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.
Don't want to do this math manually? Use our free Etsy Fee Calculator — enter any price and see exactly what you keep in seconds. Or connect your Etsy shop to Anlyzo to track your real net earnings automatically across every sale.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: $0.20Every 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| Fee | Amount |
|---|---|
| Transaction fee (6.5%) | $1.63 |
| Listing fee | $0.20 |
| Payment processing (3% + $0.25) | $1.00 |
| Total fees | $2.83 |
| You keep | $22.17 |
Etsy Fee Breakdown — Verified Data
Where a $25.00 Etsy sale actually goes
Sources: Etsy fee schedule · Etsy Q4 2024 Investor Release (8.134M active sellers, $12.587B GMS)
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:
| Fee | Amount |
|---|---|
| Transaction fee (6.5%) | $1.63 |
| Listing fee | $0.20 |
| Payment processing (3% + $0.25) | $1.00 |
| Offsite ads (15%) | $3.75 |
| Total fees | $6.58 |
| 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:
| Etsy (no offsite ads) | Etsy (with offsite ads) | Gumroad | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sale price | $25.00 | $25.00 | $25.00 |
| Platform fee | $1.63 (6.5%) | $5.38 (6.5% + 15%) | $2.50 (10%) |
| Payment processing | $1.00 (3% + $0.25) | $1.00 (3% + $0.25) | Included |
| Listing fee | $0.20 | $0.20 | $0.00 |
| You keep | $22.17 | $18.42 | $22.50 |
| Fee % | 11.3% | 26.3% | 10% |
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?
Price based on what you keep, not what you want to earn
The reason most sellers underprice is they're doing the math backwards. They pick a price that feels right, then discover after fees they're keeping less than they expected.
If you want to take home $20 on a standard Etsy sale, your price needs to be around $23-24. Factor in occasional offsite ad sales and you need closer to $27-28 to hit the same net. Run the numbers for your specific price point with the Etsy fee calculator—don't estimate.
Check what percentage of your sales are attributed to offsite ads. You'll find it in Shop Manager under Marketing > Offsite Ads. For some sellers it's 8%. For others it's 25%. The difference in effective fee rate between those two scenarios is significant enough to change how you should price.
If you sell the same product on Etsy and Gumroad, compare net revenue per sale on each platform, not gross. Etsy's higher volume often more than compensates for the higher fees—but you won't know unless you're looking at the right number.
Track fees monthly, not per transaction. The individual amounts—$2.83 here, $1.00 there—are easy to rationalize away. A single monthly total is harder to ignore. When you see $656 in fees on one line it lands differently than 200 transactions each showing $3.28 in deductions.
Some sellers price lower on Etsy (to compete in search) and higher on Gumroad (where buyers arrive from their own audience and are less price-sensitive). The fee difference means you can often net the same amount from both channels at different price points. Worth modeling out if you're selling on both.
The number that matters
Gross revenue is what Etsy shows you prominently. Net revenue—after every fee—is what your business actually runs on.
Most sellers overestimate their take-home by 10-20%. That gap compounds directly into pricing decisions, reinvestment budgets, and whether going full-time ever pencils out. Getting it wrong doesn't just affect this month—it affects every decision downstream.
For a deeper look at whether the offsite ads portion is actually worth what you're paying, we broke it down in are Etsy offsite ads worth it. For a side-by-side comparison with Gumroad and Shopify at your volume, the platform comparison calculator runs the numbers across all three instantly.
Price on what you keep. Everything else follows from that.