Profit calculator for Etsy sellers

What profit on one sale means

What a buyer pays is not what you make. A sale's order total is the item price plus the shipping the buyer paid. Sales tax rides along with it, but in the US Etsy collects that tax and passes it on, so it was never yours to keep. From the order total come Etsy's fees, and then your own costs: what went into the item, the box it ships in and the label on the box. What's left is the profit on that sale.

This calculator works that out for one sale. It subtracts, in order:

• Etsy's listing fee, $0.20, which Etsy charges again when a listing renews after a sale.
• The transaction fee, 6.5% of the item price and the shipping the buyer paid.
• Payment processing, 3% + $0.25 in the US, on everything the buyer paid, sales tax included.
• The Offsite Ads fee, 15% or 12% of the order, only when the sale came from one of those ads, and never more than $100.
• Your materials, your packaging and your shipping label.

Your time is kept on a line of its own. Many sellers don't pay themselves an hourly wage, and mixing the two hides which problem you have: a price that doesn't cover the costs, or one that covers them and leaves too little for the hours. Add your minutes and you see both.

Some costs don't belong to one sale: an Etsy Ads budget, an Etsy Plus subscription, refunds, tools and equipment, and income tax. They come out of the month, not the order. The free check-up adds up the whole month for you, and the other calculators each take one of those lines.

What each Etsy fee is charged on

The rates are easy to find. What catches sellers out is what each one is a percentage of. The transaction fee includes the shipping you charge; processing includes the sales tax; Offsite Ads only applies to some orders. This is the US table the calculator uses, from Etsy's own policy pages, checked October 13, 2026.

There is no single percentage that says what Etsy takes. The two flat parts, $0.20 and $0.25, weigh more on a small order: on a $10.00 sale with free shipping Etsy takes $1.40, 14.0% of it, and on a $100.00 sale $9.95, 10.0%. That's one reason cheap items are the hardest to make money on.

Etsy rounds each fee to the cent on its own, so a line on your statement can be a cent away from the calculator's. Rates also differ outside the US, and Etsy changes them from time to time: every rate here links to its source on the rates page, with the day we checked it.

A worked example, line by line

Take a hand-poured candle listed at $28.00, with $6.00 charged for shipping. The wax, wick, jar and scent cost $7.40, the box and padding $1.10, and the label $5.20. It takes 25 minutes to pour, list and pack. These are the numbers in the calculator above, worked out on the same rules.

Etsy's three fees come to $3.68, 10.8% of the order. Your own costs come to $13.70, more than 3 times Etsy's share: for most handmade sellers the costs, not the fees, decide whether a sale makes money. Below an item price of $9.64, with the same shipping and costs, this sale would lose money.

Your time is a cost too

The candle leaves $16.62. For 25 minutes of work, that's about $39.89 an hour. Whether that's good depends on what an hour of yours is worth, which only you can say: what you'd earn elsewhere, or what you want this shop to pay you.

Say it's $20.00 an hour. Then 25 minutes are worth $8.33, and the sale leaves $8.29 after paying you. The item price that pays your hourly rate and nothing more is $18.84; anything above it is profit on top of your wage.

Count every minute the item takes: making it, photographing and listing it, answering the buyer, packing it and taking it to the post office. Small items with long making times are where the hourly figure surprises people most. When it comes out low, there are three levers: a higher price, fewer minutes per item (batching, simpler packaging), or cheaper materials.

An hourly figure below what you wanted isn't money leaving the shop. It's the gap between what the shop pays you and what you chose, and the calculator shows it apart from the cash profit for that reason.

Free shipping: where the label cost goes

Offer the same candle with free shipping at the same $28.00 and the order total drops to $28.00. Etsy's fees fall a little, to $3.11, because they're charged on less, but the $5.20 label is still yours to buy. The sale now leaves $11.19, $5.43 less than with shipping charged.

Free shipping can be worth it: Etsy's search gives priority to US listings that ship free on orders of $35 or more, and buyers like one clear price. But the label has to be paid from somewhere, usually the item price. The shipping calculator works out the gap across your month and the price that closes it.

When the sale came from an Offsite Ad

Etsy advertises your listings on other sites and charges a fee only when one of those ads brings a sale. If the candle buyer had clicked an Offsite Ad in the 30 days before buying, a shop under $10,000 a year pays 15% of the order: $5.10. The sale would leave $11.52 instead of $16.62. At the 12% rate it would leave $12.54.

You don't choose which sales are charged, and a shop that has sold $10,000 or more in any 12 months can't opt out. Under that line you can. The fee is never more than $100 on one order. To see what Offsite Ads cost across a month, and the price that covers them, use the Offsite Ads calculator.

How to price a handmade item

A common way to price is to double or triple the cost of materials. It's quick, and it often lands short, because it ignores the label, packaging, your time and a fee that grows with the price. Working forward from your real numbers is more reliable:

1. 1Add up what one item costs you. Materials, packaging, and the label if you don't charge the buyer for it in full.
2. 2Put a price on your time. Minutes per item times the hourly rate you want. Treat it as a cost, not as what's left over.
3. 3Choose the profit on top. A share of the order you want the shop to keep, for slow months, new tools and growth.
4. 4Work back through the fees. Etsy's percentage fees are charged on the price you end up with, so they can't be added as a fixed amount. Of each extra dollar a buyer pays, Etsy's 6.5% and 3% come off first.
5. 5Check it against the market. Compare with similar items that sell. If your price is far above them, look again at minutes and materials before you lower it.

For the candle, the price that pays $20.00 an hour and nothing more is $18.84. The price that keeps 30% of the order before your time, at the same costs and $6.00 shipping, is $17.39. The price-for-a-margin calculator works this out for your own numbers and target.

Mistakes that pull a price too low:

• Leaving out packaging. Even a mailer and some tissue add up; the calculator assumes $1.00 only when you leave it blank.
• Charging less for shipping than the label costs.
• Forgetting that a share of sales may come from Offsite Ads.
• Counting sales tax as income: it passes through to the state.
• Using fee rates from an old article. Rates change; the ones here are dated and sourced.

Check it against your Etsy statement

A calculator works out what a sale should cost. Your monthly statement says what Etsy actually charged. The free statement check reads the CSV Etsy gives you, in your browser, adds up every line by kind and checks the payment processing fee, Offsite Ads and the credits Etsy owes after a refund. If something on the statement doesn't match the rules, it shows the rows to ask Etsy about.

Where these numbers come from

Every figure on this page is worked out by fixed formulas on Etsy's published US rates, checked October 13, 2026. The same rules run the free check-up, every other calculator here and our free tools for AI assistants. No AI works out a number. The rates page lists each one with its source and the day we checked it, the same list is published as data, and the methodology page explains how the pieces fit together.

• Every rate, with its source
• How the numbers are worked out
• Etsy's fees alone, on one sale
• The price for a margin
• What shipping costs you
• What Offsite Ads cost you
• Check your Etsy statement
• The free check-up, for the whole month

Questions sellers ask