Steam Community Market fees explained

Every sale on the Steam Community Market carries a 5% Steam transaction fee, with a minimum of $0.01, and items from four Valve games carry a further 10% publisher fee. Both are charged on the item cost — what the seller receives — and added to it, so the price a buyer sees is higher than the price the seller asked for. This guide covers US dollar wallets, with examples computed by the engine behind the Steam Market fee calculator. Every rate is quoted from Steam Support's Community Market FAQ, read and saved on 3 September 2026.

What Steam charges

That is the whole published schedule. Steam describes the transaction fee as protection against fraud and as the cost of developing its economy features, and says it may be increased or decreased in future. The game fee it describes only as determined and collected by the game publisher. There is no listing fee, no fee for cancelling a listing, and no separate payment charge. Neither fee has a fixed part or a cap, so a $100 sale and a $1,000 sale hand over the same share of the price.

The percentages are charged on your price, not the buyer's

Steam's FAQ answers who pays in one line: the buyer pays the Steam Transaction Fee, which is calculated from the item cost and shown on the confirmation page before purchase. So a listing has two numbers — what the buyer pays and what the seller receives — and the percentages apply to the lower one.

In a game with no publisher fee, the fee on $100.00 is $4.76 and you keep $95.24, an effective rate of 4.76%.

Five per cent of what the seller receives is less than five per cent of what the buyer pays, and both describe the same sale; the effective rate above is measured against the buyer's figure. Working from the payout shows the headline rate exactly:

To keep $100.00 you charge $105.00, and the fee is $5.00.

On Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Team Fortress 2 and Artifact the two rates stack on that same base:

The same purchase on a Counter-Strike 2 item, the fee on $100.00 is $13.05 ($4.35 Steam Transaction Fee plus $8.70 Game-specific fee — Counter-Strike 2) and you keep $86.95, an effective rate of 13.05%. To keep $10.00 you charge $11.50, and the fee is $1.50.

That is the calculator's "I want to net" mode, and every payout is reachable exactly.

Cheap items pay the minimum instead

The transaction fee never drops below a cent, which matters on the cheap items that are most of Market volume:

A ten-cent listing, the fee on $0.10 is $0.01 and you keep $0.09, an effective rate of 10%.

Steam states that minimum for its own fee and none for the publisher fee, so the calculator applies none, and on the cheapest items the publisher line rounds away to nothing:

A three-cent Counter-Strike 2 item, the fee on $0.03 is $0.01 and you keep $0.02, an effective rate of 33.33%.

Steam adds that some currencies have a minimum sale price without publishing the figure. On items worth a few cents, read the answer here as the arithmetic of the published rates, not a promise about what the Market will accept.

What this guide leaves out

Other currencies, because Steam publishes no figures for them: sellers list in the native currency of their Steam Wallet, buyers see prices in theirs, and Steam applies an exchange rate it updates daily and never states as a percentage. Wallet and listing caps, buy orders, item eligibility. Tax, beyond Steam putting any sales or VAT obligation on the seller while taking responsibility for tax on its own fee. And the largest limit on what "what you keep" means here: proceeds go to your Steam Wallet, and Steam states they cannot be withdrawn or transferred to another account or to a bank.

The Steam Subscriber Agreement confirms Valve may charge a fee for transactions in a subscription marketplace but names no percentage, so the rates above rest on the Community Market FAQ alone. That is why the schedule is recorded at medium confidence.

When these rates last changed

The FAQ carries no revision date, so the effective date recorded here is the date it was read. One wrinkle in the source: its heading asks about the "Counter-Strike 2 Fee" while the answer beneath still uses the game's old name — Valve's inconsistency, not a second fee.

This schedule was first verified on 3 September 2026, so the Steam Market fee changelog holds one entry today; later changes are recorded there with the rule affected, and the rates are re-checked every 60 days. The methodology explains how a schedule earns high or medium confidence, the PayPal fees guide applies the same treatment to a much longer schedule, and this one is quoted line by line, with the verbatim source text behind every rule, in the calculator's fee table.

Frequently asked questions

Why did I receive less than the price on the listing?

Because the listing price is what the buyer pays, with the fees inside it. Underneath sits the item cost, which is what you receive: the transaction fee is 5% of that figure, and on four games another 10% goes to the publisher.

Do all games charge the extra 10%?

No. Steam names four — Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Team Fortress 2 and Artifact — and describes the fee as set by the game's publisher. Every other game carries the transaction fee alone.

Can I take the money out of Steam?

No. Steam states that all Community Market sales and purchases are completed using the Steam Wallet, and that the funds cannot be withdrawn or transferred to another account or to a bank. They can be spent on Steam, including on gifts.