How Much Does Faire Charge? A Complete Guide to Faire Fees

The first thing most makers do when they get accepted onto Faire is feel excited. The second thing they do (once their first order comes through) is stare at the payout and wonder where their money went.

Faire’s fee structure isn’t complicated, but it’s easy to underestimate if you’re used to Etsy or Shopify. The rates are higher, and there are a couple of fees that catch people out. If you set your wholesale prices before understanding how Faire takes its cut, you can end up making less per sale than you would selling direct, sometimes significantly less.

This guide covers every fee Faire charges, walks through the actual numbers, and explains how to build those costs into your pricing so you’re not just busy on Faire, but actually profitable.

What Does Faire Charge Brands?

Faire charges brands a 15% commission on marketplace orders, a one-time $10 fee on each new retailer’s first order, plus payment processing of 1.9%–3.5% depending on how fast you want to be paid.

Faire makes its money three ways. Here’s each one:

1. Commission on sales

• 15% commission on every order that comes through the Faire marketplace, whether it’s a retailer’s first order or their fiftieth
• 0% commission on orders from retailers you bring to Faire yourself via your Faire Direct link

2. New-customer fee

• A one-time $10 fee the first time a new retailer discovers you on the marketplace and places an order. It applies once per retailer, only on that first order. Reorders don’t carry it, and neither do replacement or split orders.

3. Payment processing fee

• Charged on every order, based on how quickly you want your payout:
  • Next business day: 3.5% + $0.30
  • 30-day payout: 2.4% + $0.30
  • 60-day payout: 1.9% + $0.30

That’s the whole structure. No monthly listing fee. No subscription required to sell. You choose your payout speed, and faster access to your money costs a little more in processing.

For comparison, here’s how that stacks up against the other channels makers typically use:

Etsy and Shopify look much cheaper because they are: you’re selling retail, to end consumers, at full price. Faire is a wholesale channel. You’re selling at half (or less) of your retail price, to buyers who need margin themselves. The fee structure reflects that entirely different trade-off.

What You Actually Net: Faire Fee Calculator by Order Size

Here’s how Faire’s fees play out across common order sizes. These figures assume the 30-day payout option (2.4% + $0.30 processing); if you take next-day payout, processing rises to 3.5%. “Faire’s total cut” is the 15% commission, plus the one-time $10 new-customer fee on first orders, plus payment processing.

Three patterns stand out. First, the one-time $10 new-customer fee hurts most on small first orders: on a $100 first order it’s a bigger drag than the commission itself, pushing the effective rate to around 28%. That’s the case for setting a sensible minimum order value. Second, reorders are much cleaner: a flat 15% commission plus processing, no $10 fee, so your effective rate settles around 17-18% on every repeat order. Third, Faire Direct is dramatically cheaper: you skip the commission entirely and pay only processing.

How Faire’s Commission and New-Customer Fee Work in Practice

Faire charges a flat 15% commission on every marketplace order. The only difference between a first order and a reorder is the one-time $10 new-customer fee, which applies just to that first order.

Faire’s commission doesn’t change based on how long you’ve worked with a retailer, it’s 15% either way. What changes is the one-time $10 new-customer fee, charged only the first time a retailer finds you on the marketplace and orders.

Let’s run the numbers on a $300 first order (assuming the 30-day payout):

• Order value: $300
• Commission (15%): $45
• New-customer fee (one-time): $10
• Payment processing (2.4% + $0.30): $7.50
• You receive: $237.50 (about 79% of the order value)

Now that same retailer places a repeat order of $300:

• Order value: $300
• Commission (15%): $45
• New-customer fee: $0 (only ever charged once)
• Payment processing (2.4% + $0.30): $7.50
• You receive: $247.50 (about 82% of the order value)

The difference is the $10 fee you’ll never pay on that retailer again. It’s not huge on a single order, but it means every reorder lands at a clean ~17.5% all-in. This is why Faire’s model rewards makers who build relationships with buyers, not just churn through one-off transactions.

What Is Faire Direct — and How Does It Affect Your Fees?

Faire Direct is probably the most underused feature on the platform.

If you have existing wholesale accounts (boutiques you already sell to, people you’ve met at trade shows, shops that have emailed you asking about wholesale), you can send them to your Faire storefront using your unique Faire Direct link. When they place orders through that link, Faire charges you no commission at all. You still pay the payment processing fee, but the 15% commission disappears, and because they came to you rather than discovering you on the marketplace, there’s no $10 new-customer fee either.

