- TikTok Shop charges a referral fee of ~6% in the US and ~9% in the UK
- Payment processing is bundled into the US referral fee; TikTok's UK policy does not address the point either way
- Refund admin fees (20% of the original referral fee) are often overlooked and can add up fast
- FBT (Fulfilled by TikTok) adds $3.58–$5.75 per unit — factor this in before opting in
TikTok Shop fees are the costs TikTok deducts from every sale you make on its marketplace. Understanding exactly what you're paying — and what's left after — is the difference between a profitable shop and one that's bleeding money without knowing it.
The starting point matters: the headline figure on your dashboard is GMV, not revenue, and every fee below comes out of it. If that distinction is new to you, read what GMV means on TikTok Shop first — it works through a £10,000 month line by line.
This guide breaks down every fee TikTok Shop charges in 2026, with regional rates, real examples, and the hidden costs most sellers miss. Use our free TikTok Shop profit calculator to see how these fees impact your specific numbers.
What Fees Does TikTok Shop Charge?
TikTok Shop sellers face five main types of costs:
- Referral fee (commission) — charged on every order, varies by region
- Payment processing — bundled into the referral fee in the US; not addressed in UK policy
- Refund administration fee — charged when you process a refund
- FBT fulfilment fees — if you use Fulfilled by TikTok
- Advertising costs — if you run TikTok Ads or Spark Ads
Let's break down each one.
How Much Does TikTok Shop Take Per Sale?
The headline referral fee is 9% in the UK and 6% in the US. But that number alone is misleading, because the referral fee is rarely the only thing coming out of an order.
Here is what a single order actually gives up, using the rates detailed later in this guide:
| Cost | UK | US | Applies to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Referral fee | 9% | 6% | Every order |
| Affiliate commission | 5–25% | 5–25% | Affiliate-driven orders only |
| FBT fulfilment | Varies by market | $2.86–$5.75 | Per unit, if you use FBT |
| Refund admin fee | 20% of referral fee | 20% of referral fee | Returned orders only |
| Ad spend | 15–30% of revenue | 15–30% of revenue | If you advertise |
The rates above cover the US and UK. One caveat: the published FBT figures are US rates, with UK fulfilment quoted separately in Seller Centre. Selling in Europe? EU commission rates by country match the UK at 9% — but the reduced rate for electronics and beauty does not: 5% in the UK, 7% in the EU.
How much does TikTok Shop take from sellers on a standard order?
If you fulfil orders yourself, sell organically, and take no returns, your TikTok seller fees amount to exactly the referral fee: 9% in the UK, 6% in the US. Nothing more. This is the best case, and it is genuinely competitive — Amazon takes 8–15%, Etsy around 6.5% plus payment processing.
How much does it cost to sell on TikTok Shop in practice?
Very few orders are the best case. Most sales on TikTok Shop are creator-driven, which adds an affiliate commission on top of the referral fee:
| Line | UK order |
|---|---|
| Order value | £25.00 |
| Referral fee (9%) | −£2.25 |
| Affiliate commission (12%) | −£3.00 |
| Left before fulfilment, COGS and ads | £19.75 |
That is 21% of the order value gone before you have paid for the product, the shipping, or the advertising that sold it. The 9% headline was accurate — and it described less than half the real cost.
The 12% commission above is illustrative; creator rates on TikTok Shop typically run between 5% and 25%, and you set them yourself.
So what is the honest answer?
Between 9% and 40%+ of the order value, depending on how the sale happened. Organic, self-fulfilled orders sit at the bottom of that range. Creator-driven, FBT-fulfilled, ad-supported orders sit at the top.
This spread is precisely why a fee table cannot tell you whether you are profitable. Our free TikTok Shop profit calculator lets you set each of these lines to your own numbers.
Referral Fee (Commission)
The referral fee is TikTok's main revenue from sellers. It's a percentage of each order's subtotal, deducted automatically before your payout.
UK Rates
Since September 2024, UK sellers pay a 9% referral fee across most categories. That is higher than the US rate. Whether it is genuinely all-in is a separate question — see the payment processing section for what the policy does and does not say.
Electronics and selected Beauty & Personal Care subcategories receive a 4-point reduction, bringing the effective rate to 5%. TikTok's UK commission rate policy sets this out, and confirms the 9% is quoted "inclusive of applicable taxes, including but not limited to Value Added Tax (VAT)".
