How to use the Etsy & POD Profit Calculator
- Choose how the item is made. I make & ship it asks for materials, packaging and postage. Print on demand asks for the base cost and shipping your POD supplier charges you.
- Pick your shop’s payment account. This sets the currency and the payment processing rate. The defaults follow Etsy’s published US rates; switch to the UK, Eurozone, Canada or Australia, or open Edit fee rates to type in exactly what your fee page says.
- Enter the price and shipping. Use what the buyer sees at checkout. Add the buyer’s sales tax or VAT rate if Etsy collects it on your orders — it isn’t your income, but the processing fee is charged on it.
- Test the scenarios. Turn Offsite Ads on to see an ad-driven sale, tick the currency box if your listings and bank use different currencies, and set a Target margin.
- Read the result. The big number is your profit per sale. The cheat sheet lists every fee, what it’s charged on and what it costs on this order. Use target price sets the item price that hits your margin; Copy breakdown gives you the whole table as text.
Where the money goes on a $32 print
Take an art print listed at $32 with $5 shipping, made and mailed by you for $11.30 (print, sleeve and board, postage). The buyer pays you $37.
- Listing fee: $0.20. A listing costs $0.20 to publish and lasts four months; on a multi-quantity listing, every sale renews it for another $0.20, so treat it as a per-sale cost.
- Transaction fee: 6.5% of the item price plus shipping (and gift wrap): $2.41.
- Payment processing: 3% of the order total plus $0.25 for a US shop: $1.36.
That’s $3.97 in fees, 10.7% of the order, leaving $21.73 profit, a 58.7% margin. If the same sale arrives through an Offsite Ad at 15%, another $5.55 goes to Etsy and the profit drops to $16.18, or 43.7%.
Run the same print through a print-on-demand supplier at $11.50 base plus $4.75 shipping and the profit is $16.78 normally, but only $11.23 (30.4%) when an Offsite Ad brought the buyer. POD margins look comfortable until an ad fee lands on top of them.
Why cheap items lose more to fees
Two of Etsy’s fees are fixed per order — the $0.20 listing renewal and the $0.25 processing charge — so they weigh much more on a $10 sticker than on a $250 original. Total fees as a share of the item price, with free shipping:
| Item price | Standard fees | With Offsite Ads 15% | With Offsite Ads 12% |
|---|---|---|---|
| $10 | 14.0% | 29.0% | 26.0% |
| $25 | 11.3% | 26.3% | 23.3% |
| $50 | 10.4% | 25.4% | 22.4% |
| $100 | 10.0% | 25.0% | 22.0% |
| $250 | 9.7% | 24.7% | 21.7% |
| $1,000 | 9.5% | 19.5% | 19.5% |
The last row shows the Offsite Ads cap: the fee can’t exceed $100 per order, so above about $667 (at 15%) or $833 (at 12%) its share starts to shrink.
One more thing the table makes clear: moving shipping into the price doesn’t save fees. Since the transaction fee covers shipping, a $37 item with free shipping and a $32 item with $5 shipping cost exactly the same $3.97. Choose free or paid shipping for how it sells, not for the fees.
The pricing formula behind the numbers
Fees that are a percentage of the order behave like a tax on every dollar you charge. Add them up (6.5% + 3% = 9.5% in the US example), then:
Price for a target margin = (your costs + fixed fees) ÷ (1 − fee % − target margin) − shipping charged
For the print: ($11.30 + $0.45) ÷ (1 − 0.095 − 0.35) = $21.171, which the calculator rounds up to the next cent because $21.17 would leave the margin a fraction short; minus $5 shipping, that is a $16.18 item price for a 35% margin. Set the margin to zero and you get the break-even price, $7.99. If fee % plus target margin reaches 100%, no price works — the calculator shows that as out of reach.
Tips from practice
Price for the Offsite Ads case if your shop is near or over $10,000 a year. Above that level the ads are mandatory, so a share of your sales will always carry the extra 12%. Check that those orders still make money.
Count the packaging you actually use. Rigid mailers, backing board, tissue, stickers and a thank-you card can easily come to a couple of dollars on a print. Weigh a packed order once and price the postage from that, not from the bare item.
Watch onsite Etsy Ads separately. Ads you run inside Etsy are pay-per-click and billed on their own, not per order. Divide a month’s ad spend by the orders it brought and add that figure under Other per order.
Recheck rates once a year. Etsy has changed its fee structure before and charges some sellers an extra regulatory operating fee depending on their country. Everything is editable here for that reason. For sales outside Etsy, compare the numbers with the Gallery Commission Split Calculator or set your base price with the Art Pricing Calculator.