Etsy Fees Explained: What You Actually Keep Per Sale

I thought I was making $25 per sale. I was making $19.63.

That's a 21.5% gap between what I thought I was earning and what I actually kept. On every single sale. For months.

I found this out the hard way. I was pricing my digital downloads based on what I wanted to earn, not on what Etsy would let me keep. And when I finally sat down and calculated every fee on a $25 sale, I felt sick.

Not because the fees are unreasonable. Etsy provides a marketplace with millions of buyers. That's worth paying for. But because I'd been making pricing decisions based on wrong numbers for an embarrassingly long time.

Let me save you the same mistake.

Every fee on a $25 digital download, broken down

Let's walk through a real example. You sell a digital template for $25.00 on Etsy. No shipping (it's digital). Buyer is in the US, pays with a credit card. Here's what happens to that $25:

1. Transaction fee: 6.5% of the sale price

$25.00 x 6.5% = $1.63

This is Etsy's main commission. It applies to the item price plus any shipping (but digital products don't have shipping, so it's just the item price). This fee went up from 5% to 6.5% in April 2022, and it's been a sore spot for sellers ever since.

2. Listing fee: $0.20

Every listing costs $0.20 to publish, and it renews every time the item sells. For a digital download that sells regularly, this adds up. If your template sells 100 times in a month, that's $20 in listing fees alone.

This one's easy to forget because it's small per transaction. But across your whole shop, it's not nothing.

3. Payment processing fee: 3% + $0.25

$25.00 x 3% + $0.25 = $1.00

This is what Etsy charges to process the payment through Etsy Payments. It's comparable to what Stripe or PayPal charges, so it's not outrageous, but it's another slice off your sale.

4. The total damage Wait, that doesn't match my earlier number. That's because I haven't mentioned the one fee that catches most sellers off guard.

The fee nobody reads the fine print on

5. Offsite Ads fee: 15% (or 12% for high-volume sellers)

If Etsy runs an ad for your product on Google, Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest, and a buyer clicks that ad and purchases within 30 days, Etsy charges you 15% of the sale price. No, you don't get to choose which products are advertised. No, you can't opt out if your shop made more than $10,000 in the past 12 months.

$25.00 x 15% = $3.75

If the offsite ads fee applies to your sale:

That's 26.3% of your sale gone to fees. On a $25 product, you keep $18.42.

Not every sale gets hit with the offsite ads fee. Etsy says about 10-15% of sales come through offsite ads. But when it happens, it stings.

How this plays out at scale

Let's say you sell 200 digital templates a month at $25 each. Gross revenue: $5,000. Feels good.

Now let's assume 12% of your sales come through offsite ads (Etsy's approximate average):

• 176 regular sales: $22.17 x 176 = $3,901.92
• 24 offsite ad sales: $18.42 x 24 = $442.08
• Total you keep: $4,344.00
• Total fees: $656.00

You're paying $656 a month in fees. That's $7,872 a year. On a $60,000 gross revenue business, you're losing about 13% to fees.

And here's the thing that bugs me most: Etsy's seller dashboard shows you the gross number prominently. The fees are buried in monthly statements. So you see "$5,000 in sales!" and feel great, but you actually took home $4,344.

How this compares to Gumroad

On Gumroad, the same $25 product looks very different:

Without offsite ads, Etsy and Gumroad are surprisingly close. With offsite ads, Gumroad wins by a lot.

But here's what this comparison misses: Etsy brings you traffic. Gumroad doesn't. If you're listing on Gumroad, you need to drive your own traffic through social media, email lists, or paid ads. The "cost" of that traffic isn't reflected in the fee structure.

That's why the real comparison isn't fee percentages. It's net revenue per product across platforms. Which one actually puts more money in your pocket, after everything?

What you should actually do with this information

1. Stop pricing based on what you want to earn. Price based on what you'll keep. If you want to take home $20 per sale on Etsy, you need to price at about $23-24 (without offsite ads) or $27-28 (accounting for the occasional offsite ad sale).2. Check your offsite ads rate. Go to your Etsy dashboard, look at your sales, and figure out what percentage came through offsite ads last month. If it's higher than 15%, you might want to reconsider your pricing or whether certain products make sense on Etsy.3. Know your per-product margin across platforms. If you sell the same product on Etsy and Gumroad, calculate the net revenue from each. Don't just look at the sticker price. Look at what you keep after every fee.4. Track your fees monthly, not per-transaction. Individual transaction fees are small and easy to dismiss. Monthly totals are harder to ignore. When you see $656 in fees on one line, it hits different than $2.83 here and $1.00 there.5. Consider listing price on Etsy, higher price on Gumroad. Some sellers price lower on Etsy (to compete in search) and higher on Gumroad (where buyers come from their audience and are less price-sensitive). The fee difference means you might net the same amount from both.

The number that matters most

Forget gross revenue. The number that determines whether your business is sustainable is your net revenue after all platform fees.

Most Etsy sellers I talk to overestimate their take-home by 10-20%. That gap compounds. It affects how you price. How you budget. Whether you think you can afford to go full-time.

Get the real number. Then make decisions based on that.