If you make a physical product, sooner or later you'll ask whether you should sell on Etsy, on Faire, or both — and the first thing everyone compares is the fees. That comparison is where most makers go wrong, because Etsy and Faire aren't two versions of the same thing. Etsy is retail (you sell to the person who keeps the item) and Faire is wholesale (you sell to shops that resell it). Their fees look close on paper, but they apply to completely different prices. Here's the honest 2026 breakdown, with real numbers on the same product.
What Etsy charges in 2026
On a retail sale, Etsy takes a $0.20 listing fee (which renews every time the item sells), a 6.5% transaction fee on the full order including shipping, and payment processing of about 3% + $0.25 in the US (higher outside it). If a sale comes from Offsite Ads, add 12–15%. All in, a typical US seller loses roughly 10–12% of the sale before Offsite Ads. (We break every line down in how much Etsy takes from a sale.)
What Faire charges in 2026
Faire has no listing fee and no monthly subscription. Instead it works two ways:
- Marketplace orders (a shop Faire found for you): Faire takes a 15% commission on the product subtotal, on every order from that customer — first order and reorders alike — plus a one-time $10 new-customer fee the first time a brand-new retailer orders.
- Faire Direct orders (a shop you brought): 0% commission. You only pay payment processing, which runs 1.9%–3.5% + $0.30 depending on how fast you want your payout (3.5% for next-day, 1.9% for 60-day).
So Faire's headline rate is either ~15% or ~2–3.5% depending entirely on who sourced the customer. That's the first thing a simple fee comparison misses.
The trap: the fees apply to different prices
Here's the part almost no "Etsy vs Faire" article says out loud. Wholesale prices are typically half of retail (the classic keystone markup), because the shop that buys from you needs room to mark it back up. So a 15% Faire fee and an 11% Etsy fee aren't landing on the same number — the Faire fee is a slightly bigger slice of a much smaller price. Comparing the percentages alone tells you almost nothing about what you actually keep.
Same product, three ways
Say you make a candle. It retails at $24 on Etsy and wholesales at $12 on Faire, and it costs you $6 in materials and packaging (your COGS).
- Etsy retail ($24): fees ≈ $0.20 listing + $1.56 transaction + $0.97 processing = ~$2.73. Net after fees $21.27, minus $6 COGS = ~$15.27 profit per candle.
- Faire marketplace, 6-unit order ($72): 15% commission = $10.80. Net $61.20, minus $36 COGS = $25.20 for six = ~$4.20 profit per candle.
- Faire Direct, same 6-unit order ($72): 0% commission, ~2.4% + $0.30 processing ≈ $2.03. Net $69.97, minus $36 = $33.97 for six = ~$5.66 profit per candle.
Look at what happened. The candle earns three to four times more per unit on Etsy — not because Faire's fees are outrageous, but because wholesale means selling at half price. Faire's payoff isn't per-unit profit; it's volume and reach (one shop orders six at once, then reorders, and does your marketing for you). And notice Faire Direct beats Faire marketplace by about a third per unit, just by skipping the 15% — which is why bringing your own stockists to Faire is the single biggest lever on that channel.
So which is more profitable?
Neither, universally — it depends on your margins, your volume, and how many of your Faire customers you sourced yourself. Etsy usually wins on profit per unit; Faire can win on total profit if it brings enough volume that your workshop stays busy and your per-hour output climbs. Many makers run both: Etsy for retail margin, Faire for bulk baseline orders. The mistake is picking one off a fee percentage instead of doing the per-unit math on your product with your real costs. (For the retail-vs-your-own-store version of this question, see Etsy vs Shopify fees.)
Where this ties back to your numbers
Every decision above rests on one figure Etsy never shows you: your true net profit per product after all fees and your own costs. If you don't know that a candle nets $15.27 on Etsy, you can't judge whether wholesaling it at half price is worth the volume — you're guessing. You can estimate a single Etsy sale with our free Etsy fee calculator, but for the real, per-product number, Seller Profit Lens connects to your Etsy shop read-only and reads the fees Etsy actually charged — to the cent, per item — then subtracts your costs so you can see which products are worth keeping on the retail side and which are candidates for wholesale. It's built for the non-US, VAT-paying sellers these fee stacks hit hardest, and it's in free beta now. Join the waitlist →