Etsy Offsite Ads Fee: How 15% vs 12% Works

Short answer: 15% under $10k, 12% at $10k+, capped at $100 per order

The fee is charged only on orders Etsy attributes to an offsite ad — the buyer clicked the ad, then ordered within 30 days. Under $10,000 in shop sales over a 365-day window, the rate is 15% and you can opt out; at $10,000 in any 365-day window, it drops to 12% and participation is required. The fee never exceeds $100 on a single order, and it stacks on the listing, transaction and processing fees.

Scope: US seller, Etsy Payments, USD. This is a single-fee deep dive on Offsite Ads. For the rest of the bill, see every Etsy fee explained in order or Etsy seller fees: the full schedule.

What the Offsite Ads fee is

Offsite Ads is Etsy advertising your listings on other sites and platforms, at Etsy's own cost. You pay nothing for clicks that never convert — you pay only when it works: a buyer clicks an offsite ad and buys within 30 days. It is the one Etsy fee that can arrive after the sale: attributed after the fact and deducted from the order, not sunk upfront like the $0.20 listing fee.

A wording note on the base: the Offsite Ads Help article puts the fee on "the amount you made from your sale before the advertising fee was applied"; the fees Help also says "on the order total." On this page's $55 example ($50 item, $5 shipping, no gift wrap, tax $0), both bases read $55.00 — but confirm the live wording on the Etsy legal fees page.

Two rates: 15% vs 12%

The rate depends on your shop's sales over the previous 365 days, not the order's size:

Etsy frames 12% as the reward for scale; the trade is the opt-out — under $10k you can turn Offsite Ads off, at $10k+ the Help article supports required participation.

The $10k door

The threshold is your shop's sales over a 365-day window — trailing or consecutive, per the Help article — and the 12% rate applies once you have made $10,000 in any such window. Cross it and two things change: future attributed orders drop from 15% to 12%, and Offsite Ads becomes mandatory.

What the pages cited do not spell out is what happens if trailing sales later fall back below $10,000 — whether and when the rate or the mandatory status would change again. Don't price on an assumption either way; confirm the terms on the Offsite Ads help article.

What "attributed" means

An order is attributed when a buyer clicks an offsite ad and orders within 30 days:

• 30-day window: the buyer need not buy in the same session — a click today can put a fee on an order placed weeks later.
• Last click decides: if the buyer's last click before ordering was an Etsy Ads (on-site) click, only the Etsy Ads fee applies — no Offsite Ads fee.

You don't choose which orders get attributed; the cap below is the backstop on any single one.

The $100 cap, with a $1,000 example

At either rate, the fee never exceeds $100 USD on an individual order. On a $1,000 attributed order at 15%, the raw fee would be 15% × $1,000 = $150, but the charge is min($150, $100) = $100 — an effective 10%. At 12% the same order computes to $120 and still caps at $100. The cap binds above $666.67 at 15% and above $833.33 at 12%.

The cap only protects large orders: the percentage runs uncapped on typical orders — $8.25 on the $55 order below — and the fee is charged per order.

How it stacks on your other fees

Offsite Ads is charged in addition to the fees on every sale: a $0.20 listing fee (sunk at publish), a 6.5% transaction fee on item plus shipping plus gift wrap (US sales tax excluded), and a 3% + $0.25 processing fee on the gross order including shipping and tax. An attributed order can carry all four fee lines at once, and Offsite Ads is the largest single line.

One $55 order, two ledgers: 15% vs 12%

Assumptions: $50 item, $5 shipping, no gift wrap, tax $0 — the order is $55.00 and every fee base reads $55.00. The sunk $0.20 listing fee is excluded; each line is rounded half-up to the cent, and live rounding may differ by a cent. "You keep" is the order total minus order-side fees.

The only line that moves is Offsite Ads: 15% × $55.00 = $8.25 vs 12% × $55.00 = $6.60, a $1.65 difference in what you keep — both far below the $100 cap. For the same order with no ad attributed, see how much Etsy takes from a sale overall; for this math worked both directions, static and with no live calculator, see Etsy fee math, worked both ways.

Can you pay less?

If your shop is under $10k, you can opt out of Offsite Ads entirely and never pay the fee. At $10k+ you can't; the 12% rate and the $100 cap bound the cost. The opt-out is a genuine trade — attributed orders are sales you might not otherwise get — worked through in whether to opt out of Offsite Ads.

This page is static math, not a live Feebrief calculator

Feebrief has no live Etsy calculator. Etsy is not shown in fees.json — the comparer's fee data (lastUpdated 2026-10-26) covers eBay, Poshmark, Mercari, Depop, Vinted and Whatnot only — so everything here is a static worked example from Etsy's published pages, checked 2026-10-31. See how Feebrief sources fee data and the Feebrief disclosure. Rates can change; confirm on the linked Etsy pages before pricing.

Related fee guides

• How much Etsy takes from a sale
• Etsy seller fees: the full schedule
• Every Etsy fee explained in order
• Etsy fee math, worked both ways
• How to reduce Etsy fees
• Resale marketplace fees compared