Look at your Etsy payment account after a sale and you'll see two charges sitting almost on top of each other: a "transaction fee" and a "payment processing fee." They're taken at the same moment, they're both a percentage of the sale, and they're named similarly enough that most sellers treat them as one thing. They're not. They're two separate fees, calculated differently, and mixing them up is one of the most common reasons a seller's own math doesn't match Etsy's.
Here's exactly what each one is in 2026 — and why the difference actually matters.
The transaction fee: 6.5% for the right to sell on Etsy
The transaction fee is Etsy's commission for making the sale. It's 6.5% of the total order — and "total" means item price plus shipping plus gift wrap, not just the item. This is Etsy's cut for the marketplace itself: the traffic, the checkout, the buyer protection.
The part that trips people up: it applies to shipping too. So offering "free shipping" by baking the cost into your price doesn't dodge this fee — you still pay 6.5% on the whole amount. It's the same 6.5% whether the buyer pays with a card, a gift card, or anything else, because it has nothing to do with how they paid.
The payment processing fee: the cost of taking the money
The payment processing fee is completely different. It's what Etsy charges to actually move the buyer's money — the card-network and banking cost of the transaction. Because that cost depends on where your bank is, this fee changes by country:
- US: 3% + $0.25 per order
- UK: 4% + £0.20
- Germany / France: 4% + €0.30
- Türkiye: 6.5% + 14 TRY
Two things make this fee behave unlike the transaction fee. First, it has a fixed piece (the +$0.25, +£0.20, etc.) on top of the percentage — which is why it hurts far more on a cheap order than an expensive one. Second, it's calculated on the total the buyer paid including any sales tax or VAT Etsy collected, even though that tax was never your money. That's a subtle reason your processing fee can look a touch bigger than you'd expect from the item price alone.
Side by side
- What it's for: Transaction fee = the marketplace commission. Processing fee = the cost of collecting payment.
- Rate: Transaction = a flat 6.5% everywhere. Processing = a percentage plus a fixed fee, both varying by country.
- What it's charged on: Transaction = item + shipping + gift wrap. Processing = the full buyer total, tax included.
- Does the buyer's payment method matter: Transaction = no. Processing = yes, it's literally about the payment.
For a US seller they add up to roughly 9.5–10.5% of the sale before anything else — and that's before listing fees, Offsite Ads, or the extra regulatory operating fee non-US sellers pay. It's a big part of why your Etsy fees feel higher than 6.5%.
Why the difference is worth caring about
If you lump the two together as "about 10%," your estimate drifts in two predictable ways. On cheap orders you under-count, because the fixed processing piece (+$0.25 and friends) is a much bigger share of a $5 sale than a $50 one — a common trap when you price small items for profit. On tax-heavy orders you also under-count, because processing is charged on the tax-inclusive total. Neither gap is huge on one sale, but across a month they're exactly why a hand-built spreadsheet slowly stops matching Etsy's real deductions.
See both fees, separated, on every order
You can estimate the combined bite on a single sale with our free Etsy fee calculator. But the two fees only appear as separate, exact line items in your actual Etsy payment records — and reading them correctly, order by order, is fiddly by hand. That's what Seller Profit Lens does: it connects to your shop read-only, reads the transaction fee and the payment processing fee Etsy actually charged on each order (to the cent, tax handling and all), ties them to the right product, subtracts your own costs, and reconciles the total back to Etsy so your numbers match theirs. It's in free beta now. Join the waitlist →