- GMV is the total value of everything customers ordered, before any deduction — fees, commissions, refunds and product costs all come out afterwards
- A £10,000 GMV month typically leaves a UK seller around £2,700 once every cost is subtracted
- GMV includes orders that were later refunded or cancelled, so it always overstates what you earned
- GMV Max optimises your ad spend towards order value, not towards margin — the two can move in opposite directions
GMV on TikTok Shop stands for Gross Merchandise Value: the total drawn from every order placed, before a single deduction. It is the largest number on your dashboard, and the furthest from what reaches your account.
This guide explains what the figure contains, what it leaves out, and what a £10,000 month actually leaves you with. Run your own figures through our free TikTok Shop profit calculator once you reach the end.
GMV Meaning on TikTok Shop: The Short Answer
Gross Merchandise Value is the sum of the order value of everything customers bought from your shop over a period, calculated before fees, commissions, refunds, advertising and product costs.
It measures demand. It does not measure earnings.
Three things sit inside the figure that most sellers assume are excluded:
- Orders that were later refunded. A customer buys, receives, returns. The sale still counts towards the period's total.
- Orders that were cancelled after payment. Same principle.
- Shipping paid by the customer, and any platform-funded discount applied at checkout.
That last point catches people out. If TikTok funds a 20% voucher on a £25 item, the customer pays £20 but the figure recorded against your shop stays at £25. Your take rate is calculated on the higher number too — see our complete guide to TikTok Shop fees for how the commission base is built.
GMV vs Net Revenue vs Net Profit
Three numbers, three very different meanings. Most sellers use them interchangeably, which is where the trouble starts.
| Metric | What it includes | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| GMV | Every order placed, refunds included, before deductions | How much customers wanted to buy |
| Net revenue | GMV minus platform fees, creator commissions and refunds | What TikTok actually pays you |
| Net profit | Net revenue minus product costs, shipping and advertising | What you keep |
The distance between the first and the third is not marginal. For a typical UK seller it sits between 65% and 75% of the headline figure.
What a High GMV Means on TikTok
Not much on its own. A shop turning over £50,000 with 45% product costs, a 20% creator commission and heavy ad support can finish a month behind a shop turning over £8,000 organically on high-margin stock.
The figure rises with volume. Margin rises with control. They are not the same lever, and TikTok's dashboard only shows you the first one. For what healthy margins look like by product type, see our profit margin benchmarks by category.
A £10,000 GMV Month: What You Actually Keep
Take a UK shop that recorded £10,000 last month across 400 orders at a £25 average order value. Half of those orders came through creators at a 12% commission. Return rate: 8%. Self-fulfilled.
| Line | Amount | Note |
|---|---|---|
| GMV | £10,000.00 | 400 orders × £25 |
| Referral fee (9%) | −£900.00 | All-in, payment processing included |
| Creator commissions | −£600.00 | 12% on £5,000 of creator-driven orders |
| Shipped by Seller fee | −£200.00 | £0.50 per order since July 2025 |
| Refunds (8%) | −£800.00 | 32 orders returned |
| Refund admin fee | −£14.40 | 20% of the referral fee on returned orders |
| Net revenue | £7,485.60 | What TikTok pays out |
| COGS (368 units × £7.50) | −£2,760.00 | Landed cost per unit |
| Ad spend | −£2,000.00 | 20% of GMV |
| Net profit | £2,725.60 |
You keep roughly 27p in every pound the dashboard displayed.
Worth noting on the referral fee: the 9% is quoted inclusive of VAT. If you are VAT-registered, the VAT element is reclaimable, which brings the effective cost closer to 7.5%. If you are not registered, you carry the full 9%.
None of the deductions above are hidden. They are simply spread across different reports, and none of them appear next to the headline figure.
The Same Month for a US Seller
Identical shop, identical orders, US marketplace. The referral fee is 6% rather than 9%, and the Shipped by Seller charge does not apply.
| Line | UK | US |
|---|---|---|
| GMV | £10,000.00 | $10,000.00 |
| Referral fee | −£900.00 (9%) | −$600.00 (6%) |
| Creator commissions | −£600.00 | −$600.00 |
| Shipped by Seller | −£200.00 | — |
| Refunds | −£800.00 | −$800.00 |
| Refund admin fee | −£14.40 | −$9.60 |
| Net revenue | £7,485.60 | $7,990.40 |
| COGS + ad spend | −£4,760.00 | −$4,760.00 |
| Net profit | £2,725.60 | $3,230.40 |
Same order value, same costs, five percentage points of margin between them. A UK seller therefore needs stronger gross margins to run the same operation, and the gap widens with every order that carries a creator commission.