For a $400 order:

• As a new-customer first order: you’d net about $320 after the 15% commission, the $10 fee, and processing
• Via Faire Direct: you’d net about $390 after processing only

That’s roughly a $70 difference on that first order. And it keeps paying off: on every future order, a marketplace reorder costs you the 15% commission (about $60 on a $400 order), while a Faire Direct order never does. If you’re migrating five or ten existing wholesale accounts to Faire, that adds up fast.

The catch: retailers have to create a Faire account (if they don’t already have one) to order through your link. Most retailers who use Faire regularly are already on the platform. For those who aren’t, the onboarding is fairly painless, and they benefit from Faire’s net-60 payment terms, which is often a significant incentive for them.

Before your next wholesale account places an order through the main Faire marketplace, send them your Faire Direct link. It takes 30 seconds and saves you the 15% commission (and, on their first order, the $10 new-customer fee). One email, one link. Done.

Does Faire Have a Subscription or Annual Fee?

No. Faire does not charge brands a monthly or annual subscription fee to list and sell.

You can set up your Faire storefront and list your products without paying anything upfront. Faire only earns money when you make a sale. The commission, the one-time new-customer fee, and payment processing all come out of each order payout.

This is different from some wholesale platforms that charge a monthly fee for access. Faire’s free-to-list model is one of its genuine advantages, especially if your wholesale volume is still building.

Net-60 Payment Terms — Who Pays You, and When?

One of Faire’s most-talked-about features is that it offers retailers net-60 payment terms: retailers get 60 days to pay for their orders. You might wonder whether that means you wait 60 days to get paid.

You don’t. Faire fronts the money and lets you choose how fast you want your payout, with a small trade-off in the processing fee:

• Next business day: 3.5% + $0.30
• 30 days: 2.4% + $0.30
• 60 days: 1.9% + $0.30

So you can be paid as soon as the next business day if you’re happy to pay a slightly higher processing rate, or wait a little longer for a lower one. Either way, Faire extends the credit to the retailer, so you don’t carry that risk. Chasing 60-day invoices from boutiques is genuinely painful, and Faire absorbs all of that.

The practical implication: you’re not waiting on the retailer, you’re choosing your own payout speed. For most makers, faster cash flow is worth the extra point or so in processing.

How Faire Fees Affect Your COGS and Profitability

This is where most makers run into trouble.

Wholesale pricing is already a compression exercise: you’re typically pricing at 50% of retail (sometimes less). Add Faire’s fees on top, and if you haven’t done the maths carefully, you can end up selling products at a loss. If you’re not familiar with how COGS works for handmade sellers, it’s worth getting that right first. It’s the foundation everything else rests on.

Here’s a worked example.

Say you make a soy candle. Your true cost to make it (materials, labour, packaging, overhead) is $8. You sell it for $28 retail, and your wholesale price is $14. A boutique places a first order of 10 candles, a $140 order.

Now what happens on Faire?

• Wholesale price: $14/unit
• Commission (15%): $2.10/unit
• New-customer fee ($10 spread across 10 units): $1.00/unit
• Payment processing (~2.4% + $0.30 on the order): ~$0.37/unit
• Your net: about $10.53 per unit

Margin: about $2.53 a candle, roughly 18% over your $8 cost. Not terrible, but thinner than the retail price suggests, and if your COGS calculation missed anything (say, you forgot to account for your own labour time, or material costs increased since you last updated your recipes), you could easily be closer to break-even than you think.

On the reorder, the one-time $10 fee is gone:

• Commission (15%): $2.10
• Payment processing: ~$0.37
• Net: about $11.53 per unit
• Margin: $3.53 (~25%)

Better, because the new-customer fee is behind you. The lesson isn’t that Faire isn’t worth it (for many makers it absolutely is). It’s that you need to know your actual cost floor before you set your wholesale price, not estimate it.

If you’re not tracking your cost of goods sold accurately, Faire will reveal that gap quickly. It’s one of those channels where the math matters more than the enthusiasm.

How to Set Faire Prices That Actually Work

A few principles that help makers price for Faire profitably:

Start with your true COGS, not an estimate

Your wholesale price needs to sit above your actual cost to make the product: materials, labour, packaging, shipping supplies, and a share of your overhead. If you’re guessing at any of those numbers, you’re guessing at whether you’re profitable. One area many makers undercount: buying craft supplies in bulk can shift your COGS meaningfully, but only if your cost tracking updates when your per-unit material cost changes.

