If you make things and want to sell them online, you have more choice than ever, and more small print. This guide compares the marketplaces UK makers actually use, with the fees side by side and a worked example of what you would keep from a £20 sale on each one.
One thing to say up front: we run Crafter’s Market UK, so we are one of the options on this list. We have put the numbers in tables, linked every source, and said where another site is the better choice. Figures were checked on 16 October 2026 against each marketplace’s published fees. They change, so check before you price to the penny.
The short version
What each marketplace charges. Checked 16 October 2026; sources at the end.
| Marketplace | To list | When you sell | Card fees | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Etsy | $0.201 | 6.5% + 0.48%2 | 4% + 20p | None needed |
| Folksy | 15p + VAT3 | 6% + VAT4 | About 1.5% + 20p | Free or £7.50 |
| Not On The High Street | £199 + VAT, once5 | 25% + VAT5 | Included | None |
| Amazon Handmade | Free | 12.24%6 | Included | None7 |
| The British Craft House | Included | 7.2% | 1.5% + 20p | £18 or £33 |
| Crafter’s Market UK That’s us | Free | 0% to 5%8 | 1.5% + 20p9 | Free, £5 or £10 |
| Your own website | Included | None | 1.5% to 2.9% + a fixed fee | Your plan |
1 Charged in US dollars, so the sterling amount (about 15p) moves with the exchange rate. Listings renew every four months or when an item sells.
2 A 6.5% transaction fee on the item, postage and gift wrap, plus a 0.48% regulatory operating fee. Etsy adds 20% VAT to its fees if you are not VAT registered, and Offsite Ads take 12% to 15% of any sale they bring in.
3 On the free plan. Folksy Plus has no listing fees.
4 On the item price only; postage is excluded.
5 As widely reported. NOTHS does not publish its fees and confirms them when you apply.
6 On the total including delivery, plus a 2% digital services fee on Amazon’s fees.
7 The usual £25 a month Professional plan is waived for approved Handmade sellers.
8 5% on the free Basic plan (up to 10 products), 0% on Plus (£5 a month, 100 products) and Premium (£10 a month, unlimited). Commission is on the order including postage.
9 Shared between makers when a customer buys from several shops in one order.
Who each one suits.
| Marketplace | Handmade only | UK sellers only | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Etsy | No | No | The biggest audience of craft buyers |
| Folksy | Yes | Yes | Low fees and a UK craft audience |
| Not On The High Street | Curated | UK partners | Giftable ranges with healthy margins |
| Amazon Handmade | Yes, by application | No | Products made in volume, Prime customers |
| The British Craft House | Yes, curated | Yes | A gallery setting once sales are steady |
| Crafter’s Market UK That’s us | Yes | Yes | Keeping more of each sale, with a free start |
| Your own website | You decide | You decide | Makers with an audience of their own |
What you would keep from a £20 sale
Say a customer in the UK buys a £20 item with £3.50 postage, pays by card, and you are not VAT registered. Here is what each marketplace takes from the £23.50, rounded to the penny.
A £20 item with £3.50 postage: what you keep from £23.50.
| Marketplace | Fees | You keep |
|---|---|---|
| Etsy | £3.52 15p listing, £1.53 transaction, 11p regulatory, £1.14 processing, plus VAT on fees1 | £19.98 |
| Folksy, free plan | £2.17 18p listing, £1.44 commission, 55p card fees | £21.33 |
| Not On The High Street | £6.00 25% + VAT on the item, after the joining fee | £17.50 |
| Amazon Handmade | £2.94 £2.88 referral fee, 6p digital services fee | £20.56 |
| The British Craft House | £1.99 £1.44 commission, 55p card fees, plus the monthly plan | £21.51 |
| Crafter’s Market UK, Basic That’s us | £1.73 £1.18 commission, 55p card fees | £21.77 |
| Crafter’s Market UK, Plus or Premium | 55p Card fees only, plus the monthly plan | £22.95 |
1 Assumes Etsy’s 20% VAT applies to all of its fees. If your payment processing fee is not charged VAT, you keep about 23p more.
Two things the table cannot show. On Etsy, if the sale came through an Offsite Ad, add another 15% (£3.53 here), and that fee becomes compulsory once your shop has made over $10,000 in a year. And a subscription only makes sense above a certain volume: Plus on Crafter’s Market costs £5 a month, so it pays for itself once you sell more than about £100 a month, and the yearly price of £45 brings that break-even down to about £75 a month. The British Craft House charges a plan and commission, so there is no break-even to find; the plan is a fixed cost on top.