Jewellery sits at 5% in the US rather than 6%. EU5 rates have moved recently and published figures disagree with one another — check your own settlement export rather than trusting a table, including this one.
What Is GMV Max on TikTok?
GMV Max is TikTok's automated campaign type. Rather than setting audiences, bids and placements manually, you give it a budget and a target, and the system handles targeting, bidding and creative selection towards one objective: maximising the total value of orders it generates.
It works. That is precisely the problem.
The objective is order value, not margin. An automated system pushing towards volume will happily spend more per order to win more orders, because the metric it optimises does not know what a unit costs you. Two campaigns can produce identical totals with completely different outcomes:
| Campaign A | Campaign B | |
|---|---|---|
| Attributed GMV | £5,000 | £5,000 |
| Ad spend | £750 | £1,600 |
| Products sold | High margin | Low margin |
| Contribution after costs | Healthy | Negative |
Both report the same success. Only one of them paid for itself.
Using GMV Max Without Losing Margin
Three habits keep it honest:
Exclude your thin-margin SKUs. If a product only works at full price with no commission attached, keeping it out of automated campaigns protects it.
Judge campaigns on profit, not on returns. A 4x return on ad spend calculated against revenue can be well under 1x once product costs, fees and commissions are removed.
Watch attribution windows. Attributed GMV counts orders the campaign is credited with, which is not always the same as orders it caused. Compare periods with the campaign on and off before drawing conclusions.
Rates, attribution windows and eligibility for this campaign type change regularly and vary by market. Confirm the current settings in your own Ads Manager rather than relying on any published figure.
Why TikTok Puts GMV First
Not deception — structural incentive.
TikTok's revenue is a percentage of the transactions crossing its platform. Its commercial interest is the total flowing through, not what individual sellers retain. Reporting the metric it is paid on is the natural thing for a marketplace to do.
There is a practical constraint too. TikTok cannot calculate your profit even if it wanted to. It has no idea what you paid your supplier, what packaging costs you, what you spent on inbound freight, or what your seller payout looks like after your own overheads. There is no field in Seller Centre to enter any of it.
So the platform reports the only figure it can compute with certainty. The rest is your job — and the reason spreadsheets exist in every seller's life until they replace them with something automated. Our guide to TikTok Shop fees covers every deduction that stands between the two numbers.
Where to Find Your GMV in Seller Centre
Two places, and they will not always agree.
Seller Centre → Analytics → Overview shows the figure for your selected period. This is the demand number, refunds included.
Seller Centre → Finance → Statements shows settled orders with each deduction itemised. This is the payout number. Export it as a spreadsheet and you get referral fee, creator commission, refund admin fee and adjustments as separate columns.
The gap between the two screens is exactly what this article has been describing. Analytics tells you what customers ordered. Finance tells you what survived.
One caveat when reconciling: settlement lands days after delivery, so a given week's statement mixes orders from several periods. Analytics is grouped by order date, Finance by settlement date. They will never tie out line for line, and that is expected rather than an error.
From Order Value to What Lands in Your Account
The figure on your dashboard is a demand signal. Useful for spotting which products move and when. Useless for deciding what to price, what to promote, or what to stop selling.
Every decision that matters runs on the number underneath — net revenue after fees and commissions, then net profit after your own costs. Neither appears anywhere in Seller Centre, because TikTok does not hold the inputs.
Start by modelling it: enter your price, product cost, commission rate and ad spend into our profit calculator and see what a sale is worth before you make it.
If you are already selling, Margn connects to your shop, applies your COGS per SKU, and calculates net profit per product and per day from real order data.
- Free plan: 500 orders a month, no card required
- Pro: €19/month for unlimited orders, 15-minute sync and P&L export
Want to see what your GMV is actually worth? Get started free — no credit card required.