Tools like Craftybase calculate your cost per unit automatically as you log materials and recipes. When your material costs go up, your COGS updates automatically. That live number is your pricing floor, and everything above it is margin.

Build the Faire fee into your wholesale price

Some makers price slightly higher on Faire than they would in a direct wholesale relationship (typically 10-15% more) precisely because Faire carries real costs. This is a legitimate approach. Just be mindful that Faire shows prices to all retailers browsing the platform, so you need to stay competitive within your category.

A working formula for your minimum viable Faire wholesale price:

Minimum Faire price = COGS ÷ (1 - commission rate)

For a product with an $8 COGS and Faire’s 15% commission: $8 ÷ 0.85 = $9.41 is your break-even point on commission alone, before the new-customer fee, processing, or any profit margin. Add whatever margin you need above that.

Then account for the extras. The one-time $10 new-customer fee lands hardest on small first orders: on a 10-unit first order that’s $1 per unit, on a 5-unit first order it’s $2 per unit. And payment processing (1.9-3.5% + $0.30) comes off every order. Smaller orders have a higher effective fee rate.

Push for repeat orders — the economics get better

A retailer who orders twice is substantially more profitable than two retailers who each order once. The commission stays at 15%, but you skip the one-time $10 new-customer fee on every order after the first, and you’ve already done the work of getting them set up.

Everything that drives reorders (quick fulfillment, consistent quality, good communication, seasonal refreshes) directly improves your Faire unit economics. Build a process around it. Knowing when to restock materials to meet expected order volume is part of that process: a reorder point formula helps you avoid running short mid-season.

Use Faire Direct for your existing accounts

If you have wholesale relationships off Faire, bring them onto Faire Direct before they find you through the main marketplace. You’ll pay 0% commission on those orders, keeping the full 15% that would otherwise go to Faire. Over a year, for an established wholesale account placing $500+ orders, that’s hundreds of dollars in fees you didn’t need to pay.

Faire vs. Selling Wholesale Direct — What’s the Real Trade-Off?

The honest answer is that Faire and direct wholesale aren’t mutually exclusive. Most serious wholesale sellers use both. But it helps to understand what you’re trading. If you’re just getting started with wholesale on Faire, our complete guide to selling on Faire covers the full setup process.

What Faire gives you:

• Discovery by buyers who’d never find you otherwise
• Handled payment processing and credit management
• Net-60 terms for retailers without the invoice chasing on your side
• Free returns on first orders (Faire absorbs this, not you)
• Built-in analytics on what’s selling

What Faire costs you:

• 15% commission on every marketplace order
• A one-time $10 new-customer fee on each new retailer’s first order
• Payment processing (1.9-3.5% + $0.30), depending on your payout speed
• Some loss of direct relationship with the retailer

What direct wholesale gives you:

• No commission (just payment processing costs if you use Stripe, etc.)
• Full control of the relationship
• Ability to price differently for different accounts
• Direct communication: the retailer knows your business, not just your Faire listing

The calculus usually goes something like this: use Faire for new customer acquisition (buyers who find you through the marketplace), and direct wholesale or Faire Direct for existing accounts you’ve already built relationships with. That way the commission and the one-time new-customer fee only apply to genuinely new business, which is a reasonable cost of acquisition when you consider what it would cost to reach those retailers through trade shows or cold outreach.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line on Faire Fees

Faire is expensive compared to selling direct. That’s the honest truth. A 15% commission, a one-time $10 new-customer fee, and payment processing on top is real money, and if your wholesale prices aren’t set correctly, it will hurt.

But Faire’s fee structure isn’t a trap. It’s a trade. You’re paying for access to a large, active buyer marketplace, for payment processing and credit management, and for a platform that drives discovery without requiring you to cold-call boutiques.

The makers who do well on Faire are the ones who do the maths first. They know their COGS. They know their margin floor. They price intentionally for the channel, not by copying their direct wholesale price and hoping it works.

If you’re not sure what your products actually cost to make, that’s the thing to fix first, before you set a single price on Faire. Because once Faire’s cut comes out of that first order, guessing gets expensive fast.

Craftybase tracks your material costs and calculates your cost per unit automatically, so you always know exactly what you can and can’t afford to charge. If you’re running a WooCommerce store alongside Faire, the Faire + WooCommerce integration keeps your inventory and COGS in sync across both channels. If you’re selling wholesale, or planning to, start a free trial and run the numbers properly before your next order.