TikTok Shop Seller Fees in the UK (2026)

The short answer: what UK sellers actually pay in 2026

If you sell on TikTok Shop in the UK, your core deductions in 2026 are three platform fees plus VAT:

• Referral (commission) fee — ~9% of the order value for most categories. This is the headline fee and the biggest single deduction.
• Reduced referral fee — ~5% for Electronics and Beauty & Personal Care categories.
• Transaction fee — ~2% applied to process the payment.
• Refund administration fee — 20% of the referral fee, capped at £5 per SKU, charged only on completed post-shipment refunds.

Add it up and a typical UK seller nets roughly two-thirds of GMV before their own product, shipping and marketing costs. That is by design — it is not money being stolen from you. If your payout still looks wrong after accounting for these fees, that's when a line-by-line check pays off. Our free TikTok Shop Payout Auditor reconciles your settlement export locally and flags the few genuine rule deviations, and our guide to why TikTok Shop pays you less walks through the full math with a calculator.

Verify before you budget: TikTok publishes the authoritative rate for each category inside Seller Center. Treat the numbers here as 2026 guidance, not a contract.

Referral fee: 9% standard, 5% for Electronics and Beauty

The referral fee (TikTok also calls it the commission fee) is the percentage TikTok takes for the sale itself. In the UK for 2026 the standard rate is around 9%, with Electronics and Beauty & Personal Care sitting lower at about 5%. This banding is deliberate: high-margin lifestyle categories carry the full rate, while lower-margin or high-velocity categories like electronics get a discount to keep them competitive.

For context, the UK's 9% is higher than the US (~6%) and matches the EU rate, which was raised from 5% to 9% on 8 January 2026. If you also sell across borders, see our breakdown of TikTok Shop seller fees in Indonesia (a 1–10% category band) to compare. Want to model your own product? The TikTok Shop fee calculator for 2026 lets you plug in price and category.

Transaction fee and the refund administration fee

Beyond the referral fee, two more deductions show up on your statement:

Transaction fee (~2%): a flat-ish payment-processing charge applied to the order value. It is small but it compounds with the referral fee, which is why a 9% headline rate feels closer to 11% in practice.

Refund administration fee: equal to 20% of the referral fee for that item, capped at £5 per SKU. The key detail UK sellers miss: this fee only applies to completed refunds that happen after the item has shipped. If a buyer cancels before dispatch, you should not see it. Because it is calculated from the referral fee, a £5 cap is reached on higher-value items quickly. We cover the exact mechanics, including when TikTok wrongly charges it, in our guide to the TikTok Shop refund administration fee.

If your statement total comes out negative for a period — usually when refunds and fees outweigh new sales — read how to fix a negative settlement on TikTok Shop before you assume something is broken.

VAT and how it interacts with TikTok Shop fees

VAT is the part UK sellers most often get wrong, because it is not a TikTok fee — it is a tax — but it changes what lands in your bank account. How VAT applies depends on your situation:

• VAT-registered sellers charge VAT (standard rate 20% on most goods) on sales and reclaim input VAT; TikTok's referral and transaction fees may themselves carry VAT that you can reconcile.
• Non-UK sellers selling into the UK fall under marketplace VAT rules, where TikTok may collect and remit VAT on certain transactions.
• Below the VAT threshold, you may not charge VAT at all, but you still pay TikTok's fees on the gross order value.

Because VAT treatment is genuinely seller-specific, do not copy another shop's setup — confirm your obligations with HMRC guidance or an accountant. For statement-level questions, our plain-English explainer of TikTok Shop seller fees maps every fee line to where it appears.

Settlement amount vs. bank payout (where confusion starts)

Even after you understand the fees, the number on your settlement statement rarely equals what hits your bank. Settlement amount is sales minus fees and refunds. Your actual payout is settlement plus or minus reserve adjustments. For transactions after 25 September 2025, TikTok exposes these in a separate Reserve Details sheet — money held back temporarily, not lost.

This is the single biggest reason sellers think they are being underpaid when they are not. If your money is sitting in reserve or a payment is stuck, see why your TikTok Shop payout is on hold. To match every figure end-to-end, follow how to reconcile your TikTok Shop settlement report — export the Order details sheet from Seller Center > Finances > Statements, then run it through the free Payout Auditor, which checks the math 100% in your browser and never uploads your data.