The most TikTok-native question there is: what can I afford to pay creators?
On TikTok Shop the affiliate commission is not a marketing garnish — for many products it is the distribution channel, and it is set before the first video posts. Set it too low and no creator touches the product; too high and every sale is a small loss with great engagement. Worse, the rate is sticky: lowering it needs notice, and creators already on the plan keep the original rate for 30 days. This calculator does the arithmetic before you commit: sellers get the maximum commission that still leaves their target margin after referral, shipping, product and refund costs; creators get the mirror image — what a headline rate actually pays after refund clawbacks.
TikTok charges commission on revenue net of refunds, so the base shrinks by your refund rate — a 15% headline commission on a product with a 20% refund rate behaves very differently from the same rate at 3% refunds. Category benchmarks quoted by agencies (beauty 20–30%, home 10–20%, fashion 10–15%, electronics 5–15%) describe what sellers offer, not what your margin survives.
Worked example
At the seller defaults, a $40 product clears $19.21 before affiliates; protecting a 15% margin leaves room for a 34.8% commission at most — generous headroom most sellers never use, because they anchor on competitor rates instead of their own stack. The creator mode shows the other side: $10,000 of monthly GMV at 15% pays $1,350 after a 10% refund clawback, not $1,500.
How to use this calculator
- Sellers: enter the product's full economics first — commission is the last claim on the margin, not the first.
- Set the margin you must keep, then read the ceiling. Offer below it; leave room for Shop Ads on top.
- Creators: enter the order value and volume you realistically drive, and judge products on earnings per order after refunds — not the banner rate.