5% on every sale adds up quickly.
• Underpricing big sizes. 2XL and above cost more to make, so price those variants higher.