How to Price Print-on-Demand Products (Formula + Tables)

To price a print-on-demand product, add up your product cost, shipping, Etsy’s fees and the profit you want, then check that the price still works when a sale comes from an Offsite Ad. With Etsy’s standard US fees, the formula is: price = (product cost + shipping + target profit + $0.45) ÷ 0.905.

Below you’ll find where each number in that formula comes from, ready-made price tables for tees, hoodies, mugs and posters, size-based pricing, what discounts and Offsite Ads do to your profit, and when to raise prices. All costs are illustrative US examples at the time of writing, so swap in your own.

The print-on-demand pricing formula

The formula has four inputs and two fixed numbers from Etsy’s US fee schedule:

• Product cost: your provider’s base price for that product, size and color, after any plan discount.
• Shipping: what your provider charges to ship to the buyer, if you offer free shipping and build it into the price.
• Target profit: the dollars you want to keep from each sale.
• $0.45: Etsy’s flat fees per order, the $0.20 listing renewal charged when a POD listing sells and the $0.25 payment processing fee.
• 0.905: what’s left after Etsy’s two percentage fees (100% minus the 6.5% transaction fee minus 3% payment processing).

Worked example: a basic tee with an illustrative $8.80 product cost and $4.75 of shipping, and a $9 profit target. That’s $8.80 + $4.75 + $9.00 + $0.45 = $23.00, and $23.00 ÷ 0.905 = $25.41. A list price of $25.99 clears your target with a little to spare.

To keep the same profit on a sale that came from an Offsite Ad, divide by 0.755 at the 15% rate or 0.785 at the 12% rate. The same tee would need $30.46 or $29.30. You don’t need to price every listing for that worst case; it’s usually enough to check that an ad-driven sale still makes some profit, which we cover below.

UK sellers pay 4% + £0.20 for payment processing, so the percentages total 10.5% and you’d divide by 0.895 instead. Etsy also adds VAT to its fees in the UK and EU, which lowers the divisor further if you can’t reclaim that VAT. Our guide to print-on-demand in the UK covers the details, and our breakdown of every Etsy fee explains each line.

Step 1: Know your true cost per sale

The product’s base price is only the start. For each product, write down:

• Base cost by size. 2XL and larger sizes cost more to make, so treat them as separate lines.
• First-item and additional-item shipping. Extra items from the same print partner usually ship for less, but items from different partners ship separately, each at its own first-item rate.
• Sales tax your provider charges you. Depending on where orders ship and whether you’ve given your provider a resale certificate, you may pay sales tax on production costs.
• Plan discounts. Printify Premium takes up to 20% off products for $24.99 a month billed yearly or $39 monthly. Our Printify Premium break-even guide shows when it pays.
• An allowance for problems. Providers cover their own misprints, but wrong sizes, address errors and goodwill replacements are on you. Printify itself suggests building a small margin into retail prices to cover returns.

Keep fixed monthly costs, such as design tools and samples, out of the per-item formula and treat them as a monthly target instead. Our guide to print-on-demand profit margins shows how many orders a monthly goal takes.

Step 2: Choose a target profit in dollars

Think in dollars, not percentages. Etsy’s flat fees and first-item shipping don’t shrink with the price, so a healthy-looking 30% margin on a $6.99 sticker is only about $2.10, while the same 30% on a $44.99 hoodie is about $13.50.

Set a minimum dollar profit for each product type and let it drive your prices. Our examples use $8–10 on apparel and $5–8 on mugs, but your numbers should reflect your time per order, your niche and how much room you want for ads and sales. If you plan to join Black Friday or other sale events, your normal price needs enough room to survive the discount; our Etsy Black Friday playbook has the math.

Price tables: tee, hoodie, mug and poster

The first table shows the minimum price for each profit target, using the formula. The second shows example list prices and what they actually leave you, including a sale from an Offsite Ad.

Notice the mug. At $19.99 it keeps $5.14, and heavy shipping leaves little room for an ad. Three dollars more takes it to $7.86, which is why mugs often do better priced a little above the tee than below it. Ranking which products carry the most margin is the job of our list of the best print-on-demand products.