Two conditions are worth knowing before you price on 5%. The reduction only applies once you are past your initial new-seller commission period — TikTok confirms that period exists, but publishes neither its rate nor its length on the policy page. And the list of eligible Beauty subcategories sits in a downloadable category spreadsheet rather than on the page itself, so check your own products against it. In the EU the equivalent reduction covers devices only, not cosmetics; the UK wording is narrower than the category name suggests too, without spelling out where the line falls.
US Rates (2026)
| Category | Referral Fee |
|---|---|
| Most categories | 6% |
| Jewellery & Accessories | 5% |
| New seller promotion | 3% for first 30 days |
Important: In the US, the referral fee is a unified fee that includes payment processing. There is no separate payment processing charge. This is a common point of confusion — many guides and calculators still list payment processing as a separate 2.9% + $0.30 fee, but that's outdated for US sellers.
How It's Calculated
The referral fee is calculated on:
Customer Payment + Platform Discounts − Tax
This means if you offer a platform-funded discount, you still pay the referral fee on the full price. Only tax is excluded from the calculation.
Example: A $25.00 product with $2.00 tax → referral fee is calculated on $25.00 → $1.50 (at 6%).
Use our profit calculator to see exactly how the referral fee impacts your margin at different price points.
TikTok Shop Fees in the EU (2026): Rates by Country
TikTok Shop runs one commission structure across its five EU marketplaces. The standard rate is identical in all of them, and identical to the UK. The reduced rate is not: 7% in the EU against 5% in the UK.
| Country | Standard commission | Reduced rate | VAT | In force since |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Italy | 9% | 7% | Included | 8 January 2026 |
| Spain | 9% | 7% | Included | 8 January 2026 |
| France | 9% | 7% | Included | 8 January 2026 |
| Germany | 9% | 7% | Included | 8 January 2026 |
| Ireland | 9% | 7% | Included | 8 January 2026 |
Verified on 11 August 2026 against TikTok's own seller documentation: the commission rate policy for Italy and the category rate schedule for France, which states its own scope as Germany, Spain, France, Ireland and Italy; the Spanish edition carries the same schedule. As in the UK, the rate is quoted inclusive of VAT: a VAT-registered seller recovers that element as input VAT, putting the real cost nearer 7.5% net, while an unregistered seller carries the full 9%.
TikTok Shop Fees in Italy (2026)
Italian sellers pay a 9% commission, VAT included, with a 7% reduced rate on electronics and beauty devices. Italy also adds a new-seller rate of 4% for 60 calendar days on completing an onboarding mission — the only country-specific promotion we could confirm across the five EU markets (verified 11 August 2026).
TikTok Shop Fees in France (2026)
French sellers pay a 9% commission, VAT included, with a 7% reduced rate on electronics and beauty devices. France's own category rate schedule is the reference document setting this rate across all five EU marketplaces (verified 11 August 2026).
TikTok Shop Fees in Germany (2026)
German sellers pay the pan-EU 9% commission, VAT included, with a 7% reduced rate on electronics and beauty devices, in force since 8 January 2026.
TikTok Shop Fees in Spain (2026)
Spanish sellers pay the pan-EU 9% commission, VAT included, with a 7% reduced rate on electronics and beauty devices; the Spanish seller documentation carries the same schedule (verified 11 August 2026).
TikTok Shop Fees in Ireland (2026)
Irish sellers pay the pan-EU 9% commission, VAT included, with a 7% reduced rate on electronics and beauty devices, in force since 8 January 2026.
The 7% Reduced Rate Is Narrower Than It Sounds
Note first that this is an EU figure. The UK reduction lands at 5%, not 7% — same idea, different number, and the two are easy to mix up because the standard rate is 9% on both sides of the Channel.
The EU reduced rate covers electronics and, within Beauty & Personal Care, devices only — hair dryers, electric shavers, body beauty devices, refurbished haircare devices.
Cosmetics, skincare and fragrance stay at 9%. This matters more than it looks: beauty is the largest category on TikTok Shop, and a seller who reads "Beauty & Personal Care: 7%" will budget a rate that does not apply to what they actually sell. If your catalogue is creams rather than appliances, model 9%.
Payment Processing Fee
This is where most confusion happens.
US: Included in the Referral Fee
If you sell on TikTok Shop in the United States, payment processing is included in your referral fee. You pay 6% total — not 6% + 2.9% + $0.30. TikTok handles payment processing through its own infrastructure and absorbs this cost within the referral fee.
