How Much Does It Cost to Sell on Etsy? The Real Fee Math

How much does it cost to sell on Etsy? Three mandatory fees for a US seller: a $0.20 listing fee per item, a 6.5% transaction fee on item price plus shipping, and 3% plus $0.25 payment processing per order. That is roughly 10 to 13 percent of a typical sale. There is no required monthly fee.

Below we work the math at four price points and name the fee Etsy will not explain. New to the platform? Start with our how to sell on Etsy guide.

How Much Does It Cost to Sell on Etsy?

How much does it cost to sell on Etsy comes down to which of five fee layers touch your shop: three are mandatory on every sale, and two only apply if you opt in or cross a revenue line. The mandatory three are the listing fee, the transaction fee, and the payment processing fee. The situational two are Offsite Ads and the optional subscriptions.

That percentage spread is not hand waving; it moves with your order size, because two of the fees are flat and two are percentages. A $20 order gives up a bigger share than a $162 order, and the tables below show exactly where the money goes on both. Most fee guides work one example and stop. We work four, because the difference between them is the difference between a hobby that pays for itself and one that quietly does not.

What Are the Mandatory Etsy Fees on Every Sale?

The mandatory Etsy fees on every sale are the listing fee, the transaction fee, and the payment processing fee, and all three are defined in Etsy's official Fees and Payments Policy. Everything else on your statement is optional, situational, or tied to a program you can identify by name. Learn these three and no line on the bill will surprise you.

The $0.20 Etsy Listing Fee and When It Renews

The $0.20 listing fee is charged the moment an item is published, whether or not it ever sells. It is shelf rent. An unsold listing renews automatically every four months at another $0.20, and in a multi-quantity listing the fee is charged again for each unit sold. Twenty active listings cost $4.00 to put up and $12.00 a year to keep up if nothing moves.

What the 6.5% Etsy Transaction Fee Covers

The Etsy transaction fee is 6.5 percent of the full amount the buyer pays: item price, shipping charge, and gift wrap together. The rate has held at 6.5 percent since April 2022, when Etsy raised it from 5 percent. The detail that catches new sellers is the base: not the item price, the whole order.

The Etsy Payment Processing Fee

The payment processing fee for US sellers is 3 percent of the order total plus $0.25 per order, charged for handling the card, wallet, or bank payment through Etsy Payments. It lands on the same base as the transaction fee, so the two percentages stack on every dollar of item price and shipping. Rates differ outside the US by country; Etsy's help center carries the current schedule for each region, and non-US sellers should read their own line rather than borrow the US numbers.

The $15 to $29 Shop Set-Up Fee Nobody Explains

The shop set-up fee is the one Etsy documents least. The fee policy lists a one-time set-up charge collected during onboarding for new shops in some regions, and sellers report being billed anywhere from $15 to $29. Etsy does not publish which shops pay which amount or what the criteria are. Budget for it, and treat anything you read that claims to know the exact trigger with suspicion, because Etsy itself has not said.

How Much Does Etsy Take From a $100 Sale?

Etsy takes $9.95 from a flat $100 sale when no ad fee applies: $0.20 listing, $6.50 transaction, and $3.25 processing, just under 10 percent. Real orders have shipping on top, so the table below works four realistic carts instead of one round number. Each fee layer lands in a fixed order on the same base.

We computed the table below ourselves from Etsy's published rates, applied to four orders a real craft shop actually sees. No page ranking for this question works the math at more than one price point, and the pattern only shows up when you run several: the flat fees punish small orders, and the percentage fees never let go of big ones.

Read the fourth column before the third. On the $20 order you keep $17.65, and the effective rate is 11.8 percent because the $0.20 listing fee and the $0.25 processing floor are the same size no matter how small the sale. By the $162 order those flat fees vanish into rounding and the rate settles just under 9.8 percent, which is as low as the mandatory stack ever gets. If your average order is small, you are paying the highest version of Etsy there is.

What Is the Etsy Offsite Ads Fee, and When Is It Mandatory?

The Etsy Offsite Ads fee is 15 percent of the order for shops under $10,000 in trailing 12 month Etsy sales and 12 percent for shops at or above that line, per Etsy's official Offsite Ads page. It applies only when a specific order traces back to a click on an ad Etsy placed on an outside site, and it is capped at $100 per order. Under $10,000 you may opt out. At or above $10,000, enrollment is mandatory and permanent, and the rate drops to 12 percent as consolation.

Run it on the middle order from our table. The $58 cart already paid $5.96 in mandatory fees; if that order came through an Offsite Ad at 15 percent, another $8.70 lands on top, and the total take becomes $14.66, which is 25.3 percent of the order. That is how a shop with healthy margins on paper ends up puzzled by its deposit. The ad fee does not spread across your month; it lands whole, on single orders.

Is There a Monthly Fee to Sell on Etsy?

There is no mandatory monthly fee to sell on Etsy. A standard shop with active listings owes nothing per month except the $0.20 renewals as listings hit their four month mark. The recurring charges that do exist are subscriptions you choose. The percentages are the rent; the subscriptions are the upsell.

The percentages are the rent; the subscriptions are the upsell.

