Etsy's Offsite Ads fee takes 12% to 15% of the whole order, shipping included, and you can only opt out below $10,000

The answer, and what has and has not changed

Etsy charges an advertising fee on any order a buyer places within 30 days of clicking one of its Offsite Ads, and the fee is a percentage of the whole order: the price of the item plus the shipping and gift wrapping you charge. It is 15% if your shop has always made less than $10,000 in sales in any 365-day period and 12% once it has made $10,000 or more, and it never exceeds $100 on one order. Below $10,000 you can opt out. At $10,000 you cannot, for the life of the shop. All of that comes from Etsy's own Offsite Ads help page and Fees & Payments Policy, read on October 27, 2026.

We found no change to those numbers. The copy of the Fees & Payments Policy we read is headed "Last updated on Oct 5, 2026" and carries the same 15%, 12%, $10,000 and $100 figures as the help page. We did not have the earlier version to compare, so we cannot say what the October 5 edit touched. What Etsy has announced is tooling: its seller-updates page lists a redesigned Offsite Ads dashboard that shows revenue, fees, visits, top channels and listings, and traffic from ads that did not end in a sale.

Offsite Ads are optional only below the $10,000 line. Per Etsy's help page, that stops being true once the shop has made $10,000 or more in any consecutive 365-day period.

The rules, in one table

Eight rules decide what you pay. Each row is Etsy's wording or a close paraphrase, and the right-hand column says where it appears.

What it does to a $20, $50 and $100 sale

Hypothetical US seller on Etsy Payments, one item per order, no buyer-paid shipping, no sales tax. Etsy's other fees come from our Etsy fee table: 6.5% transaction fee, $0.20 listing fee, and 3% plus $0.25 payment processing. They match our $20 sale and $50 sale pages. The Offsite Ads fee is Etsy's rate applied to the order total. All amounts are before product cost and postage.

Read the table as an add-on. On a $20 sale, Etsy's other fees take $2.35, or 11.8% of the sale. An attributed order at 15% takes another $3.00, which lifts total Etsy fees to 26.8% of the sale. At 12% the total is 23.8%.

Why it matters: the fee is a share of the price you raise

Covering the fee takes more than the fee itself, because the fee grows with the price. An attributed order needs a price about 20% higher at 15%, or about 15% higher at 12%, to leave the same money as an order with no ad fee (our arithmetic, same assumptions as above). The table shows the exact prices.

You cannot price attributed orders separately

Etsy decides which listings it advertises and where. There is no budget and no per-listing switch. The levers you hold are the opt-out below $10,000, your prices, and what you charge for shipping. Hypothesis, not an Etsy rule: for most shops the fee is best modeled as a blend, meaning the share of your orders attributed to Offsite Ads times the rate. Your Offsite Ads dashboard shows that share. We cannot.

The table shows what a blend does to a hypothetical $50 item. Raising the price lifts the fee base on every order, so the figures include that. They ignore any change in how many buyers purchase at the higher price.

Shipping, the cap and the $10,000 line

Shipping is in the fee base. Hypothetical: a $26 item with $50 of buyer-paid shipping is a $76 order. At 15% the Offsite Ads fee is $11.40, and at 12% it is $9.12, not the $3.90 or $3.12 you would get from the item price alone. Etsy's other fees also run on the shipping, so they come to $7.67 on that order by our fee table. The seller keeps $56.93 at 15% or $59.21 at 12%, before paying for postage. Moving cost from the price into the shipping charge does not get around the fee, because the fee covers both.

At 15% the $100 cap binds at an order total of $666.67, and at 12% at $833.33 (our arithmetic: $100 divided by the rate). Above those totals the effective rate falls. For most small shops the cap never applies.

The $10,000 line and the fee base are not the same measure. The line counts item price only, per the policy, so shipping charges never move you toward it. The fee runs on the whole order, so shipping charges always add to what you pay. And the line is a one-way door: Etsy's policy says a shop that opted out and then reaches $10,000 "will be required to participate" and that the earlier opt-out "will no longer apply." Our reading: for a shop approaching $10,000, an opt-out has a short shelf life.

What to do this week

None of this needs a new tool. It needs three numbers from your own shop and one spreadsheet column.

