The Etsy Offsite Ads fee: 15%, 12%, and what it does to a handmade margin

Offsite Ads is the largest single fee Etsy charges, and it lands on the whole order — not on your profit. For a shop running a 25% margin, one ad-attributed sale can turn a good order into a bad one. Here's exactly how much it takes.

The two rates

Offsite Ads costs 15% of the order total for most shops. Once a shop has made $10,000 or more on Etsy in the trailing 365 days, the rate drops to 12% — and at that point participation stops being optional. Smaller shops can turn it off; larger ones get the discount instead of the exit.

You are only charged when a buyer clicks one of Etsy’s ads on an external platform and then buys from you within the attribution window. There is no monthly spend, no bidding, and no charge for ads that don’t convert. The fee is also capped at $100.00 per order, which only bites on high-ticket work.

What it costs on one real order

A $38.00 item with $6.00 shipping, costing $25.70 all in — materials, postage and an hour of your time:

The same order, attributed to Offsite Ads at 15%:

The fee took $6.60, but it took 48% of the profit. That is the part that surprises people: a fee quoted against revenue is enormous when measured against margin. At the 12% rate the same order keeps $8.39 — 19.1%.

Should you turn it off?

If you’re under the threshold and you can opt out, the question is whether Offsite Ads brings genuinely new customers or simply intercepts people already on their way to you. Etsy can’t answer that and neither can this page — but two things make opting out more attractive:

• Thin margins. Below about 20%, an ad-attributed sale at 15% is often a loss. The maths does not care how nice the order was.
• Strong repeat business.If buyers come back directly, paying an ad fee on a first order is a real investment. If they never return, it’s just a discount you didn’t choose.

And two make staying in sensible:

• Healthy margins with spare capacity. At 35%+ you can absorb the fee and still bank a good order, and you presumably want the volume.
• High average order value. The flat fees shrink and the per-order cap starts to matter in your favour.

Price for it, don’t just accept it

If you can’t opt out, build the fee into the price. Toggle Offsite Ads on in the calculator at the top of this page and look at the break-even figure: that number is the floor for a shop that has to assume any given sale might be ad-attributed. Most sellers who do this discover their catalogue needs a modest across-the-board rise rather than a dramatic change to one listing.

Fee rates on this page were verified against Etsy’s published fee schedule on 2026-07-21 and are stored in a single config file, so every page here shows the same numbers. Etsy can change fees at any time.