TikTok Shop fee calculator
Calculate TikTok Shop referral fees, affiliate commission and VAT for the US, UK and Southeast Asia, with the disputed US rate shown honestly rather than guessed.
Rate verification pending. The stored fee assumptions are secondary-source estimates. This worksheet is excluded from search and advertising; confirm every rate in your seller account before using the result.
Illustrative stored schedule; verify the account rate.
- Sources disagree on whether payment processing sits inside the referral fee or on top of it. One reports the 6% US rate as covering both; another reports processing of 1.02% to 3.78% charged separately, giving a true take-rate nearer 7%. We default to treating it as included and expose a separate processing field so you can model it either way — but check a real settlement report before pricing on either reading.
- UK sellers also owe 20% VAT on the sale itself, which is a much bigger number than the 9% commission.
- The US referral rate itself is disputed between 6% and 8%. TikTok has stepped it more than once.
TikTok Shop keeps $3.00 — 6.7% of the item price
- TikTok Shop fees−$3.006%
- Cost of goods−$14.0028%
- Your postage & packing−$4.509%
- Returns−$0.430.86%
- Net profitkept$28.0756.1%
| Step | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Fee baseTikTok Shop charges its commission on this total, not on the item price alone.Source: Dashboardly (effective 2026) | 45 item + 5 postage | $50.00 |
| TikTok Shop commission (6%)Source: Dashboardly (effective 2026) | 50 × 6% | $3.00 |
| Total TikTok Shop fees | $3.00 | |
| Selling price | $50.00 | |
| Other platform fees | -$3.00 | |
| Fulfilment | -$4.50 | |
| Cost of goods | -$14.00 | |
| Returns at 4%Per return: handling + refund admin + written-off stock + the outbound fulfilment fee you do not get back. | 10.70 × 0.04 | -$0.43 |
| Net profit per unit | 50.00 − 21.93 | $28.07 |
| Net marginMargin is measured against net revenue, so it stays comparable across tax regimes. | 28.07 ÷ 50.00 × 100 | 56.14 % |
| Monthly profit at 100 units | 28.07 × 100 | $2,807.20 |
The rate is disputed, and we say so rather than picking one
The US referral rate is genuinely unsettled. Reporting puts it at 6% covering both commission and payment processing, while a widely repeated figure says 8%, and TikTok has stepped the rate more than once since launch. Rather than choose one silently and present it as fact, this calculator defaults to 6%, states that it is doing so, and lets you change it to whatever your own seller centre shows.
Where TikTok Shop economics differ from a conventional marketplace
The referral fee is the smaller half of the story. TikTok Shop is a discovery channel rather than a search channel, so the sale is usually created by content rather than found by intent — which means affiliate commission to the creator who made it, typically in the 5 to 20% range and negotiated per campaign, sits on top of the platform fee. A product carrying a 6% referral fee and a 15% creator commission is a 21% channel, not a 6% one, and modelling only the platform side is how sellers conclude TikTok is cheap and then find it is not.
Two more things that move the margin
Discounting is close to structural. The channel runs on flash pricing, bundles and platform-funded and seller-funded promotions, and a listing priced without headroom for them tends not to move. Returns are also higher than search-driven marketplaces, for the ordinary reason that impulse purchases come back more often than considered ones. Both belong in the calculation before the channel is compared against Amazon or eBay on headline fee alone.
Questions people ask about this
Answers written from the published rules, not from other people's summaries of them. Every figure quoted below is listed with its source at the foot of this page.
Every formula on this siteWhat does TikTok Shop charge sellers?
A single referral fee that covers both marketplace commission and payment processing — reported at 6% in the US for most categories and 9% in the UK, with Southeast Asian markets ranging roughly 1% to 8% by country and category. Affiliate commission you set yourself, typically 10% to 20%, stacks on top.
Is the US rate 6% or 8%?
Sources disagree, and we would rather tell you that than pretend otherwise. TikTok stepped US commission from an introductory rate upward more than once, and different guides captured different moments. Check your Seller Center before pricing on either figure.
Do UK sellers pay VAT as well?
Yes, and it dwarfs the commission. A 9% referral fee sits alongside 20% VAT on the sale itself. If your price includes VAT, a fifth of the sticker price was never yours.
Does creator commission come out of the same money as the referral fee?
It comes out of the same sale but it is a separate deduction, and it is usually the larger of the two. Affiliate commission is set by you per product or per campaign, typically somewhere between 5 and 20%, and it is paid on sales the creator's content generated. A product with a 6% platform fee and a 15% creator commission is a 21% channel. Modelling only the platform fee is the most common reason TikTok Shop margins come in far below forecast.
Who pays for the discounts and flash sales?
Both parties, in proportions that vary by promotion. Some campaigns are platform-funded, some are seller-funded, and many are split — and the seller-funded portion is a direct reduction in your net revenue, not a marketing expense that sits elsewhere. Because the channel runs heavily on promotional pricing, a listing priced with no discount headroom tends not to move, so the realistic price to model is the promotional one rather than the list price.
Why are returns higher on TikTok Shop than on a search marketplace?
Because the demand is created rather than sought. Someone who searched for a product had already decided they wanted one; someone who saw it in a video decided in a few seconds. Impulse purchases come back more often than considered ones, across every channel that has ever measured it. Budget a higher return rate than your Amazon or eBay baseline when you first model the channel, and correct it with your own data once you have a few months of it.
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Where these numbers come from
Rates and rules change, and a calculator running on stale data is worse than no calculator. Every figure below carries the date we last checked it and a confidence level, so you can judge how much weight to put on it.
| Source | Publisher | Effective | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| TikTok Shop seller fees 2026 Reports a US referral fee of 6% covering both commission and payment processing, and 9% in the UK. This conflicts with a widely repeated 8% figure for the US. TikTok has stepped its US commission more than once, so the calculator defaults to 6% but makes the rate editable and shows both figures. | Dashboardly | 2026Checked 2026-08-17 | Secondary source |
Page updated . Spotted something out of date? Tell us — corrections are published with the date they were made.
More on the working: every formula on this site, the full source register, what the terms mean, and how we decide what to publish. What an estimate here can and cannot support is set out in the accuracy notes.