Where to sell handmade items for free
“Free” usually means no listing fee and no monthly fee, with the marketplace taking something only when you sell. On that definition:
- Crafter’s Market UK Basic is free to join and list, with 5% commission on each sale and up to 10 products. Card fees apply, as they do everywhere.
- Folksy’s free plan still charges 15p plus VAT per listing, so it is cheap rather than free.
- Etsy charges to list, so it is never free, even if nothing sells.
- Facebook Marketplace and local selling groups are free and work well for local collection, but there is no buyer protection and no shop page to build.
- Instagram and TikTok cost nothing to post on, but you still need somewhere to take the payment, which brings you back to a marketplace or your own site.
- eBay now charges private sellers nothing, but if you make things to sell, you are a business seller in eBay’s terms and business fees apply.
If you are testing whether your work sells at all, start free and move up when the numbers justify it.
Etsy
Etsy is the biggest handmade marketplace in the world and the one most shoppers have heard of. That audience is the reason to be there, and it is a real advantage: nowhere else sends as many browsers past your listings without you lifting a finger.
The catch is everything else. The fees stack up (listing, transaction, processing, regulatory, currency conversion if you sell abroad, and Offsite Ads once you are successful), the search results are crowded with mass-produced and AI-generated items, and many sellers say they have to pay for Etsy Ads to be seen at all. Etsy is not UK-focused either, so you compete with the whole world.
Etsy suits makers who want maximum reach and can absorb the fees in their prices. Most UK makers who sell well on Etsy keep it and add a second channel with lower fees. Our guide to Etsy fees in the UK breaks a sale down fee by fee, and how Crafter’s Market compares with Etsy goes into the differences.
Folksy
Folksy is a UK marketplace for handmade work, open to UK sellers only. Its fees are simple and modest, it has a loyal craft-buying audience, and it has an Etsy importer for bringing listings across. It is a good, honest option.
The limits are size and features. Folksy’s audience is much smaller than Etsy’s, and its selling tools are basic. If you want a built-in Royal Mail link, abandoned-basket emails or an app to run your shop from your phone, you will not find them there.
Folksy suits makers who want a UK-only home with low fees and are happy to bring their own customers.
Not On The High Street
Not On The High Street is a curated gift site with a big, affluent audience and strong brand recognition, particularly for personalised gifts. If you are accepted, the traffic is excellent.
Acceptance is the first hurdle: NOTHS reviews every application and does not take everyone. The cost is the second. The reported one-off joining fee of £199 plus VAT and 25% plus VAT commission make it by far the most expensive site on this list, and that commission comes off the price the customer pays, so your pricing has to be built around it from the start. NOTHS does not publish these figures; it confirms them when you apply.
NOTHS suits established makers with a polished, giftable range and margins that can take a quarter off the top.
Amazon Handmade
Amazon Handmade is Amazon’s artisan-only section. Listing is free, the usual £25 a month Professional plan is waived for approved Handmade sellers, and you can use Fulfilment by Amazon to get Prime delivery on your products.
The referral fee of 12.24% on the full order including delivery is higher than the specialist craft sites, and Amazon’s buyers are often there for speed and price rather than the story behind a piece. Your shop page is also very much an Amazon page, not yours.
Amazon Handmade suits makers with a product that can be made in quantity and who want access to Prime customers.
The British Craft House
The British Craft House is a curated marketplace for makers in Great Britain. It feels like a small, well-kept gallery, and the team reviews every applicant. Commission is a reasonable 7.2% including VAT, with Stripe fees on top.
The difference is that there is no free tier: the Startup plan is £18 a month for up to 75 products and the Standard plan £33 for 100. That is fine once you are selling steadily and expensive while you are finding your feet.
The British Craft House suits makers who want a curated setting and are already selling enough to cover a monthly plan.
Crafter’s Market UK
That is us, so judge this section with that in mind. Crafter’s Market UK is a UK-only marketplace for handmade work, started by two makers in Bristol in 2021 and rebuilt from the ground up this year. Every seller is UK-based and every listing is checked against our handmade policy.
What is different: the free Basic plan has no listing fee and 5% commission; Plus (£5 a month) and Premium (£10 a month) have no commission at all. Your products are sent to Google Shopping and Pinterest for free, with no offsite-ads fee when they sell. Plus and Premium shops can link Royal Mail Click & Drop, run coupons, and use the Import from Etsy tool to bring their listings across from a CSV in an afternoon. Shoppers get Buyer Protection on every order, and you keep the customer relationship through the messages on your shop.
