Etsy is a public company, which means it has to tell the truth about its numbers four times a year, in a level of detail no small marketplace ever will. That makes it one of the best free case studies available for understanding what actually drives a marketplace business, whether you're looking at a $5 million niche listings site or a $50,000 directory someone built in a weekend.
The figures below come from Etsy's fiscal year 2025 10-K and its Q4 and full-year 2025 results, filed with the SEC.
The headline numbers
| Metric | FY2025 | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Total Gross Merchandise Sales (GMS) | $11.92 billion | Total dollar value transacted across the platform (Etsy marketplace + Depop) |
| Etsy marketplace GMS | $10.46 billion (87.8% of total) | The core marketplace, before Etsy's Depop acquisition |
| Total revenue | $2.88 billion | What Etsy itself actually keeps |
| Effective take rate | ~24.2% | Revenue ÷ GMS — what the marketplace charges sellers, all-in |
| Active buyers | 86.5 million (down 3% YoY) | Buyers who made a purchase in the trailing 12 months |
| Active sellers | 5.6 million (down 1.5% YoY) | Sellers with at least one active listing |
| GMS per active buyer (TTM) | $121 (down 0.5% YoY) | How much the average buyer spends per year |
| Marketing expense | $609.0 million (~21.1% of revenue) | What it costs to acquire and retain both sides of the marketplace |
The take rate is the whole business model
A 24.2% take rate sounds high until you unpack what it buys the seller: payment processing, listing exposure to tens of millions of buyers, fraud protection, and (increasingly) paid ads on top. Etsy's take rate has climbed for years as it's layered payments processing and Etsy Ads into what used to be a simple listing-fee model. That's the core lever of any marketplace: the take rate is a function of how much value-added infrastructure you bundle in, not just what you can get away with charging.
If you're evaluating a small marketplace or directory business, the equivalent question is: what exactly is the commission or listing fee paying for? A marketplace charging 15% for nothing but a lead-gen listing is more fragile than one charging 15% for payments, dispute resolution, and demand generation, because the former is one Craigslist-style competitor away from being undercut.
Active buyers and sellers are declining — and that's the real story
The number that should catch a buyer's eye isn't GMS or revenue, both of which grew. It's that active buyers fell 3% and active sellers fell 1.5% year over year, even as revenue grew. Etsy grew revenue in 2025 primarily by monetizing its existing base harder (more ads, higher take rate), not by growing the base itself.
That's a pattern worth recognizing in any marketplace or content business you look at: revenue growth funded by rate increases on a shrinking user base is a different (and riskier) asset than revenue growth funded by base growth. The first can look identical to the second on an income statement for several years running. Ask for the underlying unit counts, not just the top-line revenue trend, in diligence on any marketplace — most sellers won't volunteer them unprompted.
GMS per buyer tells you about wallet share, not just traffic
GMS per active buyer was flat at $121 (TTM), meaning the average Etsy buyer spends about $10 a month on the platform. For a small marketplace, this is the number that tells you whether you have a loyal, repeat-purchase audience or a one-and-done acquisition funnel. A marketplace with high buyer churn but strong GMS-per-buyer among repeat visitors is a fundamentally different (and usually better) asset than one with low churn but a single $8 average transaction per buyer per year.
Marketing spend at ~21% of revenue is the cost of the "chicken and egg" problem
Etsy spends about a fifth of every revenue dollar on marketing, most of it paid acquisition to keep both sides of the marketplace liquid. This is structurally higher than a typical content or SaaS business precisely because a marketplace has to solve two acquisition problems simultaneously — buyers and sellers — and neither side sticks around if the other one thins out.
When you're looking at a small marketplace's P&L, a marketing line that looks unusually light relative to Etsy's 21% benchmark is worth investigating rather than celebrating: it may mean the business is coasting on an organic moat (a real advantage), or it may mean the seller has simply stopped reinvesting in growth ahead of a sale, and GMS is about to start declining once that spending resumes at a normal level.
What to actually check in due diligence on a marketplace
Etsy's disclosures point to the four numbers that matter most in any marketplace deal, regardless of size: take rate (and what it's bundled with), active buyer and seller counts (not just GMS), GMS or revenue per active buyer (repeat-purchase strength), and marketing spend as a share of revenue (whether growth is organic or purchased). Ask the seller or broker for these four explicitly. If a marketplace's memorandum only shows revenue and profit, you're seeing the output of a model you haven't actually seen yet.
Next: e-commerce runs on a completely different set of levers. Chewy's filings show what those are, in a business you can benchmark against almost any physical-product store.