What you actually keep when you sell 3D prints on Etsy

You list a part at 20 €, it sells, and 17.01 € land in your account. The other 2.99 € went to the platform in three separate fees that almost nobody adds up before setting the price. And if the sale came through an Etsy ad, they keep 6.59 € and you keep 13.41 €.

This article breaks down the three fees a eurozone seller pays, how much is left at each price, and how to set the number so there is still profit after Etsy and after the filament.

The mistake of pricing before you know the fees

The usual way to price is backwards: work out what the part costs, add a markup, publish that number. The problem is that the markup is calculated on money you will never see in full.

When I was selling parts with NFC chips inside I had two printers running most days, and for the first few months I made exactly that mistake. I looked at the selling price and the production cost, saw the difference, and assumed that was my profit. It was not. Between the listed price and what reaches the bank there is a fixed toll, and on small orders that toll takes a painful share.

The correct sum has three floors, not two: what it costs to produce, what the platform takes, and what is left. The production cost is what the calculator already solves. What follows is the second floor.

The three fees Etsy charges

Etsy does not charge one fee, it charges three, and they apply to different things. These are the ones in force for a seller with an account in the eurozone:

Look at the right-hand column, because that is where the costliest trap hides: transaction and processing are calculated on the total the buyer pays, and shipping is part of that total. You charge 4 € for shipping, hand all 4 € to the carrier, and Etsy still bills you a percentage of it.

The processing fee changes by country. The 4% + 0.30 € is the eurozone rate; if you sell from elsewhere, swap in your own before running the numbers.

What is left at each price

This table starts from a real part: 60 grams of PLA, five and a half hours of printing, fifteen minutes of your own work. With a 20 € spool, a 400 € printer written off over 4,000 hours and a 10% failure rate, that part costs 5.11 € to produce. Shipping is 4 € that you charge and then pay out.

What the table shows is that fees weigh far more at low prices. At 10 € you are left with 2.95 € of profit on a part that occupied the printer for five and a half hours. At 30 € you keep 20.85 € for the same part and the same hours.

It is not that you lose money at 10 €: it is that you earn so little that it does not pay for the machine time, the packing and the customer messages. With the selling-price calculator loaded with this same part you can move the markup and find your own floor.

Offsite Ads: the 15% you do not choose

Etsy promotes your products on Google, Facebook and Instagram on its own account. If somebody buys after clicking one of those ads, it charges an extra 15% of the order total.

The uncomfortable detail: if you bill less than $10,000 a year you cannot turn it off. It is mandatory. Only sellers above that figure can switch it off, and in exchange their rate drops to 12%.

That is 3.60 € of difference on a single sale. Your profit falls from 11.90 € to 8.30 €, 30% less, because of a decision you did not make. You cannot predict which orders will arrive that way, so the only defence is to price knowing that some of them will pay 27.5%.

The four mistakes that eat the margin

These are the ones I have seen most often, my own past self included:

1. Giving away shipping without putting it in the price. Free shipping sells very well, but if you have not built it into the price you are paying for the carrier and paying Etsy's fee on top of it.

2. Not counting packing time. A part takes five hours to print and three minutes to put in a box with tissue paper. Those three minutes, plus the trip to the drop-off point, are your work. In the calculator they go in the work-minutes field.

3. Forgetting the prints that fail. If one print in ten ends up in the bin, the filament for that tenth is paid for by the nine that sold. That is why the calculator has a failure percentage field: setting it to zero is lying to yourself.

4. Calculating markup on cost and calling it profit. A 50% markup on cost is not a 50% margin: if the part costs 5.11 € and you sell at 7.66 €, you make 2.55 €, which against the selling price is 33%. With Etsy's fees on top, that real 33% ends up considerably lower.

How to price backwards

Instead of working out the cost and adding a markup, do it the other way round: decide how much you want to keep clean, and find the price that delivers it.

