What Etsy actually takes from every Australian sale in 2026

You have seen the number. Etsy takes 6.5%. That is the transaction fee, and it is the one everyone quotes. It is also nowhere near what actually leaves your account.

Here is the real stack on an Australian sale. All of it is public. What is rare is a breakdown that spells it out for Australia instead of America.

Start with that 6.5% transaction fee, and note it applies to the shipping you charge, not just the item. On a AU$50 sale that is AU$3.25. Then the listing fee, which Etsy sets at US$0.20 and converts to around AU$0.30, charged again every four months whether the thing sells or not. Then payment processing: 3 to 4 percent plus AU$0.25, so call it another AU$1.75 on that fifty dollars.

Now the part most breakdowns skip, because most of them are written for American sellers. Unless you have given Etsy a GST-registered ABN, and most small makers have not, it adds 10% GST on top of every one of those fees. Not on your sale. On the fees. You pay a fee, and then you pay tax on the fee.

Add it up and a AU$50 sale loses roughly AU$6 before a single ad runs. That is about 12%, not 6.5%.

Then there is Offsite Ads, where Etsy advertises your listings and takes a cut of any sale that comes back. It runs at 15% while you can still opt out. Here is the bit worth circling: once your shop passes US$10,000 in a year, about AU$15,000, it turns mandatory at 12% and you can no longer switch it off. The better you do, the less say you get.

None of this is us telling you to quit Etsy tomorrow. Plenty of makers should keep it as a channel. The point is narrower. When Etsy raised the transaction fee from 5% to 6.5% back in 2022, sellers struck and signed petitions, and the fee went up anyway. That is what renting looks like. You do not get a vote.

On your own store the maths is different. A direct sale carries payment processing and not much else, usually 2 to 3 percent. The same AU$50 candle keeps roughly AU$48 instead of AU$44. That gap is not a rounding error. Over a year of sales it is a wage.

The catch, and we will be straight about it, is that your own store does not come with Etsy's built in traffic. You have to earn that. But you build it once, and then it is yours. The fees, the customers, all of it.