Ask any Etsy seller what their margin is, and you'll get a number that's wrong. Not because they're dishonest — because nobody actually tracks fees per order.
Etsy doesn't take one simple cut. It takes a dozen small ones:
- Transaction fee: 6.5% of the item price and the shipping
- Payment processing: 3% + $0.25 per transaction
- Listing fee: $0.20 every 4 months per listing
- Plus advertising, materials, and the discounts you offer to win the sale
A $40 order can quietly turn into a $31.50 order after fees — and if you also paid for ads or gave a coupon, that "sale" might be losing you money. The store looks busy. The dashboard looks green. The individual orders are bleeding.
What I built: a per-order profit calculator for Etsy sellers
A single-file Python CLI (pure standard library, zero dependencies) that tells you the real profit of every single order:
- CSV in, honest numbers out — import your orders, get profit per order, per item, and a store-wide summary
-
--simplemode — don't have exact fee breakdowns? It estimates using Etsy's standard fee structure (6.5% transaction + 3% payment + $0.25 + $0.20), with--rate-customif your numbers differ - Loss detection built in — any order that's underwater gets flagged, and the tool exits with code 1 so you can wire it into a cron job or CI check
- Markdown or JSON output — a clean report for yourself, or machine-readable data for your spreadsheet
- Your data never leaves your machine — no uploading order data to a third-party SaaS
# Quick estimate with Etsy's standard fees
python etsy_profit_calculator.py --simple orders.csv
# Exact breakdown with your real fee columns
python etsy_profit_calculator.py orders.csv
# Automated daily check; exit code 1 = a loss-making order exists
0 9 * * * python etsy_profit_calculator.py --json orders.csv >> /var/log/etsy_profit.log
Why "total revenue" is the wrong number to run a shop on
Every business course tells you to watch your margins. On Etsy, margins are hidden inside a pile of per-order fee math that changes with every coupon and ad campaign. Sellers who track per-order profit stop doing the two things that quietly kill shops: discounting unprofitable products and scaling ads on items with negative real margins.
If you sell on Etsy (or any marketplace with layered fees — eBay, Shopify, custom rates work too), the full kit (calculator + Etsy fee estimation + loss alerts + JSON export + docs) is at AgentChip.
Your shop's revenue isn't the story. Its per-order profit is.
Originally published on the AgentChip blog.
