Etsy Fees on a $20 Sale: How Much Does Etsy Take

The exact fees on a $20 Etsy sale

$20 is one of the most common price points for digital products on Etsy. Planner bundles, Canva template packs, spreadsheet tools. If you sell in this range, here's what Etsy takes from each sale:

Listing fee: $0.20 Transaction fee (6.5%): $1.30 Payment processing (3% + $0.25): $0.85Total fees: $2.35 You keep: $17.65 Effective fee rate: 11.8%

For every $20 sale, $2.35 goes to Etsy and $17.65 lands in your account. That's a reasonable fee rate for marketplace access. Etsy is sending you buyers through their search engine. At 11.8%, the "cost of acquisition" is lower than running your own Google ads for most sellers.

With offsite ads (the fee that stings)

If Etsy advertises your listing through Google or social media and the buyer purchases through that ad:

• Standard fees: $2.35
• Offsite ads fee (15%): $3.00
• Total fees: $5.35
• You keep: $14.65
• Effective fee rate: 26.8%

The offsite ads fee more than doubles your total fees. On a $20 product, you go from keeping $17.65 to keeping $14.65. That's $3 less per sale for a click you didn't ask for.

If your shop earns under $10,000/year, you can opt out. We wrote about [whether offsite ads are worth keeping on](/blog/are-etsy-offsite-ads-worth-it) with real data.

$20 compared to other platforms

Same $20 digital product on each platform:

Etsy: $2.35 in fees, you keep $17.65 (88.2%) Gumroad: $2.00 in fees (10%), you keep $18.00 (90.0%) Shopify: $0.88 in fees (2.9% + $0.30) plus $39/month subscription

At $20, Gumroad saves you $0.35 per sale. That's $35 on 100 sales. Not huge, but it compounds. The real difference is that Etsy sends you buyers and Gumroad doesn't. You pay Etsy's higher fees for marketplace traffic.

Shopify's per-transaction fees are lowest, but the $39/month subscription needs to be covered by volume. At 50 sales per month ($1,000 revenue), Shopify costs about $83/month total (subscription + fees). Etsy would cost about $118 in fees. Shopify saves $35/month at that volume. At 20 sales per month, Shopify is more expensive because the subscription spreads over fewer sales.

Our [platform comparison calculator](/tools/platform-comparison-calculator) runs this math at your exact volume and price point.

Why $20 is a strong price point for digital products

$20 hits a psychological sweet spot for digital product buyers. It's low enough to feel like a quick decision (no deliberation), but high enough to signal quality (not a throwaway product).

My products priced at $18-22 consistently have the best conversion rates in my shop. Higher than my $5-10 products (which get more views but fewer purchases per view) and higher than my $30+ products (which get fewer views and slightly lower conversion).

At $20, your take-home of $17.65 means you need about 57 sales per month to clear $1,000 in profit from a single product. For a well-optimized listing on Etsy with good SEO, 57 sales per month is achievable within 6-12 months.

The bundle play at $20

Instead of selling a single $20 product, consider bundling 3-4 related items that you'd sell individually at $7-8 each. The buyer gets perceived value ("4 products for $20 instead of $32 separately") and you get a higher per-transaction revenue with fewer support interactions.

My best-selling product is a "Complete Budget Toolkit" at $22 that bundles 4 individual trackers. Each tracker exists as a standalone $7-8 listing too. The bundle outsells all four individual listings combined. About 60% of buyers choose the bundle over any single item.

For the full fee math at any price, plug your numbers into our [Etsy fee calculator](/tools/etsy-fee-calculator). For the detailed breakdown of every fee type, see our [Etsy fees explained post](/blog/etsy-fees-explained-what-you-actually-keep). And if you're trying to decide the right price for your products, our [pricing strategy guide](/blog/how-to-price-digital-products) covers the framework I use for every new listing.