Who should sell on Etsy

Etsy strictly enforces its category policy: handmade goods, vintage items at least 20 years old, and craft supplies. This is a genuinely different eligibility bar than every other hub in this list — private-label and wholesale resale outside those categories do not fit Etsy's policy, regardless of catalog quality.

Fees (per Etsy's official fees policy, last updated by Etsy February 13, 2026)

  • Listing fee: $0.20 USD per item listed, for a 4-month listing duration (or until it sells or expires).
  • Transaction fee: 6.5% of the displayed item price, plus whatever you charge for shipping and gift wrapping — assessed on the total sale amount, including tax and shipping.
  • Payment processing fee: varies by country, deducted automatically from each Etsy Payments transaction (see Etsy's Payments Policy for your country's exact rate).
  • Offsite Ads fee: Etsy automatically advertises some of your listings across the web (Google, social, etc.) and charges a fee only when a sale results — 15% for shops under $10,000 USD in trailing-365-day sales, dropping to 12% once a shop crosses that threshold (the lower rate then applies permanently, even if sales later fall back below $10,000), capped at $100 per order. Eligibility and the threshold are recalculated monthly, on the first of the month. Below $10,000, participation is optional; at or above it, participation is mandatory.
  • Optional subscriptions: Etsy Plus ($10/month — includes 15 listing credits and $5 in ad credits) and Pattern, a standalone website builder ($15/month after a 30-day free trial).
  • Other fees: a one-time Set-Up Fee shown during onboarding (amount varies), an instant-transfer fee for U.S. sellers who opt in, carrier-dependent shipping label costs, and a country-specific Regulatory Operating Fee in some markets.

Seller standards: Star Seller

Etsy's Star Seller program recognizes shops that consistently meet response-time, shipping, and rating benchmarks with a badge on their listings. It's a recognition/visibility program rather than a hard eligibility gate, but shops that fall short of the benchmarks lose the badge and its associated visibility boost.

Advertising

Etsy Ads (onsite, budget-controlled by the seller, cost-per-click) is separate from Offsite Ads (described above under Fees, mandatory above the sales threshold). New sellers often confuse the two — Etsy Ads is optional and controllable at any shop size; Offsite Ads has different rules depending on your trailing-12-month sales.

Shop tools

Shop sections (custom categories within your shop), shop policies (returns/exchanges/shipping, displayed to buyers), and Etsy's search relevancy factors (title/tag match, listing quality, shipping price and speed, and shop-level signals like reviews) are the core levers for organic visibility.

Sources

Etsy, "Fees & Payments Policy" (etsy.com/legal/fees), last updated by Etsy February 13, 2026, fetched and verified September 6, 2026.