This is a significant advantage compared to platforms like Shopify, where payment processing is always a separate charge.
UK: 9%, and One Thing the Policy Does Not Say
UK sellers pay a 9% referral fee, which puts their platform cost at 9% of order value against 6% for a US seller.
Whether payment processing sits inside that 9% is less settled than most guides imply, including ours until now. TikTok's UK commission policy states the rate, the VAT treatment and the calculation formula — and says nothing about payment processing. Not that it is included, not that it is charged on top. Meanwhile the TikTok Shop Partner API carries a transaction_fee_amount field that is distinct from the commission field, and is populated in some markets.
So no official source states that a separate processing charge applies to UK sellers, and none states that it does not. Checked 13 August 2026 against TikTok's own UK commission policy. If you are reconciling to the penny, look for a second deduction line in your settlement rather than assuming one figure covers everything.
The detail nobody mentions: the UK 9% is quoted VAT-inclusive. If you are VAT-registered, the VAT element is recoverable as input VAT, which puts your real commission cost at 7.5% net. TikTok typically invoices UK sellers from a UK entity, so this is standard deductible input VAT rather than a reverse-charge entry. Confirm the treatment with your accountant — but if you have been modelling 9% as a hard cost, your margins are better than your spreadsheet says.
EU: Why Sources Disagree, and How to Settle It
If you searched for a TikTok Shop payment processing fee in Italy, France or Germany and found two contradictory answers, you were not reading carelessly. The sources genuinely disagree. Here is the state of the evidence, and how to resolve it for your own account.
What TikTok's documentation says. The EU commission fee is 9%, "including applicable taxes, including but not limited to value added tax". It describes a single commission fee. It does not mention a separate payment processing or transaction charge anywhere in the policy.
What some third-party guides say. A number of fee calculators and seller guides list an additional transaction charge of roughly 2% on EU marketplaces, on top of the commission. Others still quote 6% for the EU — that was the rate before January 2026 and is simply out of date.
Why the disagreement is hard to dismiss. Stale figures are easy to discard. Harder are the sources that get the current 9% and the 7% electronics rate right, and still list a separate 2% charge: being verifiably correct on two points earns some credit on a third. Press coverage of the January change also described it as an alignment with the UK structure, which would imply all-in — but that is an inference about the policy, not a reading of it.
Where that leaves us: the official documentation describes a single commission fee and mentions no separate charge anywhere. We are not going to promote that silence into a guarantee.
How to settle it in five minutes. Seller Centre → Finance → Statements. Export one settlement as a spreadsheet and read the deduction columns.
- If the only platform deduction is roughly 9% of order value, your rate is all-in.
- If a second line of around 2% sits beside the commission, your real platform cost is nearer 11% — and every margin you have calculated is two points optimistic.
Your settlement export outranks every other source here, including TikTok's help pages and this article. It reports what was actually taken from your money, for your account, in your market.
TikTok Shop Fees for Sellers: The Full List
Every TikTok seller fee in one table, with what triggers it. Use this as the reference; the sections below explain each line in detail.
| Fee | UK rate | US rate | When it applies | Avoidable? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Referral fee | 9% (5% electronics & selected beauty) | 6% (5% jewellery) | Every order | No |
| New seller promotion | Exists; rate not published | 3% for 30 days | First selling window | Automatic |
| Payment processing | Bundled into referral fee | Bundled into referral fee | — | N/A |
| Affiliate commission | 5–25%, you set it | 5–25%, you set it | Creator-driven orders | Yes — sell organically |
| Refund admin fee | 20% of referral fee, capped £5/SKU | 20% of referral fee, capped $5/SKU | Returned orders | Partly — reduce returns |
| Shipped by Seller fee | £0.50/order (since July 2025) | — | Orders you ship yourself | Yes — use Shipped by Platform or FBT |
| FBT fulfilment | Quoted in Seller Centre | $2.86–$5.75/unit | If you opt into FBT | Yes — self-fulfil |
| FBT storage | Free 30 days, then tiered | Free 30 days, then $0.02–$0.12/day/cu.ft | Inventory held in FBT | Yes |
| Hub placement | Optional | $0.31/unit | Multi-warehouse distribution | Yes |
| Advertising | Your budget | Min. $50/day campaign | Only if you advertise | Yes |
| Monthly platform fee | None | None | — | N/A |
Three things worth noting. There is no monthly subscription on TikTok Shop, unlike Shopify or Amazon Professional — your cost is purely transactional. Seven of the eleven lines are avoidable: the only unavoidable seller fee is the referral fee itself. And the Shipped by Seller fee is UK-only — a flat £0.50 per order introduced in July 2025 for orders you fulfil yourself, which you avoid by using Shipped by Platform or FBT instead. Those routes carry their own costs, so it is a trade rather than a saving.
