You sell a £30 item on Etsy. You check your Etsy Payments balance. It reads £24.80. You scratch your head and wonder where £5.20 went.
This happens to almost every UK Etsy seller at some point. Etsy's fee structure is genuinely complicated — there are six separate charges that can apply to a single sale, and most sellers are only aware of two or three of them.
Here is every fee Etsy charges UK sellers in 2026, what each one is, and how to calculate what you actually keep.
Every time an item sells, Etsy charges approximately £0.15 (the fee is set at $0.20 USD and converted at the current exchange rate). This also applies when a multi-quantity listing renews after a sale. On low-priced items, this fee takes a disproportionately large percentage of the sale price.
This is the big one, and it's charged on the total order value including postage. If your item sells for £20 with £4.50 postage, Etsy takes 6.5% of £24.50 — not just £20. That's an important distinction. Many sellers price postage at cost but forget that Etsy takes a cut of it too.
Etsy raised this fee from 5% to 6.5% in 2022. It hasn't come down.
UK sellers using Etsy Payments pay 4% of the total transaction plus £0.20 per order. This covers the cost of processing the card payment. Note that US sellers pay a lower rate (3% + $0.25) — UK sellers effectively pay a higher percentage on smaller orders due to the fixed £0.20 component.
Introduced in 2021, this small percentage is charged on every UK transaction to cover Etsy's regulatory compliance costs. It's easy to miss because it's so small, but it adds up across hundreds of sales.
If you are not VAT registered, Etsy adds 20% VAT to their fees (not to your product price). This applies to the transaction fee, payment processing fee, and listing fee. If you are VAT registered, you can reclaim this as input VAT.
For a non-VAT-registered seller, this effectively increases all fee percentages by 20% — making the 6.5% transaction fee closer to 7.8% in real terms.
If Etsy promotes your listing on Google, Facebook, or other platforms and a buyer purchases within 30 days of clicking that ad, Etsy charges an additional 12% or 15% of the order total.
Sellers who have made less than $10,000 (approximately £8,000) on Etsy in the past 365 days can opt out of Offsite Ads. Sellers above this threshold cannot opt out. If you are opted in or ineligible to opt out, this fee applies to a significant proportion of your sales.
| Sale Price | Postage | Total Fees | You Keep | Effective Fee % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £10.00 | £3.50 | £2.47 | £7.53 | 24.7% |
| £20.00 | £3.50 | £3.74 | £16.26 | 18.7% |
| £30.00 | £4.50 | £5.22 | £24.78 | 17.4% |
| £50.00 | £5.00 | £8.04 | £46.96 | 16.1% |
| £30.00 + Offsite Ad | £4.50 | £9.77 | £20.23 | 32.6% |
The effective fee percentage for UK sellers typically runs 15–20% of the total order value under normal conditions, and can reach 30–35% when Offsite Ads apply. This is before your material costs, labour, and postage expenses.
Notice how the effective fee rate is higher on the £10 sale than the £50 sale. This is because the fixed-fee components (£0.15 listing fee, £0.20 payment processing) take a larger share of smaller transactions.
If you sell items under £10, Etsy fees can consume 25–30% of your revenue before you've spent a penny on materials. Pricing below £10 on Etsy UK requires very careful margin planning — and in many cases simply isn't viable once material costs and your time are factored in.
Your actual profit per sale is:
Sale price − Etsy fees − Material costs − Postage costs − Your time − Overhead
Most sellers only subtract Etsy fees and materials. Forgetting to price in your time is the most common reason Etsy shops feel busy but never seem profitable.
If you want to model this precisely for your listings — including every UK-specific fee, your material costs, and an hourly rate for your time — our Etsy Profit Pro calculator handles all of it and shows you your real margin, break-even price, and monthly revenue projection.
Calculate your real profit after every Etsy fee — transaction, listing, payment processing, offsite ads, VAT, materials, and your time. Know your true margin before you list.
See Etsy Profit Pro — £15 →