Etsy

Verdict: worth opening if your product honestly fits Etsy’s rules, because the buyers are different from Amazon’s and the fees are not worse.

What it does

Etsy is a marketplace for handmade goods, vintage items (20 years or older), and craft supplies, with a buyer base that searches for gifts and design-led products rather than the cheapest option. For a brand that makes or designs its own products, it is a second storefront with its own search traffic, and orders can be fulfilled from FBA stock through Multi-Channel Fulfillment or a tool like Sellbrite.

Fees (checked 20 October 2026, US)

Etsy’s own fee page blocks automated reading, so these figures come from two current third-party guides that agree with each other and with our own invoices.

• Listing fee: $0.20 per listing, renewed every four months or on each sale.
• Transaction fee: 6.5% of the item price plus shipping and gift wrap.
• Payment processing (US): 3% plus $0.25 per order.
• Shop setup fee: one-time, non-refundable, introduced in 2024; about $15 in the US, up to $29 in some regions.
• Offsite Ads: 15% on attributed sales, optional below $10,000 in trailing-twelve-month revenue; 12% and mandatory above it, capped at $100 per order.
• Etsy Plus: $10/mo, optional, for extra listing credits and customization.

Before ads, that is roughly 9.5% plus 45 cents per sale, in the same range as an Amazon referral fee.

Who it is for

Brands with products that genuinely qualify: designed in-house, made by you or a disclosed production partner, or vintage. Gift-able products and anything personalizable do especially well.

Who should skip it

Resellers and private-label sellers whose products are generic catalog items with a logo. Etsy’s handmade policy is enforced, shops get closed, and the buyer base will not reward a product that looks like it came from a wholesale catalog, because it did.

Runs our store

Etsy is one of our channels. The order volume is a fraction of Amazon’s; the customers are more engaged and the reviews read differently. The mandatory Offsite Ads fee above $10,000 is the line item to watch.

The honest caveats

Fee creep is steady (the setup fee is new, Offsite Ads became mandatory for larger shops). Search is less predictable than Amazon’s. And Etsy’s policy on what counts as handmade is the thing most likely to end your shop.

Bottom line

If your product is a fit, the economics work and the setup cost is trivial. No affiliate link here; the vendor link is below.

Visit Etsy for sellers