Guide · By DQ · October 5, 2026
Black Friday falls on November 27, 2026, and Cyber Monday on November 30. Every year, sellers ask the same question in forums: is 20% off safe? 30%? What about 40% plus free shipping? The honest answer depends on your costs, but you don't have to guess. Once you know how Etsy's fees behave on a discounted order, you can work out the deepest discount each listing can take before it stops making money.
This guide shows the formula, two worked examples and the traps that turn a busy sale weekend into a loss. Fee figures come from Etsy's Help Center (linked at the end) and use US rates. Etsy changes fees from time to time, so confirm them in Shop Manager before you set up a sale.
For a US seller using Etsy Payments, a normal order carries:
When you run a sale or a promo code, the buyer pays less, so the percentage fees shrink with the order total. The fixed parts don't. You still pay $0.25 processing and $0.20 for the renewal, whether the item sold for $30 or $15. Your own costs don't shrink either: materials, postage and packaging cost the same at 40% off.
There's one more fee that matters a lot during Black Friday: Offsite Ads. If a buyer clicks one of Etsy's ads on Google, Facebook, Pinterest or another partner and buys from your shop within 30 days, you pay 15% of the order (or 12% if your shop has made $10,000 or more in any consecutive 365-day period), capped at $100 per order. Holiday shoppers click a lot of ads, so more of your sales may carry this fee than in a normal month. The Offsite Ads dashboard (Shop Manager → Marketing → Offsite Ads) shows how many of your orders were attributed to ads in the past.
Etsy-funded coupons work differently. When Etsy runs its own coupon, Etsy pays for the discount. You receive the full order amount and pay the same fees as without the coupon, so those don't eat your margin.
Call what the buyer pays you (discounted item price + shipping you charge) the order total. With US rates:
Etsy fees = 9.5% × order total + $0.45 (6.5% transaction + 3% processing, plus $0.25 processing + $0.20 listing)
Your profit is the order total minus those fees minus your costs. Setting profit to zero gives the lowest order total you can accept:
Break-even order total = (your costs + $0.45) ÷ 0.905
If you want to keep a margin m (as a share of the order total), and to allow for Offsite Ads at rate a (0.15 or 0.12), use:
Minimum order total = (your costs + $0.45) ÷ (0.905 − a − m)
Then turn it into a discount. Etsy's percentage-off sales apply to the item's list price, not to shipping, so:
Maximum discount = 1 − (minimum order total − shipping charged) ÷ list price
"Your costs" means everything you pay to fulfil one order: product or materials, the postage label, packaging, and your time if you pay yourself.
Costs: $9.00 product, $4.80 postage, $0.70 packaging, so $14.50 in total. You list the item at $28 and charge $5 shipping.
At full price, the order total is $33.00. Fees are $3.59 and profit is $14.91 (45%). That looks like plenty of room to discount. Here's what happens as the discount grows:
| Discount | Order total | Profit (organic) | Profit (Offsite Ads 15%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| None | $33.00 | $14.91 (45%) | $9.96 (30%) |
| 20% off | $27.40 | $9.85 (36%) | $5.74 (21%) |
| 30% off | $24.60 | $7.31 (30%) | $3.62 (15%) |
| 40% off | $21.80 | $4.78 (22%) | $1.51 (7%) |
| 50% off | $19.00 | $2.25 (12%) | −$0.61 (loss) |
And the maximum discount for each goal:
| Goal | Organic sale | Offsite Ads 12% | Offsite Ads 15% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Just break even | 58.9% | 49.8% | 47.1% |
| Keep a 20% margin | 42.1% | 26.6% | 21.7% |
So 30% off is fine on organic sales, but if a sale comes through an Offsite Ad at 15%, profit drops to $3.62. The 50% doorbuster loses money on every ad-driven order.
Costs: $3.00 product, $1.70 postage, $0.50 packaging, so $5.20 in total. Listed at $12 with free shipping already priced in.
| Discount | Order total | Profit (organic) | Profit (Offsite Ads 15%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| None | $12.00 | $5.21 (43%) | $3.41 (28%) |
| 20% off | $9.60 | $3.04 (32%) | $1.60 (17%) |
| 30% off | $8.40 | $1.95 (23%) | $0.69 (8%) |
| 40% off | $7.20 | $0.87 (12%) | −$0.21 (loss) |
The break-even discount is 48% for organic sales but only 37.6% with a 15% Offsite Ads fee. To keep a 20% margin, the ceiling is 33% organic and just 15% with Offsite Ads at 15%.
Both items start at roughly the same 43–45% margin, yet the cheaper one runs out of room much sooner. The $0.45 of fixed fees and the postage you pay are a bigger share of a $12 order than a $33 one, and a discount doesn't shrink them.
1. Stacking free shipping on top of a percentage off. Etsy lets buyers apply a list-price discount and a free shipping promotion to the same order. In example 1, 25% off plus free shipping drops the order total to $21.00. You still pay the $4.80 label, so profit falls to $4.06 (19%). If that order came through Offsite Ads at 15%, you keep about $0.91.
2. Pricing the whole shop off your best seller. A shop-wide 30% sale is easy to set up, but each listing has its own ceiling. Check your cheapest listings first, since that's where fixed fees bite hardest. Etsy lets you choose specific listings for a sale as long as you don't set a minimum order.
3. Forgetting the sales that come through ads. If your shop is past the $10,000 threshold, you can't opt out of Offsite Ads, so plan every Black Friday price for the 12% case. If you're under the threshold, you can opt out under Shop Manager → Settings → Offsite Ads, but you'd also lose the ad traffic.
Make a short list of your top sellers and cheapest listings, fill in real costs, and work out the maximum discount for each with the formula above. If you'd rather not build a spreadsheet, Canopio's free calculator applies Etsy's fees to one order (organic, Etsy Ads or Offsite Ads) and works backwards from a target margin to a price. It runs in your browser, and it's free. If you want to check every live listing at once, there's an optional $9.90 one-time Shop Audit. Canopio is independent and not affiliated with Etsy, so always confirm current rates on Etsy's own pages.
On what the buyer pays. Etsy's transaction and processing fees are calculated on the order total, so a seller-funded discount lowers those fees in dollars. The fixed parts ($0.25 processing and $0.20 per renewal) stay the same.
There's no single safe number. In our examples, 20% kept a healthy margin on both items, but the cheaper item could only take 15% off and still keep a 20% margin on an Offsite Ads sale. Work it out per listing with the formula above.
Your own promo codes reduce the order total, so the percentage fees drop with it. Etsy-funded coupons are paid for by Etsy. You receive the full order amount and pay the same fees as you would without the coupon.
Yes. The fee is a percentage of the order amount you made from the sale, so it falls with the discount. But the rate stays 15% or 12%, which is why ad-driven orders hit their break-even point sooner.
Yes, if the sale has no minimum order. You can then choose individual listings. A sale with a minimum order applies to the whole shop.
Canopio is independent and not affiliated with Etsy, Inc. Examples are hypothetical and use US rates unless noted. Confirm current fees in your Shop Manager.