PayPal Fee Calculator

How PayPal's fee is calculated

Every PayPal commercial fee is a percentage plus a small fixed amount, and that fixed part is what makes small payments expensive. The rate you get depends on the transaction type you select:

• Goods & services, card: 2.99% + $0.49, the standard when a buyer pays by credit or debit card.
• Goods & services. PayPal balance: 2.99%, no fixed fee.
• PayPal Checkout, invoicing or Venmo for business: 3.49% + $0.49.
• QR code payments: 2.29% + $0.09.
• Micropayments: 4.99% + $0.09.
• Charity: 1.99% + $0.49.

The seller always pays. The fee is deducted before the money reaches your balance, so an invoice for $100 never lands as $100. These are US rates from PayPal's business fees page. Rates differ by country and change over time, so confirm your own schedule before you price a product or a service.

Two things decide which rate you pay: how the buyer funds the payment, and which product you use to collect it. A card-funded payment costs more than a balance-funded one because PayPal pays interchange on the card. A PayPal Checkout button costs more than a QR code because it's a hosted checkout. Pick the cheapest option that still fits how your customers want to pay.

Worked example: a $100 goods and services payment

Calculator defaults: a $100 goods-and-services payment made by card.

• Percentage fee (2.99% × $100): $2.99
• Fixed fee: $0.49
• Total fee: $3.48

You receive $96.52, an effective rate of 3.48%, not the 2.99% the rate card advertises. Now make the buyer international. US sellers pay an extra 1.5% cross-border fee, so the rate becomes 4.49%: 4.49% × $100 = $4.49 + $0.49 = $4.98, and you receive $95.02. If PayPal also converts the currency, a spread of roughly 3-4% is applied on top of the wholesale rate. On a $100 cross-border sale that can quietly cost you $8 or more in total.

PayPal fee comparison table

What each transaction type costs on a $100 domestic payment:

Note how the balance-funded goods-and-services rate is the cheapest commercial option at 2.99% flat, it's the one to want when a buyer is willing to pay from their PayPal balance rather than a card.

The fixed fee is why small payments hurt

The fixed fee is the reason small payments feel so expensive. On a $5 goods-and-services payment by card, the fee is 2.99% × $5 + $0.49 = $0.6395, so you keep $4.36, an effective rate of 12.8%, more than four times the headline rate. On a $500 payment the same schedule charges $15.44, an effective 3.09%.

If you routinely take payments under about $20, PayPal's micropayments schedule is cheaper. At 4.99% + $0.09, a $5 payment costs $0.34 instead of $0.64. The two schedules cross at $20: below it micropayments win, above it the standard rate wins. Set the calculator's dropdown to each and compare, the gap on a $10 payment is $0.39 versus $0.59, a fifth of the whole sale.

Friends and family vs goods and services

Friends and family is free when it's funded by a PayPal balance or bank account, which makes it tempting for business. Don't. F&F payments carry no buyer or seller protection, and using them to sell goods violates PayPal's terms, so you can lose both the money and the account in a dispute. Goods and services costs 2.99% + $0.49 precisely because it includes dispute resolution and chargeback cover.

The practical rule: if you're shipping something or delivering a service, it's a goods-and-services payment and you pay the fee. Reserve F&F for actual friends and family. PayPal's consumer fees page sets out the personal schedule separately if you want to see exactly where the line sits.

If a buyer insists on friends and family to dodge the fee, decline and send an invoice instead. The few dollars you save is not worth losing the ability to open a dispute when the item goes missing or arrives damaged, the protection is the whole point of the goods-and-services fee.

Cross-border and currency conversion

Cross-border adds two costs. First, a flat 1.5% surcharge on the domestic rate for payments from buyers in another country. Second, currency conversion: PayPal adds a spread of roughly 3% on top of its wholesale exchange rate when it converts the money. A £100 payment to a US seller can arrive as roughly $115-120 depending on the day, and that spread is already inside the number.

If you invoice internationally, quote in your own currency where you can and let the buyer's card handle the conversion, or at least price in the 1.5% cross-border fee so it doesn't eat your margin. The calculator has an international toggle so you can see both figures side by side before you send an invoice.

How to price so the fee doesn't eat your margin

If PayPal is your only processor, build the fee into the price instead of absorbing it. The formula is: invoice (target + fixed) ÷ (1 − rate). To net $50 on a goods-and-services card payment, that's ($50 + $0.49) ÷ (1 − 0.0299) = $52.02. Charge $52 and you clear $50.

On a $20 target the same formula gives ($20 + $0.49) ÷ 0.9701 = $21.11, you add about 5.5% to the price just to cover fees. On a $500 target it's ($500 + $0.49) ÷ 0.9701 = $515.94, or 3.2%. The smaller the transaction, the larger the markup you need, which is the fixed-fee problem seen from the other direction. Run each target through the calculator until the net lands where you want it.

For tax purposes, PayPal fees are a deductible business expense, so keep the monthly statements, the net you receive is income and the fee is the offset. The IRS self-employed tax center explains how the two interact, and it's worth a read before your first estimated payment.

Refunds and chargebacks still cost you

When you refund a buyer, PayPal keeps the fixed fee. Refund a $100 goods-and-services payment and the 2.99% percentage comes back but the $0.49 fixed fee does not, so the refund costs you $0.49. On a $5 payment that $0.49 is nearly 10% of the sale, gone on a transaction that produced nothing.

Chargebacks are worse. PayPal adds a dispute fee of around $20 in many cases, on top of returning the buyer's money. A single fraudulent order can wipe out the profit from four or five good ones. If you sell in a category with a high chargeback rate, build a margin buffer for it, the calculator shows the healthy number, not the after-dispute one.