Say you want 10 € clean on that part costing 5.11 €, with 4 € of shipping charged separately. You need Etsy to pay you 15.11 € for the item. With standard fees that comes out at a listed price of 17.88 €. If you also want to cover the case where the sale arrives through Offsite Ads, go up to 22.28 €.

That second number is the one I would use, rounded to 22.50 €. You will sell just the same — in this niche the difference between 18 € and 22 € rarely decides a purchase — and you make sure no order ends up costing you time for nothing.

To run this with your own data, start from your part's real cost and then try markups in the selling-price calculator until the profit, minus 27.5% of fees, still looks right to you.

Selling several units in one order

Of the four fees, two are percentages and two are flat amounts: the 0.30 € of processing and the 0.17 € of listing. Those two do not grow with the order, so the more units go in a single shipment, the less they weigh.

The effective fee drops from 12.5% to 11%, and profit per unit rises from 11.90 € to 12.61 €. That is 0.71 € more per part without touching the price or the cost, simply by grouping the shipment.

This has a practical consequence: quantity discounts partly pay for themselves. If you offer 5% off when buying three, a slice of that discount comes out of the fee you stop paying, not out of your margin. It is one of the few levers that improves the number without raising prices.

Etsy against direct selling: the two numbers

It is worth seeing the same order through both channels. A normal payment gateway for direct sales runs around 1.5% + 0.25 € per transaction, against Etsy's 10.5% variable plus 0.47 € fixed.

The difference is 2.38 € per sale. Over a hundred sales that is 238 €, half a printer. But be careful reading that as guaranteed savings: selling direct means you bring the traffic yourself, and that costs time or money.

The sensible way to use this number is not to abandon Etsy, but to know what bringing in a customer is worth. If getting a direct sale costs you less than 2.38 € in ads or time, it pays. If it costs more, Etsy is being cheap.

What really raises the price: stop selling loose parts

Everything above is small change next to the big lever, which is what you sell, not how you charge for it. A part anyone can download for free and print competes against dozens of identical sellers, and there the price is set by the cheapest.

When I was selling pieces with an NFC chip inside, the difference was not in the filament: it was that the part did something. The plastic cost the same as any equivalent piece without a chip, but the buyer was paying for the function, not for the grams. Production cost rose by a few cents and the price multiplied.

That is the uncomfortable conclusion of running these numbers: you can fight Etsy's 12.5%, or you can sell something people pay double for. The second changes the sum far more than the first, which is why it is worth knowing the real cost of each type of part before deciding what catalogue to build.

So is Etsy worth it?

It depends on what you value. A 12.5% fee is expensive next to selling on your own, but you are paying for a shop window full of buyers who are already looking for what you sell. Building that traffic from scratch takes months.

My reading, having sold there: Etsy makes sense to start with and to find out whether your parts interest anyone at all. Once you have customers who come back, those are the ones worth moving to direct sales, where the 12.5% stays in your pocket.

What makes no sense is selling on Etsy with prices designed for direct sales. They are two different numbers and they have to be worked out separately.

More tools and guides

• VAT on selling 3D printed parts: what you actually take homeOf 20 € listed you keep 8.95 €. How VAT works on printed parts, the 10,000 € threshold and the One Stop Shop if you sell to other EU countries.
• How to charge for design time in 3D printingDesign is not charged per part: it is spread. Three hours are 36.00 € that come to 1.80 € each across 20 units, and to 36.00 € on a single one.
• Break-even point: how many parts you have to sellAt 2.55 € of contribution per part, 100.00 € of monthly fixed costs is 40 parts. And selling on Etsy doubles that figure. The full sums.
• 3D printing cost calculatorWork out the real cost and selling price of a 3D printed part: material, power, machine wear, failures and markup. Free, no sign-up, nothing uploaded.
• How much to charge for a 3D printed partPrice your prints properly: real cost, your labour and your markup. Generates a quote you can copy and send straight to the customer.
• How much electricity does a 3D printer useWork out your 3D printer's power use and what it costs per month on your own tariff. With the average wattage of the most common models.

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