Etsy listing tools that show where every rule came from

What do the four have in common?

They are free, and they stay free of the usual toll gates. There is no sign-up wall, no email box in front of the answer, and no counter that cuts you off after a few tries. You can send one to somebody in a forum thread and they can use it without creating anything.

They run on your device. Each tool is a page of plain code that does its arithmetic in the browser you are reading this in, so what you type into it does not travel: there is no server behind these pages to receive it. That is a property of how they are built rather than a promise anyone has to keep.

And every rule they apply carries its source. Not a footnote at the bottom of the page, and not a citation list nobody clicks. Next to the rule itself: the Etsy page the rule was read from, as a link you can open, and the date a person opened it. Rules Etsy publishes and rules Mirra chose look different from each other on purpose, and the second kind always shows its reasoning.

Why does it matter where a rule came from?

Because a lot of what circulates as Etsy policy is not Etsy policy. Search for Etsy title rules and the same list comes back on page after page, blended together with no way to tell which line came from Etsy and which came from somebody repeating a guess. Some of it is exactly right. Some of it has no origin anyone can point at.

Here are four claims that turn up constantly, stated as though Etsy published them. We went looking on July 28, 2026through Etsy's machine-readable API specification, its help center, its seller handbook and its policy pages, and found none of them:

• Etsy bans the tag “free shipping”.
• A title has to start with a letter or a number.
• A title may contain no more than three words in capitals.
• No word may appear in two different tags.

None of those is tested by any tool on this site. Not as a warning, not as a suggestion, not in smaller grey text. Failing to find a source is not proof that Etsy has never said a thing, and we are not claiming these four are false. It only proves we cannot show you where, and a rule we cannot show you the source of is a rule you have no way to check. Printing one anyway, with a confident red cross beside it, is how a seller ends up cutting a title that was working to satisfy a rule nobody at Etsy ever wrote.

The same test runs in the other direction. Mirra's own product strips the tag “handmade” out of the listings it generates for printed transfers. Etsy does not ban that tag, and plenty of Etsy sellers use it correctly. So the checker does not dress that up as an Etsy rule. It says whose rule it is and why, and it tells you to keep the tag if you made the item by hand. Here is what those two kinds look like:

• Title is 140 characters or fewer

  Etsy cuts a title off at 140 characters. Anything past that never reaches a buyer.

  Etsy's rule

  Etsy publishes this. It is stated in Etsy's own help pages(opens in a new tab), checked on July 28, 2026.

  Etsy's words: “title can be up to 140 characters long”

  Open the page to confirm the wording for yourself.

• Uses % : & + at most once each

  Each of these four may appear once in a title. A second one is rejected. The plus sign counts, which is easy to miss.

  Etsy's rule

  Etsy publishes this. It is stated in Etsy's public API specification(opens in a new tab), checked on July 28, 2026.

  Etsy's words: “only use the %, :, & and + characters once each”

  This is the text Etsy's own system checks against. The link opens a large specification file.

• "Handmade" is not a tag for a printed transfer

  This is Mirra's editorial call about printed transfers, not something Etsy rejects.

  Mirra's own rule

  Etsy does not publish this one. Mirra applies it anyway.

  Etsy does NOT ban this tag, and plenty of Etsy sellers use it correctly. Mirra strips it from generated DTF listings because a transfer printed on a machine is not handmade, and Etsy's Creativity Standards are about describing an item accurately. If you made the item by hand, keep the tag.

That is the whole differentiator, and it is a small one to describe: you can check us. Every figure in the fee calculator, every character limit in the checker, every field name in the cheat sheet is one click from the Etsy page it was read from. If Etsy changes something and we have not caught up, you will see the date we last looked and can go straight past us to the source.

What do these tools not do?

They do not touch your shop. Nothing here signs into Etsy, reads your listings, edits anything, or knows that your shop exists. There is no connection to make and no permission to grant.

They do not look at anybody else's listings. Mirra does not retrieve or analyze third-party marketplace listings. There is no keyword volume here, no competitor teardown, and no ranking estimate, because none of that would come from a source we could show you.

They do not predict sales. A break-even figure is arithmetic on the numbers you type in, not a forecast, and a title that clears every check on this site can still sit there without selling. Passing the checker means the published limits it tests were met. Etsy is the only party that decides whether a listing is accepted, and a buyer is the only one who decides whether it works.

Where can you read the longer version?

These tools are quick answers. The reasoning behind them is written out at length in three guides, each with its sources attached the same way:

• How to list DTF transfers on Etsy: the category a ready-to-press transfer belongs in, the supply flag, the who-made and when-made answers, and the real title and tag limits.
• Etsy listing rules for DTF transfer sellers: supply against handmade, production partners, where trademark risk actually comes from, and which widely repeated rules have no Etsy source.
• Bulk listing workflows for a DTF shop: pushing drafts instead of publishing live, running a batch of designs at once, a seasonal drop, and what happens to a gang sheet.

The tools stand on their own and need nothing else. If you want to know what Mirra itself does with a folder of designs, that is on the about page.

Common questions