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Etsy takes 6.5% of your shipping charge too. Price like you know that.
An $18 item with $4.50 shipping loses $2.59 to fees before your materials — $0.20 to list, 6.5% of the total including postage, 3% plus $0.25 to process the payment. This calculator stacks every fee against your costs so the price you list is the price that pays you.
Etsy sellers use it before listing: $18 + $4.50 shipping loses $2.59 to fees — including 6.5% of the postage — leaving $9.41 before your labor is counted.
The full stack: $0.20 per listing (renews every 4 months or on each sale of a multi-quantity listing), a 6.5% transaction fee on the TOTAL order including the shipping you charge — the trap that surprises new sellers — and payment processing of 3% + $0.25 for US sellers. On an $18 item with $4.50 shipping that is $2.59 total, about 11.5% of the order. Optional but dangerous: Offsite Ads at 15% for shops under $10,000/year (mandatory at 12% once you cross $10k) applied when a buyer arrives via Etsy's Google/social ads — on a $22.50 order that is another $3.38. Etsy also collects sales tax from the buyer (marketplace facilitator), which is not your fee but explains buyer complaints about checkout totals.
The formula that keeps shops alive: (materials + labor at a real hourly wage + packaging) × 2 minimum for the base price, THEN verify fees still leave 30%+ margin — which this calculator checks. The labor omission is the classic failure: a $20 item with $6 of materials looks profitable until you admit it took 90 minutes. Price shipping honestly too — because Etsy fees the shipping charge, "free shipping" with the postage folded into the item price actually SAVES you the 6.5% on that portion and Etsy's search algorithm rewards free-shipping listings over $35. Run both structures in the calculator: the item-plus-shipping split versus the folded-in price, and list whichever nets more.
They solve different problems. Etsy is a marketplace: the fees buy you 90+ million active buyers searching with wallets out — for a new shop with no audience, that traffic is worth the 11–15%. Shopify is a storefront: $39/month plus ~2.9% + $0.30 processing, cheaper per sale but you generate every visitor yourself through ads, SEO, or social. The math crossover: a shop doing $2,000/month on Etsy pays roughly $250–$300 in fees; the same revenue on Shopify costs about $100 in subscription plus processing — but only if you can replace Etsy's free traffic, which typically costs more than the difference in ads. The winning pattern is both: Etsy for discovery, then repeat customers migrate to your own site where the margin lives.