Case study
TikTok Shop fees, checked against 1,137 real orders
A US seller running TikTok Shop live auctions on LASI let us line up the fee rule LASI uses against what TikTok actually charged, one settled order at a time. The rule matched TikTok to the cent on 97% of orders, and every order that didn’t match has an explanation. Here is the whole check, with the seller kept anonymous.
Settled orders from August and September 2026 · Published with the seller’s permission · No shop, stream, host or buyer details
The rule TikTok applied
Item price
what it sold for
Shipping
what the buyer paid
6%
TikTok’s fee
rounded to the cent
In plain words: for every dollar a buyer pays (item + shipping), TikTok keeps 6 cents.
One real order, step by step
A $73.00 item sold on a live show with $12.94 shipping. This is the order exactly as TikTok settled it.
| Item price | $73.00 |
| + Shipping buyer paid | $12.94 |
| Buyer paid in total | $85.94 |
| × 6% = $5.1564 | − $5.16 |
| Deposited | $80.78 |
✓Matches TikTok’s settlement statement to the cent.
It held on every order
Five more orders from the same show, recomputed. Then the same check on 1,137 settled orders from six shows.
| Item | Ship | × 6% | TikTok charged |
|---|---|---|---|
| $20.00 | $12.94 | $1.9764 | $1.98 ✓ |
| $34.00 | $12.94 | $2.8164 | $2.82 ✓ |
| $48.00 | $12.94 | $3.6564 | $3.66 ✓ |
| $71.00 | $12.94 | $5.0364 | $5.04 ✓ |
| $79.00 | $12.94 | $5.5164 | $5.52 ✓ |
1,106 of 1,137 orders
matched the rule to the cent (97%). The rest still follow it:
- 1,106 exactly 6% of item + shipping (11 a cent apart from rounding)
- 16 had a discount TikTok paid for: 6% of the full price
- 15 refunds and returns: most of the fee handed back
“But my fees look like 7–8%”
It’s the same 6%, divided by the wrong number. The fee is charged on item + shipping, so dividing it by the item price alone makes it look bigger. On this shop, buyers paid shipping worth 28% on top of the item price. The cheaper the item, the bigger the fee looks.
25 fully settled shows
One dot per show. Same fees, divided two ways.
Why cheap items look expensive
A 6% fee as a share of the item price, with $12.94 shipping.
5.97%
all 25 shows’ fees ÷ item + shipping
7.62%
the same fees ÷ item price only
What it proves about LASI’s numbers
TikTok only settles a fee about a week after the show, so on the night every fee is an estimate. LASI estimates with this rule: the shop’s rate on item price plus the shipping the buyer paid. Across the 25 shows, that estimate landed within 0.4% of what TikTok settled. The shortcut most spreadsheets use, the rate on item price alone, came up 21% short, which is how a seller’s books end up showing more profit than the bank does.
Fees on the 25 shows, each bar as a share of what TikTok settled (= 100).
Show by show the estimate ranged from 1% under to 6% over, because refunds and TikTok-paid discounts move a show’s fee. That is why LASI doesn’t stop at the estimate: as TikTok publishes its own figure for each order, within hours and then at settlement, LASI replaces the estimate with it, so the books end on TikTok’s number. How LASI calculates TikTok fees has the full detail.
When the fee became final, and when the money arrived
Averaged over 8,708 orders sold across five weeks. A fee is only final once the order settles, after delivery.
Day 0
Sold
The buyer pays TikTok.
Day 5
Delivered
TikTok still holds the money.
Day 6
Settled
The fee is final.
Day 7
In the bank
9 in 10 orders by day 11.
The other lines on a payout
None of these change the 6% rule. They’re the other things that moved this seller’s deposits.
No sale, no fee
Cancelled orders and $0 giveaways were never charged a fee.
Refunds
TikTok returned the fee, but often kept about a fifth of it. A $20.00 order with $12.94 shipping: fee $1.98, kept $0.40.
Discounts TikTok pays for
When TikTok discounted the buyer, it paid the seller the difference. The 6% was on the full price.
Labels bought through TikTok
The label came out of the payout, and the 6% still applied to the shipping: $30.00 + $10.44 shipping, fee $2.43, label $10.44, deposited $27.57.
Early payouts
TikTok’s Early Settlement cost 0.5% of each advance, taken before it arrived: a $1,971 advance landed as $1,961.14, a $9.86 fee that is on no statement.
Reimbursements & chargebacks
Money for a lost parcel, or taken back for a chargeback, is tied to no order and is not a fee. It moves the payout, not the rule.
How we checked
- Source. The seller’s TikTok Shop settlement statements, as LASI reads them: for each order, the item subtotal, the shipping the buyer paid, the fee and the payout.
- Orders. 1,137 settled orders from six shows, each recomputed at 6% of item + shipping and compared to the cent. Cancelled orders and $0 giveaways carry no fee and are not counted.
- Shows. The 25 shows from the same weeks whose every order had settled, so no show-level figure rests on an estimate.
- Limits. This is one US shop at the rate TikTok charged it at the time. TikTok’s rate can differ by category, region and promotion, which is why LASI measures each shop’s own rate from its settlements and re-measures it daily rather than assuming 6%.
- Privacy. Published with the seller’s permission. The order amounts are real; nothing on this page names the shop, its streams, its hosts or its buyers, and the show totals are shown as ratios only.