Etsy Offsite Ads Calculator
Most advice about Offsite Ads says "it costs 15%, so opt out if your margin is thin." That's the wrong question. Only some of your sales are ad-attributed, so what matters is your blended cost across the mix — and the ad share at which the product stops making money at all. This works out both.
Your product and traffic
Not sure? Most shops that run Etsy's default settings see somewhere between 10% and 40%. Start at 25% and adjust once you've checked Shop Manager → Stats → Traffic sources.
Is it worth it?
The verdict, in three lines
What an ad sale costs you
The 15% (or 12%) fee on the order total, and the profit you give up on that single sale. This is the number most articles stop at.
What it costs across the mix
If a quarter of your sales are ad-attributed, your blended cost is much lower than 15% — because three quarters of your sales don't pay it at all.
The ad share that kills it
The share of ad-attributed sales at which this product stops being profitable. If your actual share is below that line, Offsite Ads is fine. If it's above, the product is losing money on every ad sale.
What actually decides this
Offsite Ads only kills a product when the fee exceeds the profit you'd have made without it. Since the fee is 15% of the order total, that means roughly: products with a margin below about 15% of the order total are the ones at risk. Everything above that survives any ad share, even 100%.
| Product | Profit before ads | Profit on an ad sale | Ad share it survives |
|---|
The attribution window is the part people miss
Offsite Ads is charged when a buyer clicks an Etsy-placed ad on Google, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or Bing and purchases within 30 days. That window is wide, and it captures sales that would have happened anyway.
Retargeting counts
A buyer finds you through organic search, then sees a retargeted Etsy ad two weeks later and clicks it before buying. That's an Offsite Ads sale — you owe the fee even though they already knew about you.
You can't leave once you're in
Below $10,000 in trailing 12-month sales you can switch it off. At $10,000 it becomes permanent, even if your revenue later drops back below the threshold.
But there's a cap
The fee is capped at $100 per order. On a $900 item, 12% would be $108 — you pay $100. This makes Offsite Ads far less punishing for high-ticket products.
Should you opt out?
There's no universal answer, but the decision reduces to a few checks. Work through them in order.
Are you eligible to opt out at all?
Only if your shop made under $10,000 in the previous 365 days. Shop Manager → Settings → Offsite Ads. If you're above the threshold, the rest of this doesn't apply — the fee is mandatory at 12% and you should price for it rather than decide about it.
Is the product profitable on an ad sale?
Run your numbers above. If the "profit on an ad sale" figure is negative, every ad-attributed sale loses money. That doesn't automatically mean opt out — it means you need to either raise the price or accept that ads are a customer-acquisition cost, not a profit centre.
Do you have another source of traffic?
Opting out only makes sense if buyers can still find you. If your traffic is essentially all Etsy search, turning off Offsite Ads removes a channel you were relying on — and Etsy search visibility is partly driven by sales velocity, so fewer sales can compound. If you have an email list, social following or your own site, the trade is much more favourable.
Is your blended profit still positive?
That's the number that actually matters day to day. A product can lose money on individual ad sales and still be worth running, as long as the blended figure across the mix stays positive and the volume is worth the work.
Is the fee charged instead of, or on top of, the 6.5% transaction fee?
Sources disagree, and it changes the answer materially. Some say the 15% replaces the 6.5% transaction fee on that sale; others present them as stacking. This calculator stacks them, which is the more conservative assumption — but you should check a real ad-attributed sale in your payment account to see which applies to you. We could not settle it from Etsy's own fee page.
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