TikTok Shop fees UK (2026): commission, shipping, creators and what you keep

TikTok Shop’s fee is easy to quote and easy to misread. The platform takes 9% of an order. Everything else a TikTok order costs, from the creator who sold it to the parcel it went out in, is a cost you set or choose, and none of it appears next to the commission in Seller Center. This guide takes each line in turn, using TikTok Shop UK’s own pages, then adds them up for one order. It is part of our guide to selling on TikTok Shop in the UK; to run your own numbers, use the TikTok Shop fee calculator.

The commission: 9%, or 5% in some categories

TikTok Shop UK’s commission rate, “inclusive of applicable taxes, including but not limited to Value Added Tax (VAT), is 9%“¹. Products in specified Electronics and Beauty & Personal Care categories carry a reduced effective rate of 5%²³. Check your category in Seller Center before you price, because the list of reduced categories is specific.

How TikTok works it out. The commission is charged on the order total, not the item price:

TikTok’s own example is a £100 pair of shoes with a £10 seller discount, a £10 platform discount and £5 shipping paid by the customer. Net sales are £80. Add back the £5 shipping and the £10 platform discount and the base is £95, so the commission at 9% is £8.55¹.

Three consequences follow:

• A platform-funded discount does not cut your commission. TikTok adds it back to the base, because it pays that discount to you.
• Your own discount does. A seller-funded discount lowers net sales, so it lowers the commission too.
• Shipping the customer pays is commissionable. If you charge £3.99 delivery, 9% of it goes to TikTok.

Returns. If the whole order is returned, the full commission is refunded to you², and refunds come out of the base for partial refunds¹.

VAT on the commission. Because the rate includes VAT, and TikTok issues a monthly invoice for the previous month’s commission¹, a VAT-registered business can normally reclaim that VAT as input tax¹¹. That makes the 9% commission cost 7.5% before VAT. Check your own position with your accountant.

We found no monthly subscription or listing fee in TikTok Shop UK’s fee pages, which describe the commission as the platform’s fee on sales¹².

Shipping and fulfilment

You can fulfil TikTok Shop orders three ways, and each sets your shipping cost differently.

TikTok also limits what you can charge the customer for delivery when you use Shipped via Platform. For mainland UK, the maximum flat rate is £3.99, and the weight tiers run from £3.99 (up to 2 kg) to £16.99 (20 to 30 kg); remote areas allow a little more⁸. Many brands offer free delivery instead, which keeps the commission base lower but puts the whole parcel cost on you.

TikTok’s Shipped via Platform rate card changes for parcels delivered from 1 November 2026: drop-off and pickup rates for parcels up to 5 kg rise by 21p to 30p (5p to 10p at the volume tiers), and heavier and bulky parcels stay the same⁷. TikTok’s own pages also quote different free-storage periods for FBT⁹. Use the figures in your own Seller Center, not an average from a blog post, including this one.

Creator commission: the cost you set

In the shops we run, most sales for a new TikTok Shop come through affiliate creators, who earn a commission you set per product. TikTok pays creators their commission based on your settlement period⁴, and its own UK playbook suggests 10% to 15% as an average rate⁵.

This is usually the largest variable cost on TikTok Shop, and it applies only to orders a creator drove. That makes two prices for the same product: one for an order that came from your own video or a search, and one for an order that came from a creator. The question to answer before you set a rate is the highest commission at which a creator order still makes money. Our TikTok Shop affiliate guide covers open and targeted plans, samples and how to set that rate.

Samples and content

Creators want product before they post. Free samples, the shipping to send them, and any flat fee for guaranteed content from larger creators are real costs per order, even though they are paid up front. Spread them over the orders they produce: a £15 sample that leads to 20 orders costs 75p an order; one that leads to none costs £15.

Advertising: GMV Max

TikTok Shop advertising now runs through GMV Max, which takes a target ROI and a budget and does the rest. Ad spend sits outside the commission, and GMV Max counts organic and creator orders in its reported ROI, so it can look better than it is. Set its target from your margin: break-even ROI is 1 divided by your margin before advertising. Our GMV Max guide explains how.

Payout timing

TikTok Shop pays new UK sellers 31 days after delivery. After that the standard settlement period is 8 days from delivery, with faster 3-day and 1-day tiers for sellers who meet TikTok’s performance criteria⁶. Creator commission, samples and ad spend are paid well before that, so a new shop that grows quickly can be profitable on paper and short of cash.

A worked example: one £24.99 order

A VAT-registered brand sells a £24.99 serum with free delivery, in a 9% category. Sixty per cent of its orders come through creators at 15%; it spends 10% of sales on GMV Max; and each order costs £5.50 for the product, £2.60 for shipping and £0.80 in samples and content. The figures are invented, but the method is the one we use.

The commission is the second-smallest line. A direct order on the same product makes £7.55; a creator order makes £3.80. That gap is why we set creator rates per product, not per shop: this serum could pay creators up to 30% before a creator order lost money, while a product with half its margin could not afford 15%.

Run your own products through the TikTok Shop fee calculator: it uses TikTok’s formula, works out the VAT and shows your creator break-even.

TikTok Shop fees against Amazon’s

On fees alone, TikTok Shop is cheaper. On a whole order, it depends on how much of your volume comes through creators and what you pay them. Our TikTok Shop vs Amazon guide compares the two channels for a UK brand deciding where to start.