How this Etsy fee calculator works
Etsy charges most of its fees on the whole order total — the item price after your discount, plus the delivery and gift wrap you charge the buyer. That's why charging for postage isn't free money: you pay fees on it, and you still have to pay the postage itself. This calculator keeps those two things apart. Delivery charged is revenue; postage you pay is a cost.
The formula per order is: net revenue − item cost − postage − packaging − returns allowance − Etsy fees = profit before ads, then subtract Etsy Ads per order to get profit after ads. Net margin is profit after ads divided by net revenue.
Worked example: a £25 physical item
With the example values loaded above (not VAT registered): the buyer pays £25 plus £3.50 delivery, so the order total is £28.50. At the example rates the transaction fee is £1.85, payment processing is £1.34 (4% + £0.20) and the regulatory fee is £0.14 — total fees of £3.33. After £8 materials, £3.20 postage, £0.60 packaging and a £0.50 returns allowance, profit before ads is £12.87. With £1.50 of Etsy Ads per order, you keep £11.37 — a 39.9% net margin. At 60 orders a month, less £20 overhead, that's £662.24.
Digital printable at £19.99
Switch on Digital product and the delivery, postage and packaging fields disappear. A £19.99 printable with no ads or other per-sale costs pays £2.39 in example fees and keeps £17.60 per sale. Your design time and software still belong in monthly overhead.
Offsite Ads vs Etsy Ads
These are different. Etsy Ads are the on-platform campaigns you budget for — enter their average cost per order. Offsite Ads are a percentage fee Etsy charges only on orders it attributes to its external adverts. Set the rate that applies to your shop and the share of orders it hits; 100% models "this particular sale came via Offsite Ads". Etsy states a per-order cap on this fee, which isn't modelled here.
VAT on Etsy sales and fees
If you're VAT registered, part of the buyer's payment is output VAT, so revenue is the total divided by (1 + VAT rate). As a simplification the same rate is applied to item, delivery and gift wrap — your actual treatment may differ. Etsy may also charge VAT on its seller fees; if you can't reclaim it, use the "irrecoverable VAT on fees" field. Marketplace-collected taxes and digital-goods rules aren't modelled. This is not tax advice.
Common mistakes
- Calculating fees on the item price only, forgetting they also apply to delivery charged.
- Counting postage twice — once as revenue lost and again as a cost.
- Treating the $0.20 listing fee as £0.20; it's charged in USD and auto-renewals add up.
- Mixing up Offsite Ads (a fee on some orders) with Etsy Ads (your ad budget).
- Leaving out the one-off shop setup fee — it's a one-off cost, not per order, so it isn't included by default.