Size-based pricing: charge more for bigger sizes

Providers charge more for larger sizes, so one price across all sizes quietly cuts your profit on every 2XL and up. Each extra dollar of cost needs about $1.10 of price (1 ÷ 0.905) to keep your profit the same.

On Etsy, turn on price variations for size; the price you enter for each option is the total price for that version, not an add-on. Printify publishes per-variant prices to Etsy when you set them in the product. The same logic applies to 15 oz mugs versus 11 oz and to poster sizes: bigger costs more, so it should earn at least the same dollars.

Step 3: Check the Offsite Ads scenario

Offsite Ads cost 15% of the order if your shop has never made $10,000 in a 365-day period (you can opt out), or 12% once it has, when they become mandatory. The fee is capped at $100 per order. Here’s the illustrative tee at three prices:

A practical rule: every product should still make some profit on an Offsite Ads sale. If it doesn’t, raise the price, or opt out while your shop is under the threshold. Etsy Ads, which you pay per click, need the same check; our guide to whether Etsy Ads are worth it works out the break-even point.

There’s a helpful opposite, too. When a buyer orders within 30 days of clicking a link you shared yourself through Etsy’s Share & Save program, Etsy credits back 4% of the order total. Our Pinterest plan for Etsy sellers shows one low-effort way to use those links.

Free shipping or charged shipping?

Etsy’s 6.5% transaction fee and payment processing both apply to shipping, so a $24.99 tee with free shipping and a $19.99 tee with $5.00 shipping pay exactly the same fees. The difference is search and buyer perception: US search has long favored listings with free shipping, and since October 2024 it has also favored US listings with domestic shipping under $6.

That’s why many POD sellers build first-item shipping into the price, as in all the tables above. Set your shipping profile so additional items add a small charge or none, depending on what your provider charges you for extra items. Our guide to Etsy shipping profiles for POD walks through the setup, including international orders.

Psychological pricing that fits Etsy

• Price endings are a convention, not a strategy. Prices ending in .99 are common on Etsy, but a charm price can’t rescue a price that’s far out of line with similar listings on page one.
• Build a ladder across products. A $24.99 tee, a $39.99 crewneck and a $44.99 hoodie with the same design give buyers an easy step up.
• Charge for personalization. Names and dates take time per order. A few dollars more on personalized listings (for example, $3–5) pays for that time.
• Use bundles and sets. Etsy lets you create discounted bundles, and matching family sets raise the order value while the $0.25 processing fee is charged once per order.
• Don’t race to the bottom. The cheapest listing on page one has the least room for ads, discounts and reprints. Compete on a design that feels made for the buyer.

Discount math: what a sale really costs you

Your provider charges full price for the product and shipping whatever discount you run, so every dollar off comes straight out of your profit. Here’s the $24.99 tee:

To find your deepest safe discount, work out the lowest price you’ll accept with the formula, then compare it with your list price. With a $5 minimum profit, the tee’s floor is $19.00 ÷ 0.905 = $20.99, so from $24.99 the deepest safe discount is 16% (Etsy promo codes use whole-number percentages from 5% to 75%).

One rule to know before sale season: Etsy tells sellers they can’t artificially raise a price just before a sale to make the discount look bigger; the original price has to be in place for a substantial time. If you want room for Black Friday, set the right price now, not in November.

When to raise or lower your prices

• Raise it when a listing sells steadily. Test $1–2 more for three to four weeks and watch whether orders hold up.
• Re-run the formula whenever your provider, shipping rates or Etsy fees change, and at least once a quarter for your best sellers.
• Keep the price and bank the saving when a plan like Printify Premium lowers your costs, unless you want to use the extra room for ads.
• Lower it last. If a listing gets views but no sales, the photo, title, shipping time or fit with the buyer is usually the problem. Work through our fixes for Etsy views with no sales before you cut the price.
• Price in refunds and reprints. Most misprints are your provider’s cost, but wrong sizes and address mistakes aren’t; our guide to print-on-demand returns and misprints explains who pays for what.

Pricing isn’t a one-time decision. Put your costs in a simple sheet, run every new product through the formula before you publish, and check your top sellers every quarter. That habit protects your margin better than any pricing trick.