Calculate exactly what PayPal takes from every payment — and what lands in your account.
Sold something and paid with PayPal? The number in your PayPal balance is smaller than the number on the invoice — that gap is the fee. Our free PayPal Fee Calculator computes exactly what PayPal deducts from any payment: the percentage fee plus the fixed per-transaction charge, the effective rate, and the net payout you actually receive.
PayPal is one of the world’s most used ways to get paid online, and its commercial pricing is a percentage of the payment plus a fixed fee per transaction — for US online commercial transactions commonly 2.99% + $0.49. That fixed $0.49 is nearly two-thirds higher than Stripe’s $0.30, which makes PayPal relatively more expensive on small payments and nearly identical on large ones.
Enter the payment amount, set the fee % and fixed fee to your plan (domestic, international, QR code, or micropayments each differ), and get the fee, net, and effective rate instantly. Sellers on eBay and Etsy, freelancers invoicing clients, and anyone splitting costs needs this number — now it takes one click.
PayPal’s commercial pricing follows the same two-part shape as other processors: a percentage fee that scales with the payment and a fixed fee charged per transaction. US online commercial transactions commonly price at 2.99% + $0.49; in-person QR-code payments, international payments, and currency conversions each have their own schedules, and PayPal publishes separate rates for charities, micropayments, and high-volume merchants.
The fixed fee is the part sellers underestimate. At $0.49 it is the highest fixed fee among the major US processors, and it punishes small payments hard: on a $5 payment the fee is $0.64 — a 12.8% effective rate. On $100 the fee is $3.48 (3.48% effective). On $5,000 the fee is $149.99 (3.00% effective). The math is identical every time — fee = amount × % + fixed — but the share the fee takes collapses as payments grow.
Two PayPal-specific wrinkles matter. First, Friends & Family vs. Goods & Services: personal payments funded from a PayPal balance or bank account are typically free domestically, but Goods & Services payments — the ones with purchase protection — always carry the commercial fee. Sellers who ask buyers to use Friends & Family to dodge fees violate PayPal’s terms and lose both accounts’ protection; price the fee in instead. Second, currency conversion: PayPal adds a conversion spread (commonly 3–4% above the base rate) on top of the transaction fee, so a cross-border sale can cost 6%+ all-in.
Then there are chargebacks and disputes: PayPal charges a dispute fee (commonly $15–$20 per chargeback in the US, varying by plan) that no percentage calculator covers. Refunds return the percentage fee on the refunded amount but not the fixed fee. The widget models the standard processing fee — disputes and conversion spreads belong in your books as separate lines.
Key terms:
The formula is the pricing definition as arithmetic. The effective-rate line is the diagnostic: it reveals how much of this specific payment the fee eats, which is the number that should drive your pricing decisions — not the headline 2.99%.
A freelancer invoices $100 via PayPal Goods & Services on the standard US commercial plan. Net?
She keeps $96.52 — the widget’s default. Compare Stripe’s $96.80 on the same $100: PayPal costs $0.28 more here, almost entirely from the $0.49 vs. $0.30 fixed fee. At $1,000 the gap is still $0.19 ($30.39 vs. $29.30); the fixed fee never fully washes out.
An indie musician sells a $7 track. What survives?
On small digital goods the standard plan takes a tenth of revenue — this is exactly the case micropayments pricing exists for. Sellers under $10 who skip that enrollment donate margin every sale.
An eBay seller moves a used camera for $450. PayPal takes $450 × 0.0299 + $0.49 = $13.95, leaving $436.05 — and eBay’s own final-value fee comes off too. Sellers who compute profit as “sale price minus what I paid” forget two fee layers; the PayPal layer alone is 3.1% here. List-price math must subtract both before it is honest.
A coach sells a $997 program with a payment plan: 3 × $349 = $1,047 billed. Fees: 3 × ($349 × 0.0299 + $0.49) = 3 × $10.93 = $32.79. One lump-sum $997 charge would cost $30.30 — splitting payments costs an extra $2.49 in fixed fees alone. Installment plans trade fee efficiency for conversion; know the price of the trade.
A nonprofit receives a $50 donation via PayPal. Standard commercial fee: $50 × 0.0299 + $0.49 = $1.99 (3.97% effective). Enrolled charity pricing (~1.99% + $0.49) cuts it to $1.49. Charities that never apply for the nonprofit rate overpay on every donation — a one-time enrollment with permanent savings.
A UK buyer pays a US seller £80 (~$100). PayPal adds an international fee on top of the domestic rate and a ~3–4% currency spread. All-in can reach $6–$7 on the $100 — double the domestic fee. Cross-border sellers should set the widget’s rate to their blended international rate, not 2.99%, or quotes will be systematically low.
PayPal’s pricing in history: PayPal’s 2.9% + $0.30 was the internet’s standard for over a decade; in 2021 the company restructured US pricing to 2.99% + $0.49 for online commercial transactions — a small percentage bump paired with a 63% jump in the fixed fee, which hit small sellers hardest. The lesson repeats: processors raise the fixed component because it is less visible than the percentage, and small transactions absorb the pain.
Worked scenario — the $20 invoice trap: a designer invoices $20 for a quick gig. Fee: $20 × 0.0299 + $0.49 = $1.09 — 5.4% effective. She does forty such gigs a month: $43.60 in fees on $800 of revenue. Bundling into two $400 monthly invoices cuts the fee to 2 × $12.45 = $24.90 — same revenue, $18.70 saved monthly, $224 a year, just by invoicing less often. The fixed fee taxes frequency.
Edge cases and pro tips: withdrawing to a bank is typically free but takes days; instant transfer to a debit card costs a percentage (commonly ~1.75%, capped) — on a $96.52 payout that is another ~$1.69 if you are impatient. “Friends & Family” funded by credit card still carries a fee (paid by the sender); only balance/bank-funded personal payments are free. Sellers in the EU/UK face different headline rates — set the widget to your region’s schedule. And dispute fees ($15–$20 each) dwarf per-transaction fees: one chargeback costs more than the fees on $500 of sales, so fraud prevention outranks fee optimization.
When this calculator is the wrong tool: it models flat percentage-plus-fixed pricing. It does not model PayPal’s currency conversion spread, mass-payout pricing, PayPal Credit financing costs, or the separate dispute fee — for cross-border or high-dispute businesses, reconcile against the monthly statement. And like all fee math, it is one cost among many: shipping, platform fees, and ad spend need their own calculators before per-order profit is real.
PayPal fee: fee = amount × rate + fixed (standard US online commercial: 2.99% + $0.49); net = amount − fee; effective rate = fee ÷ amount. Fixed fee punishes small payments; micropayments pricing suits sub-$10 sales. Source: Sigma Calculator, PayPal Fee Calculator, https://sigmacalculator.net/e-commerce-calculators/paypal-fee-calculator/
Cite this page as: PayPal Fee Calculator, Sigma Calculator, https://sigmacalculator.net/e-commerce-calculators/paypal-fee-calculator/
Last updated: October 12, 2026