The "Avoidable?" column is our editorial assessment of which TikTok seller fees you can structurally opt out of, not a TikTok classification.
Refund Administration Fee
When a customer returns a product and you process a refund, TikTok charges a refund administration fee of 20% of the original referral fee. This is one of the most overlooked costs on TikTok Shop.
How It Works
- You sell a product for $50 (US)
- TikTok charges a $3.00 referral fee (6%)
- The customer requests a refund
- You refund the $50, but TikTok keeps $0.60 (20% of the $3.00 referral fee)
The refund admin fee is capped at $5 per SKU (since May 2025), which protects sellers on high-ticket items. But on low-ticket, high-return-rate products, this fee adds up fast.
Example: If you sell 1,000 units at $15 with a 10% return rate, you're paying roughly $18 in refund admin fees per month on top of your other costs. Not catastrophic — but it's money most sellers don't even know they're losing.
Track your refund rate closely. If it's above 5%, the refund admin fees are quietly eating into your margin.
How Returns Hit UK Sellers Harder
The higher UK referral fee amplifies the refund admin fee, because the admin fee is calculated as a percentage of it:
| Metric | US seller | UK seller |
|---|---|---|
| Referral fee | 6% | 9% |
| Refund admin fee (20% of referral) | $0.30 on a $25 product | £0.45 on a £25 product |
| Total platform cost on a returned order | ~$0.30 lost | ~£0.45 lost |
Per return the difference is trivial. Across volume it stops being trivial: a UK fashion seller with 300 monthly returns pays around £135 in refund admin fees alone, where the equivalent US seller pays about $90.
The compounding effect matters more than the absolute number. UK sellers carry a higher referral fee and a higher refund admin fee derived from it, which means they need structurally higher gross margins to run the same return rate profitably. If you sell fashion or footwear in the UK — the two highest-return categories — model your margin at your actual return rate, not at zero.
The admin fee is only one of three costs a return creates, alongside lost COGS and return shipping. For return rates by category and the full per-return cost, see our TikTok Shop refund rate guide.
Fulfilled by TikTok (FBT) Fees
FBT is TikTok's fulfilment service, similar to Amazon FBA. You ship inventory to TikTok's warehouses, and they handle picking, packing, and shipping to customers.
Fulfilment Fees (Per Unit Shipped)
| Shipment Type | Fee |
|---|---|
| Single-unit order | $3.58 |
| Multi-unit order (per unit) | $2.86+ |
| Oversize items | $5.75+ |
Multi-unit shipping discounts were improved in January 2026, with rates reduced by up to 24% compared to 2025.
Storage Fees
| Period | Fee |
|---|---|
| First 30 days | Free |
| 31–90 days | $0.02/day/cu.ft |
| 91–180 days | $0.06/day/cu.ft |
| 181–365 days | $0.12/day/cu.ft |
The free 30-day window is generous, but storage fees escalate quickly after that. Slow-moving inventory sitting in FBT for 90+ days sees storage costs triple, and past 180 days they jump to $0.12/day/cu.ft — a strong incentive to keep your sell-through rate high.
Hub Placement Fee
If you want your inventory distributed across multiple TikTok fulfilment centres for faster delivery, there's an optional hub placement fee of $0.31 per unit.
Should You Use FBT?
FBT makes sense if:
- Your products are small and lightweight (lower per-unit fees)
- You have consistent, predictable sales (no storage fee surprises)
- You want the "Shipped by TikTok" badge (can improve conversion)
It doesn't make sense if:
- Your products are oversized or heavy
- Your sales are seasonal or unpredictable
- Your margins are already tight
Factor FBT costs into your profit calculations before committing.
