Small Business & Freelance · Web + Mobile
MakerMargin: the Etsy pricing calculator that pays you
Price handmade work so it pays you, not just the marketplace.
MakerMargin is an Etsy pricing calculator and cost sheet for makers who sell handmade work online or at craft fairs. It turns materials, minutes, fees, and a target margin into a price you can defend, and keeps a cost sheet per product.
Waitlist Not built yet Updated 5 September 2026
What problem does MakerMargin solve?
Most handmade prices start from a feeling. You look at what similar items sell for, knock a little off because you are new, and hope the number covers everything. It rarely does. The listing fee, the transaction fee, the payment fee, the packaging, the label, the trip to the post office, and the forty minutes of sanding all come out of the same price, and none of them show up in the moment you type it in. The result is a shop that looks busy and pays nothing. Sellers discover it at tax time, or when a wholesale buyer asks for a price list and the numbers only work if labor is free. Spreadsheets fix this for a week. Then a supplier raises a price, a marketplace changes a fee, and the sheet is wrong again without anyone noticing.
Handmade pricing calculator
Enter materials, minutes, fees, and a target margin to get a price that pays you. Fee percentages are yours to edit.
Free to use. No account. Nothing you type here is stored.
What would MakerMargin do?
MakerMargin would keep one cost sheet per product: materials with supplier prices, minutes of work at your hourly rate, packaging, and an overhead share for tools and studio space. Fee profiles for each place you sell, which you edit whenever a fee changes, sit on top. Type a target margin and every product shows the price that reaches it, the profit at your current price, and the effective hourly rate you are actually earning. Change a material price once and every product that uses it updates. Before a craft fair or a wholesale conversation, you export a price list with cost, retail, and wholesale columns that you can hand over without doing sums on the back of a receipt.
How would it work?
- 1Add a product with its materials, minutes of work, packaging, and the places you sell it.
- 2Set your hourly rate, overhead share, and a target margin once for the whole shop.
- 3Read the price that reaches your margin and the hourly rate your current price pays.
- 4Export a price list with cost, retail, and wholesale columns before a fair or a buyer meeting.
Who is it for?
- Etsy sellers with ten to a few hundred listings who have never costed a product.
- Craft-fair and market sellers who need a price list that survives a hard question.
- Makers moving into wholesale who need cost, retail, and wholesale prices that agree.
How do you price handmade items today without an app?
Start with one product and a sheet of paper. Write down every material in it and what that material costs per unit you use, not per pack you bought. A skein that makes three hats costs a third of its price per hat. Add packaging, the mailer, the label, and the tissue paper, because they are real. Time yourself making the next one, from setup to the finished photo. Multiply the minutes by an hourly rate you would accept from an employer, then divide by sixty. If that number feels high, notice that feeling and keep it anyway; it is the number that makes the shop a job instead of a hobby that costs money. Add an overhead share for tools, studio space, listing fees, and the hours you spend photographing and answering messages. A flat ten to twenty percent of the cost line is a common starting point until you have real figures. Now handle fees the right way round. Fees are a share of the price, not of the cost, so you cannot add them on at the end. Decide the margin you want to keep after fees, add the fee shares to it, and divide the cost by one minus that total. The calculator on this page does exactly that sum and shows the formula. Finally compare the answer with the market. If your price is far above similar items, the fix is usually the time, not the price: a faster process, a simpler variant, or a material swap. Cutting the price below cost is not a pricing decision; it is a decision to pay your customers to take your work.
What do people use today?
| Option | Good at | The gap |
|---|---|---|
| A pricing spreadsheet | Free, flexible, and private; a good template covers materials, labor, and fees in one row per product. | Nothing updates when a supplier or a marketplace changes a number, and fees are often added to cost instead of taken from price. |
| Marketplace fee calculators online | Quick answer for what a marketplace keeps from a single sale at a given price. | They start from a price you already picked; they do not cost the product or tell you what your time earned. |
| Craft business bookkeeping apps | Inventory, cost of goods, and tax-ready records for established makers. | Heavier and pricier than a seller with twenty listings needs, and pricing is a report, not the front door. |
| Rules of thumb like cost times two | Fast, and roughly right for cheap materials with little labor. | Ignores time entirely, so labor-heavy items are underpriced by the most. |
What would it cost?
Free
$0
- Cost sheets for 5 products
- Editable fee profiles
- Price and effective hourly rate
Maker
$6/mo
- Unlimited products and materials
- Update a material once, every product follows
- Price list export for fairs and wholesale
- Margin alerts when a fee or a cost changes
Studio
$15/mo
- Everything in Maker
- Two extra team members
- Wholesale and retail price lists per customer
Prices are proposed. Founding members lock in the lowest price if we build MakerMargin.
Questions people ask
What is an Etsy pricing calculator?
An Etsy pricing calculator turns the cost of materials, your time, packaging, and the fees a marketplace keeps into a selling price that leaves you a chosen profit margin. The free one on this page also shows the hourly rate your current price pays you.
Why are fees taken from the price instead of added to the cost?
Marketplace and payment fees are a share of what the buyer pays. If you add them to your cost and then set a price, the fee on the new, higher price is larger than the one you added. Dividing by one minus the fee share solves that in one step.
Does MakerMargin know the current fees for each marketplace?
No, and it will not pretend to. Fees change, and each seller's mix of listing, transaction, payment, and advertising fees differs. You enter your fee shares once per marketplace and edit them when they change. Your figures stay yours.
What hourly rate should I use?
A rate you would accept from an employer for the same hours. Many makers start below that and raise it as the process gets faster. The calculator shows the rate a price actually pays, so you can see the gap instead of guessing at it.
Can it price wholesale as well as retail?
That is the plan. Wholesale is usually a margin on cost rather than a share of retail, so the cost sheet is the same and the target changes. The export would show cost, wholesale, and retail side by side for buyer conversations.
Is MakerMargin only for Etsy?
No. The name reflects where the question is most common. Fee profiles can describe any marketplace, a card reader at a market stall, or a wholesale account, so the same product can carry a different price for each channel.
When will MakerMargin launch?
There is no date. MakerMargin is built only if enough makers join this waitlist and say they would pay. Joining costs nothing, and the calculator on this page is free either way.
Where does this stand?
MakerMargin is a proposal, not a product. This page collects demand from search and answer engines. Askwright builds it only if enough people join the waitlist and say they would pay. Read how this works.