Ask a new Etsy seller what Etsy charges and you'll usually hear "about 6.5%". The real figure, once every fee is counted, is typically 14–17% of what the buyer pays — and it can pass 30% on an offsite-ad sale. Here is the full stack, in the order it hits your payment account.
Listing fee — £0.15. Charged when you list, and again each time a multi-quantity listing renews after a sale, so in practice it's per unit sold. Transaction fee — 6.5% of the total the buyer pays: item price, shipping and gift wrap. The shipping part is the one that surprises people. Payment processing — 4% + £0.20 on the total, via the mandatory Etsy Payments. UK regulatory operating fee — 0.48% of the total (it rose from 0.25% on 22 June 2026; easy to miss on your statement). And if you're not VAT-registered, 20% VAT is added to every one of those fees — not to your sale, to Etsy's charges.
Buyer pays £13.50. Seller is not VAT-registered, sale didn't come through an offsite ad:
| Fee | Amount |
|---|---|
| Listing fee | £0.15 |
| Transaction fee (6.5% of £13.50) | £0.88 |
| Payment processing (4% + £0.20) | £0.74 |
| Regulatory operating fee (0.48%) | £0.06 |
| VAT on fees (20%) | £0.37 |
| Total Etsy fees | £2.20 |
That's 16.3% of the £13.50 — two and a half times the headline 6.5%. If the item cost you £4.79 to make and the postage really costs £3.50, your profit on this sale is £3.01.
Two of the components are flat: the £0.15 listing fee and the £0.20 processing fee. On a £50 order they're noise; on a £5 order they're 7% by themselves. If you sell low-priced items — stickers, digital downloads — your effective fee rate climbs towards 20% before you've counted a single cost of your own. Bundling several items into one order is the standard countermeasure: one set of flat fees instead of three.
Offsite Ads — 15% of the order if Etsy's advertising brought the buyer and your shop is under the ~£8,000/year threshold (you can opt out); 12% and mandatory above it. We've written a separate guide to offsite ads because it deserves one. Currency conversion — 2.5% if your listing currency differs from your bank's; UK sellers listing in GBP with a GBP account avoid this entirely.
Fee rates verified August 2026 and editable in the calculator when they change. This is general information, not tax or accounting advice.