Are Etsy Offsite Ads Worth It? Do the Profit Math First

On a $40 print that costs you $18 to make and ship, you keep $17.75. If that sale came from an Offsite Ad, you keep $11.75.

That is about one-third of your profit, gone, from an ad you never set up. Etsy signs most shops up automatically, and the fee only shows when a sale comes through an ad. So the real question is not “are Offsite Ads good?” It is “Can this item still make money after the fee?”

Short answer: Etsy charges 15% when an Offsite Ad leads to a sale (12% once your shop reaches $10,000 in a year). It applies only if the buyer clicks an ad and orders within 30 days. Whether it is worth it depends on how much profit you have left after the fee.

Checked against Etsy’s Offsite Ads help page on October 17, 2026. Rates can change.

Why is Etsy charging me for Offsite Ads?

Because someone clicked one of Etsy’s ads and then bought from your shop within 30 days. Etsy runs these ads on other websites, such as search engines, social media and partner sites. You do not pick which listings it advertises.

If nobody buys, you pay nothing. If the same buyer places another order inside that 30-day window, that order can be charged too.

One more detail: if the buyer’s last click before buying was on an Etsy Ad (the ads you run yourself inside Etsy), only the Etsy Ads fee applies, not the Offsite Ads fee.

How much is the Offsite Ads fee?

It depends on how much your shop has sold:

• 15% if your shop has always made less than $10,000 in any 365-day period. You can opt out.
• 12% if your shop has made $10,000 or more in any 365-day period. You cannot opt out, and Etsy says you stay in for the life of the shop.

There is also a cap. The fee on any single order never goes above $100, which only matters for items priced over about $667 (at 15%) or $833 (at 12%).

Etsy’s pages are not clear on whether shipping and sales tax count toward the fee. So the examples below use free shipping and no tax, which leaves nothing to guess.

What the fee does to your profit

Here are three items from a US shop. “Cost” means materials plus postage. On every sale we take off the $0.20 listing fee, the 6.5% transaction fee and the 3% + $0.25 payment processing fee, as listed on Etsy’s fee basics page and payment processing page. Then we take off the Offsite Ads fee.

These examples assume a US shop, free shipping, no sales tax or gift wrap, and one $0.20 listing fee counted per sale. Real orders can differ, for example when a listing renews or a buyer orders several items.

Item price	Your cost	Profit, no ad	Profit, 15% ad sale	Profit, 12% ad sale
$20	$15	$2.65	-$0.35	$0.25
$40	$18	$17.75	$11.75	$12.95
$100	$40	$50.05	$35.05	$38.05

Look at the $20 item. It earned a small profit on a normal sale and lost money on an ad sale. You paid to ship a product and ended up out of pocket.

You can check any of these in our Etsy fee calculator. Pick “Yes” under “Did the sale come from an Offsite Ad?” and it adds the fee for you.

The one rule that answers “is it worth it?”

An ad sale only makes money if your profit before the ad fee is bigger than the ad fee.

The fee is 15% of the price. So check this for each item: is your profit before ads more than 15% of the price (or 12% if you are over $10,000)?

• The $20 item made $2.65 before ads. That is 13.25% of the price. Below 15%, so an ad sale loses money.
• The $40 item made $17.75. That is 44% of the price. Well above 15%, so an ad sale still earns a good profit.

It is the same idea as break-even ROAS: you cannot judge an ad cost until you know how much profit is left before it.

This tells you if one ad sale is profitable. It does not tell you if the ad brought a buyer you would not have got anyway, so look at your own orders too.

Should you opt out?

Only shops under $10,000 can opt out, so this choice is for newer shops.

Compare the fee with your real margins. If ad sales stay profitable, the fee may be worth paying for the extra buyers. If they often lose money, opting out makes sense.

The catch is that you cannot opt out one listing at a time. It is all or nothing. So look at your whole shop: if most of your products have thin margins, opt out or raise your prices. If most have healthy margins, staying in may be fine.

How to opt out, and how to turn it back on

1. Go to Shop Manager, then Settings, then Offsite Ads.
2. Select Opt out of Offsite Ads and confirm.

To turn it back on, open the Offsite Ads page and select Turn on Offsite Ads.

What happens when you pass $10,000?

Your fee drops to 12%, which sounds like good news. But taking part becomes mandatory, and Etsy says you stay in for the life of the shop. Etsy measures this over any 365-day period, not only the calendar year, and reviews it monthly.

So if you are close to $10,000 and your margins are thin, price for it ahead of time.

How to price for Offsite Ads?

If every sale came from an ad, the $40 print would need to sell for about $47.95 to keep the same $17.75 profit. You can find that number with the “price I should charge” option in the Etsy fee calculator.

But not every sale comes from an ad. A simple estimate: if about 1 in 5 orders comes from an ad, the average extra cost is 3% of your price (20% of orders times 15%). On a $40 item, that is about $1.20 per order. That is our own estimate, not an Etsy number, so adjust it to your own shop.

Etsy Offsite Ads questions

The short version

Offsite Ads are worth it when an item has a healthy margin and not worth it when it does not. Work out your profit before ads. If it is more than 15% of the price, an ad sale still pays you. If it is less, you are paying Etsy to take your money.

Run your own prices through the Etsy fee calculator, and see our other fee calculators if you sell on more than one platform. Our How We Calculate page explains how we check our numbers.