• Pull your share. In Shop Manager, open Marketing, then Offsite Ads, which is the dashboard path in Etsy's help page. For a period you choose, note attributed orders, attributed revenue and fees, then divide attributed orders by all orders. That share times 15% or 12% is your blended fee.
• Find your line. Etsy's help center tells you to set a custom 365-day range on your Stats page. The policy counts item price times quantity and excludes shipping, taxes and gift wrap, so check that your Stats figure uses the same definition before you rely on it. We did not verify what the Stats page includes.
• If you are under $10,000, decide on the opt-out on purpose. Offsite Ads charge nothing until a sale happens, and opting out removes that traffic as well as the fee. Etsy says you can re-enroll with Turn on Offsite Ads. Whether the traffic is worth the fee is a question about your margins and your dashboard. Etsy's pages do not say how much traffic Offsite Ads bring to any given shop.
• Reprice the thin items first. Any listing whose margin after Etsy's other fees is smaller than the ad fee loses money on an attributed order: on a $20 item that is $3.00 at 15%. Use the tables above to set a floor, then compare with what the same item nets on eBay.
• Check what you charge for shipping. If you charge more than postage costs, the fee runs on the surplus as well, and the surplus does not count toward the $10,000 line.
• After a refund, read your payment account. Etsy's Payments Policy says that on seller refunds the payment processing fee is recalculated and "Other applicable fees will be refunded to the seller's payment account." It does not say in so many words how a partial refund affects an Offsite Ads fee, so check the entry rather than assume.

Questions sellers ask about Etsy Offsite Ads

Answers are from Etsy's help page, its Fees & Payments Policy and its Payments Policy, read October 27, 2026. Where Etsy's pages are silent, we say so.

Can I opt out of Etsy Offsite Ads?

Only if your shop has always made less than $10,000 in any consecutive 365-day period. Go to Shop Manager, Settings, Offsite Ads, then Opt out. If you reach $10,000 later, you are required to participate for the lifetime of the shop and the earlier opt-out no longer applies.

What is the difference between the 15% and 12% rate?

Both apply to the same base, the order total. Shops below $10,000 pay 15%. Shops at or above $10,000 pay 12%, which Etsy calls a discount, and cannot opt out. On $50 of order total that is $7.50 against $6.00.

Does the 30-day window apply to custom or repeat orders?

Etsy's policy says it applies to "any orders" a buyer places from your shop within 30 days of the ad click, and the help page says each order in that window can be charged. Neither page carves out custom or repeat orders. Your Offsite Ads dashboard lists the orders attributed to ads.

Is the fee charged on shipping?

Yes. Etsy's policy says the fee is a percentage of the total order amount, which is the listing price plus the shipping and gift wrapping you charge. US sellers do not pay it on sales tax. Sellers outside the US pay it on taxes included in listing prices.

How do I price items so Offsite Ads do not wipe out my margin?

Work out the share of your orders that are attributed, multiply by 15% or 12%, and raise prices so your take-home holds at that blended fee. The tables above show the method for a hypothetical $50 item.

Does this apply to 3D-printed items I sell?

The rate and the opt-out depend on your shop's sales, not on the type of item. The Etsy pages we read list no exemption for 3D-printed items or any other item type. Whether a given 3D print may be listed on Etsy at all is a separate question that this piece does not cover.

Can I choose which listings are advertised or set a budget?

No. Etsy's help page says listings are advertised based on what performs best on each channel, and that Offsite Ads have no budget setting. The only cost control is the cap of $100 per order and, below $10,000, the opt-out.

Do I get the fee back if I refund the order?

Etsy's Payments Policy says that when a seller refunds a buyer, the processing fee is recalculated and other applicable fees are refunded, but that for full refunds Etsy itself covers, such as through its protection program, the fees "including without limitation: transaction fee, offsite ads fee, etc." are not credited back. It does not spell out the partial-refund case for the Offsite Ads fee, so check your payment account.

What we are watching next

Any edit to the 15%, 12%, $10,000 or $100 figures. Etsy last updated its Fees & Payments Policy on October 5, 2026, and we will log any rate change on the fee change log with the old and new values.

Our Etsy calculators do not yet include an Offsite Ads line, so the tables above are computed from the same fee table plus Etsy's ad rate. Fee-layering is a theme we track on the forecast scorecard, where Forecast F5 covers Amazon's 2027 fee announcement. No forecast covers Etsy today. Our broader marketplace analysis is in the October Intelligence Dossier, and the rest of our operator analysis is on the intelligence dashboard.

How Etsy's redesigned Offsite Ads dashboard reports attributed orders. Etsy's description is brief, so we have not tested what it shows. Compare your own dashboard with your payment account entries for a few orders before you build prices on it.