Etsy Shipping Profit Calculator
What you charge for shipping and what it actually costs you are two different numbers. See the gap between them clearly, alongside your overall profit.
Estimated based on the assumptions you entered. Your actual fees may vary based on your Etsy account, country, payment setup, advertising participation, and transaction details.
How this calculation works
Shipping contribution is simply what you charge the buyer for shipping minus what you actually pay to ship it — a positive number means shipping helps your profit, a negative number means you're covering part of the shipping cost out of your item price. This is calculated directly from the two numbers you enter, independent of Etsy's fees.
Buyer-paid shipping only ever counts toward revenue here — never toward your costs — and your actual shipping cost only ever counts toward costs, exactly as in every other Sellarithm calculator. Overall net profit alongside it comes from the same profit calculation as the flagship Profit Calculator.
Fee assumptions
- $0.20 listing fee, charged per unit sold
- 6.5% transaction fee on your item price + shipping charged
- 3% + $0.25 payment processing fee (US Etsy Payments account)
- Optional: 15% Offsite Ads fee (12% for shops with $10,000+ in trailing-12-month sales), capped at $100 per order, only if you mark a sale as ad-attributed
This profile assumes a US-based Etsy Payments account and does not include Etsy Ads budget, Etsy Plus subscription, currency conversion, sales tax, or refunds. Note that Etsy's transaction fee applies to shipping charged too, so shipping still has a small fee cost even when it doesn't show up as a direct cost line.
Example calculation
Item at $20.00, $5 product cost. Four common shipping scenarios:
| Shipping charged | Actual shipping cost | Shipping contribution |
|---|---|---|
| $0 (free shipping) | $6.00 | –$6.00 |
| $8.00 | $6.00 | +$2.00 |
| $6.00 | $6.00 | $0.00 |
| $4.00 | $6.00 | –$2.00 |
"Free shipping" doesn't mean shipping is free to you — it means the buyer isn't charged for it separately, but your actual cost is still real and still subtracted from your profit.
Tips for interpreting your result
- Advertising "free shipping" often means folding the shipping cost into your item price instead — check whether your item price already accounts for it, or whether you're absorbing it as a straight loss on every sale.
- A negative shipping contribution isn't automatically a problem if your item price is set high enough to cover it — check "Overall net profit," not just the shipping number alone.
- Etsy's transaction fee applies to shipping charged as well as the item price, so raising shipping charged to cover cost 1:1 still leaves you slightly short after fees.
Related Tools
Frequently Asked Questions
Want your full profit breakdown, not just shipping?
Use the Profit Calculator to see net profit and margin across every cost line at once.
Go to Profit Calculator