What we are not: as big as Etsy. We are honest about that. The marketplace is growing, but the traffic is a fraction of Etsy’s, which is why we suggest most makers sell in two places rather than one. You also need a Stripe account to be paid, which takes about ten minutes to set up.
Crafter’s Market suits UK makers who want to keep more of each sale, sell to a UK audience, and have a second home for their shop that is not at the mercy of a global marketplace’s next fee change.
Your own website
Shopify, Big Cartel, Squarespace and WooCommerce all let you run your own shop with no commission. You own the brand, the customer list and the rules. The cost is a monthly plan plus card fees, and the real cost is traffic: nobody arrives unless you bring them, through social media, search, email or a marketplace that points to you.
An own-brand site suits makers who already have an audience. For most people starting out, a marketplace first and your own site later is the realistic order.
Which one is right for you
- Just starting, no budget: Crafter’s Market Basic or Folksy’s free plan. Both let you find out whether your work sells without paying up front.
- Already on Etsy and tired of the fees: keep Etsy for its traffic and add a 0% commission UK marketplace alongside it. Use an import tool so you are not retyping listings.
- Premium, giftable products with healthy margins: apply to Not On The High Street, and expect to build a quarter commission into your prices.
- Products you can make in volume: Amazon Handmade, for Prime customers.
- An existing following of your own: your own website, with a marketplace for discovery.
- A curated, gallery-style setting: The British Craft House or Crafter’s Market, depending on whether you want a free tier.
Selling in more than one place
Most makers who do well online sell on two or three channels. The marketplaces do not mind: none of them asks for exclusivity. The practical problems are keeping stock levels in step, so you do not sell the same one-off twice, and not spending your evenings retyping listings.
For the second problem, use the import tools. Folksy has one, and on Crafter’s Market, Plus and Premium shops can upload the listings file you download from Etsy; the listings arrive as drafts with their photos, so you check each one before it goes live. Our step-by-step guide to moving from Etsy walks through it. For the first, keep made-to-order items open everywhere and one-offs in one place, or set a small buffer on quantities.
The rules apply everywhere
Whichever marketplace you choose, the same UK rules follow you. Since 2024, online platforms have reported sellers to HMRC once they make 30 or more sales, or receive about £1,700 (2,000 euros) or more, in a calendar year. Being reported does not itself mean you owe tax, but if you are making things to sell, you are trading, and the trading allowance of £1,000 a year is the point at which you need to register for Self Assessment. Products have to meet UK safety rules, which matter most for toys, candles, cosmetics and anything for babies. Our guide to the rules, tax and laws for selling handmade covers all of this in more detail, our help centre has a plain-English guide to vendor responsibilities, and HMRC’s own page explains the reporting rules.
Which marketplace has the lowest fees for handmade sellers in the UK?
Per sale, a 0% commission plan on Crafter’s Market (Plus or Premium) is the lowest, with only card fees to pay, but it has a monthly cost. Among the free-to-join options, Crafter’s Market Basic at 5% and Folksy at 6% plus VAT and 15p per listing are the cheapest. Etsy sits in the middle until Offsite Ads apply, and Not On The High Street is the most expensive at 25% plus VAT.
Can I sell on Etsy and another marketplace at the same time?
Yes. None of the marketplaces in this guide asks for exclusivity, and most successful makers sell on two or three. Keep an eye on stock for one-off pieces so you do not sell the same item twice.
Where can I sell handmade items for free in the UK?
Crafter’s Market UK’s Basic plan has no listing or monthly fee, with 5% commission when you sell. Facebook Marketplace is free for local sales. Folksy is nearly free at 15p plus VAT per listing. Etsy charges to list.
Do I need to tell HMRC if I sell crafts online?
If your total income from all trading is over £1,000 in a tax year, yes: you need to register for Self Assessment. Below that, the trading allowance covers you. Separately, marketplaces report sellers who pass 30 sales or about £1,700 a year to HMRC, which does not change what you owe. See HMRC’s guidance on selling through online platforms, linked above.
Is Folksy or Etsy better for UK makers?
Etsy has far more shoppers; Folksy has lower fees and a UK-only audience. If you can only pick one and want sales quickly, Etsy’s reach usually wins. If you want to keep more of each sale and build slowly, Folksy or Crafter’s Market is the better fit. Many makers use both.
Figures checked on 16 October 2026 against each marketplace’s published fees: Etsy, Folksy, Not On The High Street, Amazon Handmade, The British Craft House and our own fees page. Exchange rates and fees change; this is a guide, not a quote, and nothing here is tax advice.