The order
Sales tax
Etsy adds 3% processing on the tax it collects. Set this to 0 if the order carried none. Five states have no state sales tax: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon.
Your costs
Shop settings
You take home
A US sale is the cheapest Etsy sale to make. No regulatory operating fee, no VAT on Etsy's own fees, and a payment processing rate of 3% that only Australia, New Zealand and Canada match. That is why a US seller keeps more of the same order than a seller in any of the other 31 countries Etsy operates in — and why fee figures copied from a UK or EU calculator come out too high for an American shop.
What Etsy charges a US seller
Eight lines can appear on a US Etsy invoice. Six of them can reach your account; two of them do not exist in the United States at all.
| Fee | Rate | Charged on |
|---|---|---|
| Listing fee | $0.20 | Each listing, renewed every four months — and again for every extra item in a multi-quantity order |
| Transaction fee | 6.5% | Item price plus shipping plus gift wrap. Excludes sales tax |
| Payment processing | 3% + $0.25 | The buyer's total including sales tax, plus $0.25 once per order |
| Offsite Ads | 15% or 12% | Item price plus shipping plus gift wrap, capped at $100 per order |
| Currency conversion | 2.5% | The sale, when listing and payout currencies differ |
| Regulatory operating fee | $0 | Not charged in the United States |
| VAT or GST on Etsy's fees | $0 | Not charged in the United States |
| Sales tax | 0–10%+ | Collected from the buyer, filed and remitted by Etsy. Not your income |
Why a US seller keeps more of the same order
Etsy's headline rates are the same in all 32 countries it operates in: $0.20 to list, 6.5% of the order. Everything that differs sits underneath, and in the US two of those lines are simply absent.
| Line | United States | United Kingdom |
|---|---|---|
| Transaction fee | 6.5% | 6.5% |
| Payment processing | 3% + $0.25 | 4% + £0.20 |
| Regulatory operating fee | — | 0.48% |
| VAT on Etsy's fees | — | 20% |
| Percentage load on the order | 9.50% | 13.18% |
That last row is the whole story. A UK seller hands over 13.18% of the order in percentage fees before the fixed charges; a US seller hands over 9.50%. Three and a half points of margin, on every sale, for doing identical work.
The gap is not a discount Etsy gives Americans. It is digital services tax and VAT in the other 31 countries, passed down to the seller. Our Etsy UK calculator runs the same order with the UK's 0.48% regulatory fee and 20% VAT so you can see both sides of it.
The tax line most fee calculators get wrong
Etsy charges the 6.5% transaction fee on the item, the shipping and the gift wrap — and not on sales tax. It charges the 3% processing fee on the buyer's total including sales tax. Two different bases, on the same order, on the same invoice. Etsy's own payment processing page states it plainly: the fees are taken from the item's total sale price, including its shipping fees, and any applicable sales tax.
On a $30 item with $6 shipping and 8% sales tax, the buyer is charged $2.88 of tax. The transaction fee is 6.5% of $36.00, which is $2.34. The processing fee is 3% of $38.88, which is $1.17 — not 3% of $36.00, which would be $1.08. That extra nine cents is Etsy taking its cut of money it is about to hand to a state revenue department. Across 500 orders a year it is about $43 of margin that a calculator modelling one base will never show you.
The calculator above asks for a sales tax rate for exactly this reason, and models the two bases separately. Leave the rate at 0 if the order carried no tax.
Sales tax is not your money, and Etsy files it for you
Every state with a sales tax now has a marketplace facilitator law, which makes Etsy the seller of record for tax purposes on orders it processes. Etsy collects the tax from the buyer, files the return, and remits the money. You do not register in the buyer's state, you never hold the cash, and it does not appear as income on your return.
Five states have no state-level sales tax: Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon. Alaska is the awkward one — no state tax, but some boroughs levy their own. Sell from or into those states and many orders will carry no tax line at all, which means the processing fee base is just the order total.
One limit worth stating: this covers marketplace sales only. If you also sell through your own site, or your state treats another channel differently, that is a separate question and one for an accountant. Nothing on this page is tax advice.
Worked example: a $30 item with $6 shipping
One item, one listing fee, no Offsite Ads. Sales tax shown at 8% so you can see where it lands.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Order total (item + shipping) | $36.00 |
| Listing fee | −$0.20 |
| Transaction fee (6.5% of $36.00) | −$2.34 |
| Payment processing (3% of $38.88 + $0.25) | −$1.42 |
| Regulatory operating fee | $0.00 |
| VAT on Etsy's fees | $0.00 |
| Total Etsy fees | $3.96 — 11.0% of the order |
| You keep, before your own costs | $32.04 |
Deduct $12 of materials, a $5 label and $1 of packaging and the order leaves $14.04, a 39% margin. Run the same £36 order through the UK rates and the fee alone reaches 14.3% of the order, before you have bought anything.
