A $500 sale feels like a great day — a big custom order, a furniture piece, a bulk buy. Then the payout lands and it's a few dozen dollars short of $500, and you're left wondering where it went. Here's precisely what Etsy takes from a $500 sale in 2026, to the cent, so there are no surprises.
The three standard fees on a $500 US sale
For a US-based seller, a $500 order (with shipping included in that total) is charged three standard fees:
- Listing fee — $0.20. Flat, charged once per sale (the listing auto-renews each time the item sells).
- Transaction fee — 6.5% = $32.50. Etsy takes 6.5% of the whole order total, including any shipping and gift wrap the buyer paid — not just the item price.
- Payment processing — 3% + $0.25 = $15.25. For US sellers this is 3% of the total plus a fixed $0.25.
Add them up: $0.20 + $32.50 + $15.25 = $47.95 in fees. You keep about $452.05 — roughly 9.6% gone. On bigger orders the flat fees ($0.20 and $0.25) barely register, so the percentage is a little lower than it is on a small sale. (Compare with a $50 sale, where the fixed fees hurt more.)
What if the sale came from Offsite Ads?
If Etsy placed an ad that led to this sale, there's a fourth fee — Offsite Ads — at 15% of the order (12% if your shop made over $10,000 in the past 12 months). On a $500 order that's $75 (or $60 at the 12% rate). That single fee is bigger than all three standard fees combined:
- Standard fees: $47.95 → payout ≈ $452.05.
- + Offsite Ads at 15%: $47.95 + $75 = $122.95 → payout ≈ $377.05 (~24.6% gone).
You only pay this when a sale is actually attributed to one of those ads, and it's capped at $100 per order — so a $500 Offsite Ads sale hits the fee hard but not the cap. More on this in is Etsy Offsite Ads worth it.
Non-US sellers: the bite is bigger
The $47.95 above assumes a US seller. If your bank is outside the US, three quieter charges stack on top of the same 6.5% transaction fee:
- Higher payment processing. Instead of 3% + $0.25 you might pay 4% + £0.20 (UK), 4% + €0.30 (much of the EU) or 6.5% + 14 TRY (Türkiye). On $500, a 6.5% processing rate alone is $32.50 — more than double the US figure.
- Regulatory operating fee. In the UK, EU countries, Canada, Türkiye and others, Etsy adds a small percentage-based fee (usually under ~1.2%). On $500 that's a few dollars most calculators never show. See the regulatory operating fee explained.
- VAT on the fees, and currency conversion. Many countries add VAT on top of Etsy's fees, and if you list and get paid in different currencies there's a 2.5% conversion fee. Neither appears in a standard fee estimate.
Stack those and a non-US seller can lose 15% or more on the same $500 order that costs a US seller under 10%. That gap is exactly why we cover the hidden costs for non-US sellers — the headline "6.5%" hides most of the real bill.
And this is before your own costs
Everything above is only what Etsy takes. Your real profit on that $500 sale is what's left after your materials, packaging and the shipping you actually paid. A $500 handmade order with $180 of materials and $22 of shipping nets far less than the $452 payout suggests — and that's the number that actually matters. (See how to calculate cost of goods sold.)
Check it against your own numbers
You can estimate any single order with our free Etsy fee calculator — it includes the regulatory and currency-conversion fees most tools skip, so it's closer to reality for non-US sellers. But a calculator works from published rates; your actual charges vary with ad attribution, refunds, exact processing amounts and VAT-on-fees that only your Etsy ledger shows. That's the gap Seller Profit Lens closes: it connects to your shop read-only and reads the fees Etsy actually charged on that $500 order, to the cent, then subtracts your own costs to show true profit per product. It's free in beta right now. Join the waitlist →