Etsy Seller Fees: What You Keep on a $10 Digital Sale
Etsy seller fees on a $10 digital sale: $0.20 listing, 6.5% transaction, 3% + $0.25 processing. You keep $8.60, or $7.10 if an Offsite Ad made the sale.
On a $10 digital product, a US Etsy seller pays a $0.20 listing fee, a 6.5% transaction fee ($0.65) and Etsy's own payment processing of 3% + $0.25 ($0.55). That is $1.40 in fees, so you keep $8.60. If the buyer came through an Etsy Offsite Ad, add a 15% fee ($1.50) and you keep $7.10.
Those fees buy something real: Etsy's buyers. If you bring your own traffic, or want repeat buyers to purchase from you directly, shopspace charges 0% per sale for a flat $19 a month billed yearly. It brings you no buyers, though, so the math below shows where each option wins.
Every Etsy fee on a digital product (as of September 2026)
Etsy charges in layers, so there is no single percentage to quote. These are the fees for a US seller, taken from Etsy's fee schedule:
- Listing fee: $0.20. Charged when you publish a listing. The listing lasts four months and auto-renews at $0.20.
- Transaction fee: 6.5% of the displayed price, plus shipping and gift wrap if any. For US sellers it does not apply to sales tax. On a digital file with no shipping, it is simply 6.5% of your price.
- Payment processing: 3% + $0.25 per order for a US bank account, calculated on the order total including tax.
- Offsite Ads: 15% or 12%, charged only when a sale is attributed to an ad Etsy ran for you outside Etsy. More on this below, because it is the fee that hurts most.
There are smaller ones too: a possible one-time shop set-up fee (Etsy shows the amount at onboarding), a 2.5% currency conversion fee if you list in a different currency from your payment account, and Etsy Plus at $10 a month if you choose it. There is no separate fee for digital products, and Etsy collects and remits VAT on digital downloads where required.
How much Etsy takes on a $10 digital sale
Here is the full math on one $10 sale, counting the listing fee once:
| Fee | Calculation | Organic sale | Sale from an Offsite Ad |
|---|---|---|---|
| Listing fee | flat | $0.20 | $0.20 |
| Transaction fee | 6.5% x $10 | $0.65 | $0.65 |
| Payment processing | 3% x $10 + $0.25 | $0.55 | $0.55 |
| Offsite Ads fee | 15% x $10 | n/a | $1.50 |
| Total fees | $1.40 | $2.90 | |
| You keep | $8.60 | $7.10 |
On a $10 product the Offsite Ads fee alone is larger than the other three fees combined.
Etsy fees at common digital product prices
For a digital sale with no shipping, tax or currency conversion, the formula is:
Total Etsy fees = $0.45 + 9.5% of the price
That is the $0.20 listing fee plus the $0.25 processing flat fee, then 6.5% transaction plus 3% processing.
| Sale price | Etsy fees (organic) | You keep | Effective rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| $6 | $1.02 | $4.98 | 17.0% |
| $10 | $1.40 | $8.60 | 14.0% |
| $20 | $2.35 | $17.65 | 11.75% |
| $50 | $5.20 | $44.80 | 10.4% |
| $100 | $9.95 | $90.05 | 9.95% |
The flat $0.45 is why cheap products feel the squeeze most. A $6 printable gives up 17% before any ad fee; a $100 bundle gives up just under 10%. If you can raise your average order with a bundle, the effective rate drops. Our guide to digital product pricing strategies covers how.
The Offsite Ads fee: the one most sellers miss
Offsite Ads are ads Etsy places for your listings outside Etsy. You pay nothing unless a buyer clicks one and orders from your shop within 30 days. Then:
- Shops under $10,000 in sales over the prior 365 days pay 15% on attributed orders, and can opt out.
- Shops at $10,000 or more pay 12%, participation becomes mandatory, and the 12% rate stays with the shop for its lifetime.
- The fee is capped at $100 per order.
A shop selling $2,000 a month passes $10,000 within the year, so it can no longer opt out. On a $10 sale, 12% is $1.20 on top of the $1.40 you already pay. If you are under the threshold and your margins are thin, opting out is worth testing: you lose some reach but keep 15 points more on every sale an ad would have claimed.
Etsy vs selling direct: the monthly math
Here is what the platform takes on $500 and $2,000 a month of $10 sales (50 and 200 orders). Card processing (Stripe or PayPal) applies on every platform, so it is left out to keep the comparison fair. For Etsy that leaves the listing fee (counted once per sale) and the 6.5% transaction fee. shopspace is shown at $19 a month billed yearly.
| Monthly sales | Etsy fees | You keep on Etsy | shopspace fees | You keep on shopspace |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $500 (50 x $10) | $42.50 | $457.50 | $19 | $481 |
| $2,000 (200 x $10) | $170 | $1,830 | $19 | $1,981 |
Offsite Ads are not in that table. If a quarter of those orders came through an ad, add $18.75 at $500 (15% of $125) and $60 at $2,000 (12% of $500).
At $2,000 a month in sales you drive yourself, Etsy's listing and transaction fees come to $170 before a single Offsite Ad. Start a 7-day free trial of shopspace and keep it: 0% per sale, flat $19 a month billed yearly.
The break-even is low. On $10 products, Etsy's listing plus transaction fee is $0.85 per sale, which reaches $19 at 22.35 sales. From the 23rd $10 sale in a month, a flat $19 costs less. On month-to-month billing ($29), the crossover is 34.1 sales, so from the 35th sale.
The catch matters: this only counts for sales that do not need Etsy. A buyer who found you through Etsy search would not have found your own store at all.
What Etsy gives you that shopspace does not
Be clear about the trade before you move anything:
- Buyers. People search Etsy for templates, printables and planners every day. shopspace has no marketplace and sends you no traffic; every visitor is someone you brought.
- Tax handling. Etsy collects and remits VAT on digital downloads where required. shopspace does not handle VAT for you.
- No fixed cost. Etsy costs nothing in a month you sell nothing. shopspace costs $19 a month billed yearly (or $29 month to month) whether you sell or not.
If you are new and have no audience, those three points usually outweigh the fees.
When selling direct makes more sense
The math tips toward your own store when:
- You already have an audience. An email list, an Instagram following or a YouTube channel sends buyers who were never Etsy's to begin with.
- You get repeat buyers. People who bought once and now look for you by name do not need Etsy's search. Etsy has rules about how you contact its buyers, so read its seller policy before messaging them, and grow your own list from your own channels instead. Our guide to building an email list as a creator covers how.
- You want to sell more than files. On shopspace you can sell downloads, courses, memberships with a community, bookings and bundles from one store, then follow up with email sequences and Instagram auto-DMs.
- You sell cheap products at volume. At $6 to $10, Etsy's fees take 14% to 17% of each sale.
Many sellers do both: Etsy for discovery, a direct store for the audience they build. If you are still weighing platforms, where to sell digital products compares the options, and selling without transaction fees lists the platforms that take 0%.
The verdict
If Etsy is where your buyers find you, stay and treat the fees as the price of that traffic; just check whether opting out of Offsite Ads makes sense while you still can. If you are sending more than about 23 buyers a month to $10 products yourself, or your repeat customers already search for you by name, you are paying Etsy for traffic you generated.
Put those buyers on a store you own: try shopspace free for 7 days. A card is required at signup and nothing is charged during the 7 days, and after that it is $19 a month billed yearly with 0% taken from each sale.