Etsy fee calculator for DTF transfer sellers

What does Etsy charge a US seller on one sale?

Four charges land on a sale, and they are charged on different amounts, which is why adding the percentages together gives the wrong answer.

• Listing fee, $0.20. Etsy takes this when you publish, whether the item sells or not. The listing runs for four months, and auto-renew charges it again. If someone buys more than one of the same listing in a single order, each extra one costs another $0.20. Etsy states this on its fees and taxes page.
• Transaction fee, 6.5%. Charged on the order total, and the base includes what you charge for shipping and gift wrapping. For a US seller it does not include sales tax. Etsy states this on the same page.
• Payment processing, 3% plus $0.25 an order. That is the rate for a bank account in the United States, which is not always the same as the country your shop says it is in. This one is charged on the total including shipping and any sales tax. Etsy publishes a rate for every country.
• Offsite Ads, 15% or 12%. Only on an order that came from an Etsy ad shown somewhere else, within 30 days of the click. Most orders never trigger it. Etsy explains the programme here.

For a shop selling DTF transfers the listing fee is the one that behaves differently from how sellers expect. A transfer is a low-price item, so $0.20 is a bigger share of the sale than it would be on a $40 product, and a design that sits unsold through several four-month renewals costs you every time it renews. That cost never shows up in a per-order calculation, including this one.

Why do most Etsy fee calculators get the transaction fee wrong?

Because they charge it on the wrong amount. Two mistakes are common, and they push the answer in opposite directions, so a calculator can make both and still look about right.

The first is leaving shipping out of the base. Etsy charges the transaction fee on what you charge for shipping and for gift wrapping, not only on the item price. On a low-price item with real postage on top, what you charge to ship can approach what you charge for the item. A calculator that ignores shipping then works the fee out on roughly half the amount Etsy works it out on.

The second is treating sales tax as part of the base. For a US seller it is not: Etsy's Fees and Payments Policy says the transaction fee does not apply to sales tax. Payment processing is the exception. That one is charged on a total that does include sales tax, which is why the two lines in the breakdown above are worked out on different amounts even though they come out of the same order.

The calculator above keeps those two bases apart on purpose and shows you which amount each fee was taken from. If a number surprises you, read the line under it before you change your prices.

How does the Offsite Ads fee work?

Etsy advertises listings on other sites. When a shopper clicks one of those ads and buys from you within 30 days, Etsy charges a share of that order. The rate depends on how big your shop is. Below Etsy's threshold you pay 15%, you are enrolled automatically, and you can opt out. Once your shop passes $10,000 in sales across any 365 days the rate falls to 12%, the programme becomes mandatory for the lifetime of the shop, and opting out stops being an option.

Two details save arguments later. The fee on any single order stops at $100, however large the order. And the threshold is not measured the same way the fee is charged: Etsy works the threshold out excluding separately charged shipping, taxes and gift wrap, while the fee itself is charged on your displayed price plus shipping and gift wrapping. Etsy's Offsite Ads page carries both definitions. Do not use one figure for both.

This matters more for transfer sellers than the headline rate suggests, because volume is the whole model. A shop moving hundreds of low-price orders reaches a sales total faster than its owner expects, and the switch to mandatory participation is permanent.

What does this calculator leave out?

A fee calculator is not a profit calculator. This one answers a narrow question: of what the buyer pays you, how much does Etsy take. Everything below is real money and none of it is here.

• What the transfer costs to make. Film, ink, powder, press time and your own labour. Mirra has no figure for any of those and will not invent one, because a pre-filled number reads as a claim. Enter your own on the break-even calculator.
• What the shipping label costs you. The calculator counts what you charge the buyer, which is income. What you pay the carrier depends on weight, size and service, and Etsy publishes no figure for it.
• On-site Etsy Ads. Different thing from Offsite Ads. You set a daily budget, so there is no rate to apply.
• The shop set-up fee. Etsy says the cost varies by location and publishes no single number.
• Subscriptions, refunds and returns. A refunded order changes which fees come back and which do not.
• Anything outside the United States. Payment processing has a different rate in every country, and it keys on where your bank account is. Currency conversion is a separate charge, and this page works in US dollars throughout.

Treat the result as an estimate for one order. Etsy rounds its own fees, so a real invoice can differ by a cent, and the rates themselves change.

Where do you find your own numbers?

In your shop, not on this page. Your own figures are in Shop Manager, under Finances, then Payment account. That ledger lists what Etsy actually charged you, per order, at your rates, in your country. It cannot go stale and it cannot be wrong about your shop, which is more than any calculator can say.

Use this page the other way round: to see how a price change moves the fee before you make it, and to check that a figure you were told matches what Etsy publishes. Every rate in the tool shows the Etsy page it came from and the date someone read it. If the date is old the tool stops showing a total rather than guessing, and if your own rate differs you can type it in and the answer becomes yours.

Common questions