How Do Etsy Fees Change What I Should Charge for Candles?

These are the fees on Etsy's own help pages as I read them on 2026-11-04. Etsy's pages do not show a last-updated date, only a 2026 copyright line, and fees change, so check the pages linked at the bottom before you set a price. For a US seller, they list a $0.20 listing fee, a 6.5 percent transaction fee, and a payment processing fee of 3 percent plus $0.25 an order. If a sale comes from an Etsy Offsite Ad, there is a further 15 or 12 percent.

What are the fees?

For a multi-quantity listing, Etsy charges $0.20 for each additional item bought, and the processing fee depends on the country of your bank account. A shop that has reached $10,000 in any consecutive 365 days cannot opt out of Offsite Ads. Etsy's Offsite Ads article words the fee as 15 percent "on the order total" in one place, and as "the amount you made from your sale before the advertising fee was applied" in another. It does not say whether shipping is in it. Etsy's Fees & Payments Policy would not open for me, and I could not reach an archive copy. A search engine's copy of it says the fee is on the total order amount, including shipping and gift wrap, and not on sales tax for US sellers. I could not check that on the page itself, so treat it as unconfirmed and read the policy. The example shows both.

Worked example: one $28 candle

All candle prices and costs are examples. A buyer pays $28.00 for the candle and $6.00 for shipping, and I assume no sales tax. The order total is $34.00. Your full cost is $10.20 and your postage is $6.00, so shipping washes out.

I count the $0.20 on every sale to be safe. On a one-off listing you pay it once. The total is 3.68 / 34.00 = 10.8 percent of the order total, and 3.68 / 28.00 = 13.1 percent of the candle's price. What is left of the candle's price, 34.00 - 6.00 - 10.20 - 3.68 = $14.12, is 14.12 / 28.00 = 50.4 percent.

Now say the order came from an Offsite Ad at 15 percent. On the $28 item alone that is $4.20, leaving 14.12 - 4.20 = $9.92, or 35.4 percent. On the full $34 order, the base that search copy points to, it is $5.10, leaving $9.02, or 32.2 percent. The same sale loses 15 to 18 points of margin to one fee.

How do I set the price?

1. Start with your full cost per candle, including labor. See our cost guide and labor guide.
2. Pick the margin you want on the price. See our margin guide.
3. Add up the fees that scale with the order. Here that is 6.5 + 3 = 9.5 percent of the order total, including the shipping you charge.
4. Add the fixed fees: $0.20 + $0.25 = $0.45, and the 9.5 percent on shipping, 0.095 x 6 = $0.57.
5. Solve for the price. Price = (cost + fixed fees + fee on shipping) / (1 - margin - 0.095).

For a 50 percent margin: (10.20 + 0.45 + 0.57) / (1 - 0.50 - 0.095) = 11.22 / 0.405 = $27.70. Check it. The order total is 27.70 + 6 = $33.70. Fees are 33.70 x 0.095 + 0.45 = 3.20 + 0.45 = $3.65. What is left is 27.70 - 10.20 - 3.65 = $13.85, and 13.85 / 27.70 = 50 percent.

A price with no selling fees at all would be 10.20 / 0.50 = $20.40. So the same margin on Etsy needs $27.70 - $20.40 = $7.30 more. That is 27.70 / 20.40 = 1.358, about 36 percent higher. Your own site has costs of its own, so that gap overstates the difference.

Should I put Etsy prices above my own site?

Craftybase says many candle makers find Etsy pricing needs to be 10 to 15 percent higher than their Shopify price to net the same profit per sale. It also says to price for your lowest-margin channel and use that price everywhere to avoid customer confusion, and that lower prices signal lower quality on Etsy. Those two ideas pull against each other. Work out the numbers for each channel and then decide.

What about Offsite Ads?

The fee only hits orders that came from an Offsite Ad, so you cannot know in advance which sales it will be. Whether to build it into every price is your call. If your shop has never reached $10,000 in any consecutive 365 days, Etsy says you can opt out.

Common mistakes

• Working out fees on the item price when Etsy charges them on item plus shipping.
• Treating the 12 or 15 percent as a fee on every sale.
• Using an old fee number from a video or a forum.
• Leaving out your own labor, then finding Etsy took the rest.

Questions

Do fees apply to the shipping I charge?

Etsy's pages say the transaction fee applies to shipping and gift wrap you charge, and the payment processing fee is taken from the item's total sale price, including shipping fees and any applicable sales tax.

Are fees different outside the US?

Etsy's payment processing page lists rates by country, and some countries have extra fees. I only covered United States sellers.