Etsy’s UK fee structure looks simple in their headline marketing — 6.5% transaction fee, a few pence per listing — and is anything but. The full picture has five fee layers, plus 20% VAT on every layer for non-VAT-registered sellers (which is most small UK sellers).
The five fee layers
In order of how Etsy applies them:
1. Listing fee — £0.16. Charged when you publish or renew a listing. Lasts 4 months or until the item sells. Non-refundable.
2. Transaction fee — 6.5%. Charged on the item price plus shipping. The item-price-plus-shipping basis catches sellers out — if you offer “free shipping” by absorbing the cost into your item price, you pay 6.5% on the higher price.
3. Payment processing — 4% + £0.20. UK rate via Etsy Payments. Charged once per order, regardless of how many items.
4. Regulatory Operating Fee — 0.32%. Etsy’s UK-only fee covering Digital Services Tax. Quiet but present on every sale since 2021.
5. Offsite Ads — 0%, 12%, or 15%. Only applies to sales Etsy attributes to an off-platform ad it ran (Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.). Sellers above the £8k-ish annual threshold are auto-enrolled at 12%; below the threshold, 15% with the option to opt out entirely.
The VAT layer
If you’re not VAT-registered (you haven’t given Etsy a UK VAT number), Etsy adds 20% VAT to every fee on top. So the 6.5% transaction fee is effectively 7.8%, the 0.32% Regulatory Operating Fee is effectively 0.384%, and so on. This roughly turns a 10.5% headline rate into a 13–14% effective rate before Offsite Ads.
VAT-registered sellers (typically those whose total turnover crosses £90,000) don’t pay VAT on Etsy’s fees and can reclaim VAT on their other business costs. They also charge VAT to buyers and remit it to HMRC. The maths is materially different — toggle the “VAT-registered” switch on the calculator above to see.
What this calculator does and doesn’t model
The calculator above shows the per-order fee maths for one transaction. It assumes:
- You’re a UK-resident seller using Etsy Payments (the standard since the Etsy/PayPal split).
- Your buyer pays in GBP. Cross-currency sales add a 2.5% conversion fee not modelled here.
- The sale is a normal completed transaction (not a refund, partial refund, or chargeback).
- You’re not using Etsy Plus (£8/month) or Pattern (£10/month). Those are separate subscription costs.
For the full picture across many orders — average margin per product, monthly fee spend, year-on-year trends — Etsy’s CSV export gives you the raw data; this calculator is for the per-order maths you do before listing.
How it compares to other resale platforms
Same order — a £30 item with £3.50 shipping charged, non-VAT-registered, private/casual seller — across the UK marketplaces most sellers weigh up against each other. Figures come straight from each platform's own fee calculator on this site, so you can check the working on the relevant page.
| Platform | Seller fees on this order | Effective rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Etsy | £4.78 | 14.3% | £0.16 listing + 6.5% transaction + 4%+£0.20 processing + 0.32% regulatory fee, plus 20% VAT on all of it if you're not VAT-registered. |
| eBay (private seller) | £0.00 | 0% | UK private sellers pay zero final value fees on most categories since October 2024, and eBay's Managed Payments has no separate processing fee. Business sellers pay ~10.9%+VAT+a fixed fee instead. See the eBay fee calculator. |
| Depop | £1.27 | 3.8% | Depop removed its 10% selling fee for UK sellers in July 2024 — only payment processing (2.9% + £0.30) remains, unless you use optional Boost (+8%, only on attributed sales). See the Depop fee calculator. |
| Vinted | £0.00 | 0% | Vinted has never charged UK sellers a fee — buyers pay a separate Buyer Protection Fee that doesn't touch your payout. See the Vinted profit calculator. |
eBay and Vinted show £0 for casual private sellers because both platforms shifted their fee model in recent years — that wasn't always true, so don't rely on older articles. Etsy still takes the biggest cut here, but it's also the only one of the four with real search traffic and a built-in audience actively looking to buy, which the £0-fee platforms don't offer in the same way.
Connecting fees to tax
The “profit before tax” figure is what HMRC cares about — but you need more than just one calc to work out your tax owed. Two calculators stack on top of this one:
- Trading allowance calculator — checks whether you’re under HMRC’s £1,000 tax-free threshold or need to register for Self Assessment. Most casual Etsy sellers are surprised by this.
- Side hustle tax calculator — computes the actual tax owed on your Etsy profit, factoring in your day-job income, personal allowance, and Class 4 NI.
Etsy fees are tax-deductible. If your actual fees (plus other business expenses) exceed the £1,000 trading allowance, claim them on Self Assessment instead — the trading allowance calculator above tells you which method saves more.