If your Etsy shop sells digital products — planners, templates, printables, presets — sooner or later someone tells you to "just move to Gumroad, the fees are lower." Then you look it up: Gumroad charges 10%, Etsy charges 6.5%, and suddenly the advice sounds backwards. Both numbers are real, and both are misleading, because they're not counting the same things. Here's the honest 2026 breakdown for digital sellers, with the math on real prices.
What Etsy charges on a digital sale in 2026
Etsy's "6.5%" is only the transaction fee. A digital sale actually stacks three charges: a $0.20 listing fee (renewed every time the item sells), the 6.5% transaction fee, and payment processing of about 3% + $0.25 in the US (higher outside it — 4% + £0.20 in the UK, 4% + €0.30 in much of the EU). For automatic-download digital items, Etsy also collects and remits EU/UK VAT from the buyer, so you don't handle that part. All in, a typical US digital sale loses roughly 12–15% before any ads. We break the digital case down in Etsy fees for digital products.
What Gumroad charges in 2026
Gumroad's "10%" is a flat platform fee, but it isn't the whole bill either. On a direct sale (a buyer who came from your link) you pay 10% + $0.50 per transaction, plus card processing of about 2.9% + $0.30. That lands around 12.9% + $0.80 per sale. There's no monthly fee and no tiers. Two things that genuinely count in Gumroad's favor: since January 1, 2025 it acts as merchant of record, so it collects and remits sales tax, VAT and GST worldwide at no extra creator fee; and there are no listing fees, so unsold products cost you nothing. The catch: if a sale comes through Gumroad's own Discover marketplace, the fee jumps to a flat 30% (processing included).
The real comparison: same product, both platforms
Take a $15 digital planner, sold to a buyer you brought yourself (US seller):
- Etsy ($15): $0.20 listing + $0.98 transaction + $0.70 processing ≈ $1.88 in fees → you keep about $13.12 (~12.5%).
- Gumroad ($15): $1.50 platform + $0.50 flat + $0.74 processing ≈ $2.74 in fees → you keep about $12.26 (~18%).
So on a $15 sale you drive yourself, Etsy actually keeps a bit more in your pocket — the opposite of what the "6.5% vs 10%" headline implies. But watch what happens on a cheap item.
Why cheap digital products break the math
Both platforms bolt a fixed amount onto every sale — Etsy's $0.20 listing + $0.25 processing, Gumroad's $0.50 + $0.30 — and fixed fees hurt small prices the most. On a $3 mini-template:
- Etsy: ~$0.74 in fees → you keep ~$2.26 (about 25% gone).
- Gumroad: ~$1.19 in fees → you keep ~$1.81 (about 40% gone).
Gumroad's $0.50 flat fee is the difference: on a $3 sale it alone is 17% before anything else. The lesson isn't "pick a platform" — it's that ultra-cheap digital items bleed margin everywhere, and bundling them into a $12 pack is usually worth more than the percentage difference between platforms. (Same trap we cover in how much Etsy takes from a $5 sale.)
The factor that matters more than the fee
Here's what a fee comparison never captures: who sends the buyer. Etsy's fee buys you a marketplace — millions of people already searching for planners and printables. Gumroad's direct fee is cheaper partly because Gumroad sends you almost no one; you bring the audience (email list, social, your own site). That's why Gumroad's Discover fee is 30% — that's the price of Gumroad finding the customer, and it's much closer to Etsy's true "traffic included" cost. So the honest framing isn't "which is cheaper," it's the same retail-vs-your-own-store question as Etsy vs Shopify: Etsy if you want built-in demand, Gumroad if you already have an audience to send. Plenty of sellers run both — Etsy for discovery, Gumroad for their existing followers.
One more thing they share: refunds still cost you
On both platforms, issuing a refund does not fully make you whole. Gumroad keeps its 10% + $0.50 even on a refunded sale; Etsy returns most fees but the timing and credits scatter across your ledger. If refunds are common in your niche, factor that in — it's a real cost neither headline rate mentions.
Where this ties back to your numbers
Whichever platform you lean on, the decision rests on one figure the dashboards don't hand you: your true net profit per product after every fee. You can estimate a single Etsy sale with our free Etsy fee calculator, but for the real per-product number — including the processing, regulatory and VAT-on-fees pieces a calculator only estimates — 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. Our tool is Etsy-focused (Gumroad is a separate channel we don't track), and it's built for the non-US, VAT-paying sellers these fee stacks hit hardest. It's in free beta now. Join the waitlist →