What Etsy Plus Includes for $10 a Month

Etsy Plus costs $10 per month and bundles roughly $3 in listing credit, $5 in Etsy Ads credit, and extra shop customization options. If you use both credits every month, the net cost is about $2. If you list sporadically and run no ads, it is $120 a year for cosmetics. One thing it does not buy is placement: Etsy's own explanation of how search works ranks listings on query match, engagement, shop quality, and shipping signals, not on subscription status.

Currency Conversion and Other Situational Fees

Currency conversion costs 2.5 percent whenever your listing currency differs from your payment account currency, per Etsy's currency conversion policy, and matching the two currencies removes the fee entirely. The fee policy also lists Pattern, Etsy's optional standalone website product, at $15 per month, and sellers in certain countries pay a small regulatory operating percentage that Etsy itemizes by country in its help center. None of these touch a US shop that sells in dollars and skips the add-ons.

How Do Etsy Fees Compare to Shopify, Amazon, and eBay?

Etsy fees compare to Shopify, Amazon, and eBay as the cheapest way in and rarely the cheapest way to scale. Etsy asks for no monthly commitment and takes its cut per sale; the others trade a subscription or a higher commission for traffic or control. The table carries the date each rate was pulled, because every marketplace changes its card on its own schedule.

Two numbers in that table deserve a second look. eBay's final value fee moved from 13.25 to 13.6 percent for most categories on February 14, 2025, per eBay's official selling fees page, so older comparisons understate it. And Shopify's percentage looks better than Etsy's until you remember the $39 flat bill arrives whether you sold anything or not.

Low volume favors Etsy's pay-per-sale model; high steady volume favors a flat bill with a smaller percentage. Where the flip happens depends on your average order and shipping, so run your own trailing three months through the table above rather than trusting anyone's breakeven headline, ours included.

Does Etsy Collect Sales Tax for Sellers?

Etsy collects sales tax for sellers automatically on qualifying orders in 45 US states plus DC and Puerto Rico under marketplace facilitator laws, and it remits that tax itself at no extra charge to the seller, per Etsy's US sales tax help page. The collection happens at checkout without any setting on your side.

What that does not do is end your tax obligations. Sellers can still owe registration or filings in their own state once they cross economic nexus thresholds, and sales made off Etsy are not covered at all. Those are questions for an accountant who can see your actual numbers. We set up shops and work fee math; we do not give tax advice, and neither should a blog post.

When Does Paying Etsy Fees Stop Making Sense?

Paying Etsy fees stops making sense when a flat monthly store bill would cost you less than the roughly 10 percent Etsy takes, and only your own volume can say when that is. We have sold online since 2005 and run stores on six platforms daily, including our own supply store operating since 2009, so the fee stack on this page is one we reconcile in a real shop manager, not a rate card we read secondhand. The honest pattern from that experience: sellers leave Etsy too early far more often than too late.

The middle path is running both, which many sellers reach eventually: Etsy for discovery, your own store for repeat buyers. When your volume argues for that switch, our ecommerce consulting service walks the numbers with you before you commit to anything.

What an Etsy Shop Set-Up Service Handles

Stateline Tech provides an Etsy and marketplace set-up service for sellers who want the shop built right the first time: registration, policies, listings written to match how Etsy search actually ranks, and the fee settings from this article configured deliberately instead of by default. You get a quote before we start, and current rates are on our marketplace set-up pricing page rather than pasted here to go stale.

Frequently Asked Questions About Etsy Fees

Is It Free to Sell on Etsy?

It is not free once you list and sell. Opening an account costs nothing in most regions, though some new shops pay a one-time set-up fee at onboarding. Publishing a listing costs $0.20, and every sale pays the 6.5 percent transaction fee plus 3 percent and $0.25 payment processing. The percentages only apply when something actually sells.

What Is the $29 Fee on Etsy?

The $29 fee is the one-time shop set-up charge some new sellers pay during onboarding. Etsy's fee policy lists a set-up fee but does not publish the amount or the criteria; sellers report charges between $15 and $29 with no stated reason for the difference. It is charged once at opening, never monthly, and existing shops do not pay it again.

Do You Have to Pay to Sell on Etsy Every Month?

No. There is no mandatory monthly charge to keep a shop open. The only recurring cost a standard shop faces is the $0.20 renewal as each unsold listing hits its four month mark. Etsy Plus at $10 per month and Pattern at $15 per month are optional subscriptions, and most shops run without either one.

Why Are So Many Sellers Leaving Etsy?

Fee stacking is the reason sellers cite most in public forums. The transaction fee rose from 5 to 6.5 percent in April 2022, Offsite Ads enrollment became permanent for shops past $10,000 a year, and the mandatory stack now takes 10 to 13 percent before any advertising. Whether built-in buyer traffic is worth that depends on your margins, which is exactly the math this page walks.

How Do You Keep Etsy Fees as Low as Possible?

Match your listing currency to your bank account currency to avoid the 2.5 percent conversion fee, opt out of Offsite Ads while your shop is under $10,000 if margins cannot absorb 15 percent, let stale listings expire instead of paying $0.20 renewals on items that never move, and skip Etsy Plus unless you actually spend its credits every month.

You now know what it really costs to sell on Etsy; if you would rather have the shop built and configured by someone who sells there daily, call Stateline Tech at (608) 214-5158 or start with our marketplace set-up service.