Most "how much does Etsy take" guides quietly assume you're a US seller — 6.5% transaction, 3% + $0.25 processing, done. If you sell from the UK, that math is wrong in your favour and against it: your processing fee is different, there's a regulatory fee US sellers don't pay, and — the big one — Etsy adds 20% VAT on top of every fee unless you've given them a VAT number. Here's exactly what Etsy takes from a UK sale in 2026, worked out to the penny on a £25 order.
The fees on a £25 UK sale
For a UK-based seller with a UK bank account, paid through Etsy Payments, a straightforward £25 order (no Offsite Ads) is charged:
- Listing fee — about £0.16. Etsy's listing fee is set at $0.20 and converted to sterling, so it wobbles a little with the exchange rate. Charged once, and renewed automatically each time the item sells.
- Transaction fee — 6.5% = £1.63. Charged on the whole order total, including any shipping and gift wrap the buyer pays — not just the £25 item price.
- Payment processing — 4% + £0.20 = £1.20. UK processing is 4% of the total (£1.00) plus a fixed £0.20. That's higher than the US 3% + $0.25. See payment processing fees by country.
- Regulatory operating fee — 0.48% = £0.12. A small percentage Etsy charges UK sellers to cover local digital-services taxes. It rose to 0.48% from 22 June 2026 (up from 0.32%), so older calculators understate it. See the regulatory operating fee explained and Etsy fee changes in 2026.
Subtotal so far: £0.16 + £1.63 + £1.20 + £0.12 = £3.11. But for most UK sellers that isn't the final number.
The 20% VAT that catches UK sellers out
Here's the part US sellers never deal with. If you have not entered a valid UK VAT number in your Etsy settings, Etsy charges 20% VAT on its own fees — on the listing, transaction, processing and regulatory fees alike. It's not VAT on your product; it's VAT on what Etsy charges you.
On our £25 sale, 20% of the £3.11 in fees is another £0.62. That takes total Etsy fees to about £3.73, and your payout to roughly £21.27 — around 14.9% of the sale gone before a penny of your own costs. A US seller on the same-sized order loses about 11%; the extra ~4 points is almost entirely that VAT-on-fees. See does Etsy charge VAT on your seller fees.
Most small UK makers sit below the £90,000 VAT-registration threshold, so this applies to them. If you are VAT-registered and have added your number, Etsy stops adding the 20% (you account for it on your own VAT return instead). Either way it's worth understanding — for the wider picture of VAT on your sales, see VAT for UK and EU sellers.
What if the sale came from Offsite Ads?
If Etsy placed an ad that led to your £25 sale, it adds an Offsite Ads fee: 15% if your shop made under the equivalent of about $10,000 in the last 365 days, or 12% above that. On £25 that's £3.75 at 15% — and yes, the 20% VAT applies to that too, so it's really about £4.50 added. That can push a single low-priced order past 30% in total fees. You only pay it when a sale is actually attributed to an ad, but on a cheap item it stings. See is Etsy Offsite Ads worth it.
Don't forget shipping and currency
Two more things move the number. First, the transaction fee applies to the shipping the buyer pays, so a £25 item with £4 postage is charged fees on £29, not £25. Second, if you list in a currency other than GBP and get paid in sterling, Etsy adds a 2.5% currency conversion fee — see currency conversion fee explained.
And that's still not your profit
Everything above is only what Etsy takes. Your real profit also subtracts what the item cost to make, the postage you actually paid, packaging, and any tax you owe. A £25 sale that nets £21.27 after Etsy fees might leave £9–£10 after materials and postage — and one Offsite Ads hit can halve that. To find the point where a sale actually makes money, see how to find your break-even price, and for the full non-US picture, the hidden costs for non-US sellers.
See the exact number for your shop
You can estimate any single UK order with our free Etsy fee calculator — it includes the regulatory and currency-conversion fees most tools skip. But a calculator works from published rates; your real charges shift with VAT-on-fees, ad attribution, refunds and exact processing amounts that only your Etsy ledger shows. That's the gap Seller Profit Lens closes: it connects to your shop read-only, reads the fees Etsy actually charged on every order to the penny, and subtracts your own costs to show real profit per product — built with UK and other non-US sellers in mind. It's free in beta right now. Join the waitlist →