You list a digital download at £20. It sells. Then Etsy takes its cut - and it is never just one fee.
Here is the whole picture for UK sellers in 2026, with a worked example you can drop straight into a spreadsheet.
The four fees every UK sale pays
Etsy stacks four charges on the same order. Most sellers only quote the middle one, which is why their margin estimates come out too high.
- Listing fee: £0.16 each time a listing is published or renewed. Auto-renew charges it again every four months, whether or not the item sells.
- Transaction fee: 6.5% of the item price, plus any shipping and gift wrap you charge.
- Payment processing: 4% + £0.20 per order through Etsy Payments in the UK.
- Regulatory Operating Fee: 0.48% of the item price plus shipping and gift wrap, charged on top of the other fees and subject to VAT where applicable.
Worked example: a £20 digital download
Take a £20 PDF with no shipping and no ads. Here is what leaves the sale.
- Listing fee: £0.16
- Transaction fee at 6.5%: £1.30
- Payment processing at 4% + £0.20: £1.00
- Regulatory Operating Fee at 0.48%: £0.10
- Total fees: £2.56, or 12.8% of the sale
- You keep: £17.44
The fixed fees punish cheap products
Run the same maths on a £5 product and the percentage gets much worse: £0.91 in fees, or 18.2%. The listing fee and the £0.20 processing charge do not shrink with your price.
That is why £3 to £5 digital downloads rarely work as a business on a marketplace. Either the price goes up or the volume has to be enormous.
Fee table at every price point
The percentage you lose depends on the price. Here is the same maths across the range UK digital sellers use most, with no shipping and no ads.
- £5: £0.91 in fees, you keep £4.09 (18.2%)
- £12: £1.68 in fees, you keep £10.32 (14.0%)
- £20: £2.56 in fees, you keep £17.44 (12.8%)
- £35: £4.20 in fees, you keep £30.80 (12.0%)
- £50: £5.85 in fees, you keep £44.15 (11.7%)
- £100: £11.34 in fees, you keep £88.66 (11.3%)
The floor you can never get below
Look at the shape of those numbers: the percentage falls towards about 11% as the price rises, because only the two fixed fees (£0.16 listing and £0.20 processing) get diluted by a bigger order. The 6.5%, 4% and 0.48% move with the price and never shrink.
That floor is the strongest argument for a £19 product over a £4 one. Four £5 sales earn £16.36 after fees. One £20 sale earns £17.44 from a quarter of the transactions - more money, less admin, fewer support messages.
What else can take a bite
The four headline fees are not the whole story. These are the extras that surprise sellers at the end of the month.
- Offsite Ads: 15% of the sale when Etsy advertises your listing and the buyer clicks the ad. It drops to 12% for sellers under the $10,000 threshold, and is optional below that level.
- VAT on Etsy's fees: UK sellers pay 20% VAT on the fees themselves. It is reclaimable if you are VAT registered, but it is real cash flow if you are not.
- Currency conversion: 2.5% when your listing currency differs from your payout currency.
- Refunds: you return the sale price, and payment processing fees are generally not returned to you.
Why digital sellers feel it more than physical sellers
For a handmade seller, Etsy's discovery is genuine value. Buyers arrive already searching, and the marketplace fee buys access to that demand.
For a digital download the maths is different. The product costs nothing to duplicate, so the only real cost is acquiring the buyer - and on a marketplace you pay to acquire the same buyer again on every repeat purchase.
There is also a structural limit. Etsy's policies restrict how you can use buyer details for marketing outside Etsy, so you cannot build a list you own and email it before your next launch. The audience stays with the marketplace.
What the same £20 sale costs on your own store
Sell from your own branded page and the only unavoidable fee is your payment processor's. There is no listing fee, no transaction fee and no marketplace commission - just a small percentage plus a fixed amount per transaction.
On a £20 sale that is about £0.50 through Stripe at 1.5% + 20p, or roughly £0.88 through PayPal at 2.9% + 30p. Against £2.56 on Etsy, you keep about two pounds more per order.
The trade-off is honest: Etsy brings the buyers, your own store does not. You have to bring the traffic yourself through search, social, email and word of mouth. That is the work you are buying back when you skip the marketplace.
- £20 on Etsy: you keep £17.44
- £20 on your own store: you keep about £19.50
- Difference: £2.06 per sale, or around £247 a year at ten sales a month
FAQ
These are the questions UK sellers ask most often about Etsy fees.
- Does Etsy take 6.5% or more? 6.5% is only the transaction fee. Add payment processing at 4% + £0.20, the fixed listing fee and the 0.48% Regulatory Operating Fee, and a £20 digital sale loses roughly 13%.
- Is Etsy cheaper than my own store? For paid discovery, sometimes yes. For repeat sales, bundles and email marketing, your own store keeps far more.
- Do the numbers change? Yes. Etsy adjusts fees and thresholds regularly, so check the current UK fee schedule before you price a product. The figures here are for illustration.