Gumroad vs Etsy Fees: Which Keeps More of Your Sale in 2026?

On a direct sale, Gumroad takes about 12.9% plus $0.80 while Etsy takes roughly 12% all-in, so the two are close until traffic enters the picture. Gumroad charges 10% plus $0.50 per transaction on top of roughly 2.9% plus $0.30 processing, and jumps to 30% on sales it sends you through Discover. Etsy charges a $0.20 listing fee, a 6.5% transaction fee, and about 3% plus $0.25 US payment processing, then adds Offsite Ads at 12% or 15% on attributed orders, which pushes the all-in cut past 20%. The cheaper platform depends entirely on whether the buyer came from you or from them.

That is the whole comparison in one line, but the dollar difference at your actual price point matters more than the percentages. Here is the math at real numbers.

Gumroad vs Etsy fees on a real sale

Fixed fees dominate at low prices and percentages dominate at high ones, which is why the winner flips as your price moves. Gumroad's $0.50 transaction fee plus the $0.30 processing charge is $0.80 of dead weight on every order; Etsy's $0.20 listing fee plus $0.25 processing is $0.45, but Etsy's listing fee is charged per listing per four months regardless of whether anything sells.

Read that table twice. Below about $25 Etsy edges ahead because Gumroad's flat $0.80 is a bigger share of a small order. Above about $50 Gumroad edges ahead. And the moment an Etsy sale is attributed to Offsite Ads, Etsy is decisively more expensive at every price. Figures use published rates as of July 2026 and exclude sales tax and currency conversion; confirm against your own statements.

What are Gumroad's fees exactly?

Gumroad charges 10% plus $0.50 per transaction on sales you bring yourself, and roughly 2.9% plus $0.30 goes to payment processing on top, for a combined cut near 12.9% plus $0.80. Sales that Gumroad's own Discover marketplace sends you carry a 30% fee instead, which is the single biggest swing in the whole comparison. There is no listing fee, no monthly subscription, and no charge until something sells.

That 30% Discover rate is not automatically a bad deal, because it applies only to buyers Gumroad found for you. Paying 30% for a customer you would never have reached is closer to an affiliate commission than a fee. Paying 30% on a customer who came from your own newsletter because they happened to click through a Discover link is money burned, which is why the link you promote matters.

What are Etsy's fees exactly?

Etsy charges $0.20 to list an item for four months, 6.5% of the total order value as a transaction fee, and about 3% plus $0.25 for US payment processing through Etsy Payments. All-in that lands near 12% for a typical order. Offsite Ads then add 12% of an attributed sale for shops that have crossed $10,000 in the trailing 365 days, where participation is mandatory, or 15% for smaller shops that opt in, capped per order.

The listing fee is the part sellers underestimate. A shop with 200 listings pays $40 every four months whether or not those listings sell, which for a digital seller with a wide catalog is a real fixed cost that Gumroad simply does not have. The tradeoff is that those listings sit inside a marketplace with buyer intent already attached.

Is Gumroad cheaper than Etsy for digital products?

For a digital product priced above roughly $25 and sold to your own audience, Gumroad is cheaper, and the gap widens as price rises and as your Etsy shop takes more Offsite Ads hits. For a low-priced digital download sold to marketplace browsers, Etsy is usually cheaper per sale and, more importantly, sells at all, because it supplies demand you would otherwise have to create. The fee percentage is the wrong thing to optimize if one platform sells ten units and the other sells one.

Can you sell on both Gumroad and Etsy?

Yes, and for digital products it is the common setup. Etsy works as the discovery channel where new buyers find you, and Gumroad works as the direct channel you point your list, bio link, and email footer at. The economics reward that split: you pay Etsy's marketplace premium only for customers Etsy actually found, and you keep the better rate on customers you brought yourself.

The operational cost of running both is reconciliation. Two payout schedules, two fee schedules, two dashboards, one bank account. Gumroad pays on Fridays once your balance clears $10 after a roughly seven-day hold. Etsy deposits on your shop's set schedule after fees are netted out of your payment account. Neither deposit matches the gross sales figure you remember, and after a month of mixing them, working out what you actually earned means opening both dashboards and doing subtraction.

When do Gumroad and Etsy pay you?

Gumroad initiates payouts weekly on Fridays once your balance is above $10 and the roughly seven-day hold on each sale has cleared, so a Monday sale generally reaches you the following week. Etsy releases funds into your Payment account after a processing period and deposits them on the schedule you have chosen, daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly, with new shops often subject to a longer reserve. In both cases the deposit is net of fees, which is why the number in your bank never matches the number on your sales page.

We cover the timing rules in more detail in the Etsy payout schedule guide, and the fee mechanics per platform in Gumroad fees explained and Etsy fees explained.

How do I track what I actually keep across both?

The number that matters is the effective rate: total fees divided by total gross, per platform, per month. It moves without warning, because a run of Discover sales or a wave of Offsite Ads attribution can quietly add ten points to your cut in a single month, and a raw sales total will never show it. Sellers who track only gross revenue routinely discover months later that their margin fell while their sales rose.

Earnly calculates that automatically. Every Gumroad and Etsy payout lands on one board with gross, the platform cut, processing, and your take-home, so the effective rate per platform is visible each month and a jump gets flagged rather than absorbed. If you also import physical stock, pulling supplier paperwork into a spreadsheet so purchase invoices become clean line items you can total is what makes a real margin figure possible on top of the fee math.

If digital products are your business, the income tracker for digital product sellers is the place to start, and the creator payout tracker covers every platform once you are selling in more than two places. For the full cross-platform picture, see our creator platform fees comparison.

Earnly reads your numbers and never touches your money. It is not a bank, a payment processor, or a lender, and it does not provide financial, accounting, or tax advice. Fee schedules are as published in July 2026, vary by country, and change; confirm every figure against your Gumroad and Etsy statements.