Etsy or your own site? Fraya vs. Etsy for makers
What a sale costs on Etsy and on your own site, what each one is good at, what you do not own on a marketplace, and why most makers end up using both.
By Lance Culbreth, founder of Fraya · · 3 min read
Short answer
Etsy brings buyers; your own site builds a business you own. On Etsy a $50 sale costs about $5.20 in fees (a 6.5% transaction fee, 3% plus 25 cents for payment processing, and a 20-cent listing fee), and up to $7.50 more when an Offsite Ad made the sale. On a Fraya site the same sale costs about $2.25 (1% plus Stripe’s card processing), but you bring the buyers. Most makers do best with both: Etsy for discovery, their own site for repeat customers.
What Etsy is good at
Etsy is a marketplace with buyers already searching for handmade, vintage, and craft goods. A new maker with no audience can list a product today and be found by someone who has never heard of them. Nothing else a small maker can buy does that. Etsy also handles checkout, buyer trust, and a familiar returns process.
What a sale costs on Etsy
- Listing fee: 20 cents per listing, renewed each time it sells or every four months.
- Transaction fee: 6.5% of the sale, including what the buyer pays for shipping.
- Payment processing in the US: 3% plus 25 cents.
- Offsite Ads: 15% of a sale Etsy’s ads brought in, capped at $100 an order. Shops past $10,000 in a year pay 12% and cannot opt out.
- No monthly fee is required. Etsy Plus is $10 a month for extra tools.
Figures from Etsy’s own seller pages, September 2026. Etsy sets its fees and changes them; its pages are the source of truth.
What you do not own on a marketplace
- The customer relationship. The buyer is Etsy’s customer first, and Etsy’s rules limit how you can market to people who found you there.
- The page. Your listing sits next to other shops’ similar items, in Etsy’s design, under Etsy’s name.
- The rules. Fees, search ranking, and policies change on Etsy’s schedule, not yours.
What your own site gives you
A place that is only yours: your name at the top, your design, your prices without a marketplace cut, and every visitor’s email address if they choose to give it. It also gives AI assistants and search engines a page about your business, not a listing inside someone else’s.
The trade is traffic. Your own site starts with no visitors. You bring them, from Instagram, from packaging, from people who already bought once.
Using both
The common pattern: keep Etsy for being found, and build your own site for the people who come back. Fraya imports your Etsy listings from a CSV export, with images re-hosted, so the catalog does not have to be typed twice. The site captures email with a welcome offer, and the campaigns, review requests, and cart reminders run from there.
Etsy also sells its own standalone website product, Pattern, for $15 a month. It is worth comparing if you want a simple site tied to your Etsy shop.
Straight answers.
How much does Etsy take from a $50 sale?
About $5.20: $3.25 in transaction fee, $1.75 in payment processing, and a 20-cent listing renewal, at US rates as of September 2026. If an Offsite Ad brought the buyer, add 15% ($7.50), or 12% for shops past $10,000 a year.
Does Fraya charge listing fees?
No. Fraya is free to publish and sell with 1% on sales. Card processing is Stripe’s, paid from your own Stripe account.
Should I leave Etsy?
Usually not at first. If Etsy brings you buyers, keep it. Build your own site alongside it for repeat customers and your brand, and let the numbers tell you when the balance shifts.
Can I import my Etsy shop into Fraya?
Yes, from Etsy’s CSV export. Products come across with their images re-hosted.