Add an Offsite Ads sale at 15% and US fees climb to $9.36, or 26% of the order.
The fixed fees are what hurt small orders
The 6.5% never changes. What changes is how much of your order the two fixed charges — $0.20 and $0.25 — take up. On a $200 sale that 45 cents is a rounding error. On a $5 sale it is a fifth of the price before any percentage is applied at all.
| Sale price | Etsy fees | Effective rate | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| $5 | $0.93 | 18.5% | $4.07 |
| $10 | $1.40 | 14.0% | $8.60 |
| $25 | $2.83 | 11.3% | $22.17 |
| $50 | $5.20 | 10.4% | $44.80 |
| $100 | $9.95 | 10.0% | $90.05 |
| $200 | $19.45 | 9.7% | $180.55 |
$5 sales are the ones to look at. Eighteen and a half per cent of the price is gone before materials, and no amount of careful making recovers it. The fix is not a higher price on the same listing — it is bundling two items into one order, so the $0.25 is charged once instead of twice.
Offsite Ads: 15%, 12%, and the $100 cap
Offsite Ads runs your listings on Google, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Bing. You are charged only when a buyer clicks one of those ads and orders from your shop within 30 days.
The rate is 15% while your shop has never taken $10,000 in any 365-day period, and 12% once it has. Below $10,000 you can opt out in Shop Manager. Cross it and participation becomes compulsory for the life of the shop, at 12%.
It is charged on the order total, not the item price. Shipping you charge the buyer sits in the base, same as the transaction fee. Sales tax does not.
The cap is $100 and it does bind. At 15% the fee stops rising once an order passes $666.67; at 12% it stops at $833.33. If you sell high-ticket work that ceiling matters — a $2,000 order pays $100, not $300.
It can more than double your fees. On the $36 order above, a 15% Offsite Ads charge adds $5.40 to $3.96 of other fees. Decide which kind of order you are pricing for before you set a price.
Questions US sellers ask
How much does Etsy take from a US sale?
Roughly 10% to 11% of a typical order, before your own costs: a $0.20 listing fee, a 6.5% transaction fee on the item plus shipping and gift wrap, and 3% plus $0.25 payment processing on the total including any sales tax. Offsite Ads can add another 12% to 15% on orders that arrived through an ad.
Does Etsy charge fees on sales tax?
Only one of them. The 6.5% transaction fee excludes US sales tax, but the 3% plus $0.25 processing fee is charged on the buyer's total including that tax. On a $30 item with $6 shipping and 8% sales tax, processing is charged on $38.88 rather than $36.00 — about nine cents you pay on money Etsy hands straight to a state.
Do US sellers pay the regulatory operating fee?
No. Etsy charges a regulatory operating fee in eight countries: the UK at 0.48%, Canada at 0.50%, Italy at 0.80%, Spain at 0.88%, France at 1.14%, Turkey at 1.67%, Hungary at 1.97% and India at 0.05%. The United States is not one of them — and no VAT or GST is charged on Etsy's own fees to US sellers either.
Is the listing fee charged once per order or once per item?
Once per item. A listing fee is charged when a listing is published, again every four months it stays active, and again for each extra quantity sold in a multi-quantity order. Selling three of the same item in one order costs three listing fees — $0.60, not $0.20.
Do I have to pay for Offsite Ads?
Only on orders that arrived through an Etsy offsite ad: 15% if your shop has never made $10,000 in a 365-day period, 12% once it has. Below $10,000 you can opt out; above it, participation is compulsory and the fee is capped at $100 per order.
How do I work out what to charge to hit a target profit?
Switch the calculator above to Work out price and enter the profit you want from the order. It solves for the item price, holding your shipping, tax rate and costs as entered. This is the reverse of the normal calculation, and it avoids the usual mistake — adding a flat percentage on top of a price Etsy has already taken a share of, which overcharges small orders and undercharges large ones.
What if my state has no sales tax?
Leave the rate at 0. Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon have no state-level sales tax, so many orders shipped from or to them carry no tax line. Parts of Alaska still levy local taxes at borough level, so check before assuming.
Where these rates come from
Every rate on this page was taken from Etsy's published US fee documentation and checked on 6 November 2026: Etsy's US seller page and Etsy's help centre article on fees and taxes. When a rate changes, the calculator and this page are updated together, and the verification date changes with them.
Selling somewhere else, or on more than one platform? The same method applies — see what is live on the site before you price a catalogue.
SellMargins is not affiliated with Etsy. These figures are an estimate to help you price your work; your own Etsy statement is the final word on what you were charged. Nothing on this page is tax, legal or accounting advice.