What TikTok Deducts Before Your Payout
Fees are not invoiced to you — they are withheld before TikTok releases funds. Your payout is never the order total, which is why the fee table and your bank statement rarely reconcile in an obvious way.
| Deduction | Amount | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Referral fee | 9% UK / 6% US | Payment processing bundled in the US; UK policy silent |
| Affiliate commission | 5–25% | Creator-driven orders only |
| Shipping subsidy recovery | Varies | If TikTok subsidised the shipping |
| Refund admin fee | 20% of referral fee | Returned orders only |
| Reserve hold | 0–10% of settlement | Depends on your reserve level |
Worked example — a £25 product sold on TikTok Shop UK with a 10% creator commission:
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Order value | £25.00 |
| Referral fee (9%) | −£2.25 |
| Affiliate commission (10%) | −£2.50 |
| Reserve hold (5%) | −£1.25 |
| Settlement payout | £19.00 |
You sold for £25 and you receive £19.00 — and that is still before your own cost of goods. On a £7.50 landed cost, your real net profit is £11.50.
The same $25 order in the US settles at roughly $19.75, about $0.75 more per order, purely because of the 6% versus 9% referral gap.
Two lines in this table are not fees. The reserve hold is your own money, released later, and the payout itself lands 8 to 31 days after the order — both distort your cash position without costing you anything. See our TikTok Shop settlement guide for how the timing works.
To calculate your true landed cost per unit before any of this, see our TikTok Shop COGS guide.
Advertising Costs
TikTok Ads aren't technically a "fee" — they're an investment. But they're a real cost that directly impacts your profit margin.
Minimum Budgets
| Level | Minimum Daily Budget |
|---|---|
| Campaign level | $50/day |
| Ad group level | $20/day |
Real Impact on Margins
Most TikTok Shop sellers spend between 15–30% of their revenue on ads. At the low end, this is manageable. At the high end, it can wipe out your profit entirely.
The key metric isn't ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) calculated on revenue — it's ROAS calculated on profit. A 3x ROAS on revenue might be a 0.8x ROAS on profit once you factor in all other fees.
To track this accurately, you need to know your true per-order profit after all fees. That's where a tool like Margn helps — it connects to your TikTok Shop and calculates real profit per product, automatically.
How Do TikTok Shop Fees Compare?
Here's how TikTok Shop stacks up against other major e-commerce platforms:
| Fee Type | TikTok Shop (US) | Amazon FBA | Shopify | Etsy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly fee | Free | $39.99/mo | $39/mo+ | Free listing |
| Commission | 6% | 8–15% | 0% | 6.5% |
| Payment processing | Included | Included | 2.9% + $0.30 | 3% + $0.25 |
| Fulfilment | $3.58+ (FBT) | $3.22+ (FBA) | Self/3PL | Self/3PL |
| Total per-order cost | ~6% | ~20–30% | ~3–6%* | ~10% |
*Shopify's lower commission rate is offset by monthly fees, app costs, and the need to drive your own traffic.
TikTok Shop's unified fee is competitive — especially since it includes built-in traffic from the TikTok algorithm, which is the one cost Shopify never shows you. A Shopify store with a 3% effective fee still has to buy every visitor.
To see how these fees translate into real margins by product category, check our profit margin benchmarks.
How to Calculate Your Real Profit After Fees
Knowing the fee structure is step one. Step two is calculating what you actually keep.
The formula:
Net Profit = Revenue − COGS − Referral Fee − Ad Spend − Commissions − Refunds
Your COGS is often the biggest variable in this equation — and most sellers underestimate it. For a complete guide on calculating your real landed cost per unit, see our TikTok Shop COGS guide.
Once you know your fees and COGS, you need a pricing strategy that accounts for both. Our TikTok Shop pricing strategy guide shows the backward formula to set the minimum price you can charge while staying profitable in both UK and US markets.
For a step-by-step walkthrough with examples, read our guide on how to calculate your true TikTok Shop profit.
Or skip the math and use our free TikTok Shop profit calculator — enter your revenue, COGS, and ad spend, and see your real margin instantly.
Want It Calculated Automatically?
If you're tired of estimating, Margn connects directly to your TikTok Shop and pulls your real fees, commissions, and refunds from every order. No spreadsheets, no guessing.
- Free plan: 500 orders/month, hourly sync
- Pro plan (€19/mo): Unlimited orders, 15-min sync, ad spend tracking, CSV export
Not sure which tracking tool fits your business? Compare the best TikTok Shop profit trackers.
Ready to see your real numbers? Get started free — no credit card required.
