Guide
Etsy fees in the UK, explained
Etsy takes several fees from every order, and they stack up faster than most sellers expect. Once you add VAT on those fees, it's common to lose a fifth or more of an order before your own costs. Here's each fee, and how to work out what you actually keep.
The fees on a typical sale
- Listing fee: about £0.16 per item listed (charged in US dollars, so it shifts slightly with the exchange rate).
- Transaction fee: 6.5% of the whole order, including any shipping you charge the buyer.
- Payment processing: roughly 4% plus £0.20 per order.
- Regulatory operating fee: a small percentage Etsy charges in some countries, including the UK.
Offsite Ads
If a sale came through an Offsite Ad (Etsy advertising your products on Google, social media and elsewhere), Etsy adds an advertising fee of 12% or 15% of the order, depending on your shop's turnover. It's capped at around £80 per order. Smaller shops can opt out; once your shop passes a turnover threshold, it becomes mandatory.
The fee sellers miss: VAT
Unless you're VAT-registered, Etsy charges 20% VAT on its own fees. This isn't VAT on your sale. It's VAT on the listing, transaction, processing and ads fees Etsy takes. It's easy to overlook, and it makes the real cost of selling noticeably higher than the headline percentages suggest. VAT-registered sellers don't pay this, because they account for it separately.
Working out your real profit
Your profit is what's left after both Etsy's fees and your own costs: materials, postage you actually pay, packaging, and your time. A sale can look healthy on the price alone and barely break even once everything is counted. Two habits help: price with a target margin in mind, and check the break-even price so you never list below it.
These are 2026 UK fee rates. Etsy's fees can change, and the listing fee in particular varies with the dollar exchange rate, so treat the figures as a close estimate.
See what you keep per sale
Our free Etsy fee calculator breaks down every fee line by line and shows your net profit and margin, the break-even price, and what to charge for a target margin. Private to your device.