PayPal Fee Calculator

PayPal takes 2.99% + $0.49 from every US Goods & Services payment in 2026. On a $100 sale that is $3.48, leaving you $96.52. On a $25 sale it is $1.24 and you keep $23.76. On a $1,000 invoice it is $30.39 and you keep $969.61. The percentage is the same in all three cases, but the fixed $0.49 makes the effective rate swing from 4.96% on a $25 payment down to 3.04% on a $1,000 one — which is why small transactions feel so much more expensive than the headline rate suggests.

This guide covers exactly what you keep at every payment size, the rates that apply to each kind of payment, how micropayments and cross-border pricing change the math, how to invoice so you receive the number you quoted, and what refunds and chargebacks really cost.

How much does PayPal take from $10, $100, or $1,000?

This is the table most people are actually looking for. Every figure below is the 2026 US Goods & Services rate of 2.99% + $0.49, and matches what the PayPal Fee Calculator returns for the same input.

Payment amount	PayPal fee	You receive	Effective rate
$10	$0.79	$9.21	7.90%
$25	$1.24	$23.76	4.96%
$50	$1.99	$48.01	3.98%
$100	$3.48	$96.52	3.48%
$250	$7.97	$242.03	3.19%
$500	$15.44	$484.56	3.09%
$1,000	$30.39	$969.61	3.04%
$2,500	$75.24	$2,424.76	3.01%
$5,000	$149.99	$4,850.01	3.00%
$10,000	$299.49	$9,700.51	2.99%

The headline is the last column. A $10 payment costs you 7.90% — more than two and a half times the advertised rate. A $10,000 payment costs 2.99%, effectively the percentage alone. The entire difference is one fixed 49-cent charge that does not care how big the payment is.

Put another way: on a $10 payment, 62% of the fee is the fixed charge and only 30 cents is the percentage. On a $1,000 payment the fixed charge is 1.6% of the fee and everything else is the 2.99%. If your average order value sits under about $30, the fixed fee — not the percentage — is your real PayPal problem, and the fix is pricing and bundling rather than negotiating rates.

The formula behind every PayPal fee

There is only one formula, and every number above comes out of it:

Fee = (Amount × Rate) + Fixed fee Net received = Amount − Fee Effective rate = Fee ÷ Amount × 100

Worked through on a $250 invoice at the US domestic rate:

• Percentage part: 2.99% × $250 = $7.475, rounded to $7.48
• Fixed part: $0.49
• Total fee: $7.48 + $0.49 = $7.97
• Net received: $250.00 − $7.97 = $242.03
• Effective rate: $7.97 ÷ $250 = 3.19%

PayPal rounds the total fee to the cent, so tiny rounding differences of a penny between your own arithmetic and your PayPal statement are normal and are not an error.

Two things the formula makes obvious. First, splitting one payment into several smaller ones always costs more, because you pay the fixed fee again each time — a $600 job billed as six $100 invoices costs $20.88 instead of the $18.43 you would pay on a single $600 invoice. Second, the percentage applies to the gross amount the buyer sent, including any shipping and sales tax you collected. You pay 2.99% on money that was never yours.

The 2026 US rates that apply to each payment type

The 2.99% + $0.49 figure is the standard commercial rate, but PayPal has several published prices depending on how the money reaches you.

Payment type (2026, US)	Percentage	Fixed fee
Goods & Services / commercial transaction	2.99%	$0.49
PayPal Checkout (branded button on your site)	up to 3.49%	$0.49
Micropayments (opt-in pricing)	4.99%	$0.09
Cross-border Goods & Services	around 4.49%	$0.49
Currency conversion	3%–4.5% spread on the rate	—
Friends & Family, domestic, bank or balance funded	0%	$0
Friends & Family funded by card	around 2.9% (sender pays)	$0.30
Chargeback fee	—	around $20

The gap between 2.99% and the 3.49% branded checkout rate is not trivial. On $100 the fee rises from $3.48 to $3.98; on a $250 order from $7.97 to $9.22. Across 500 orders a year at $100 that is $250 of pure difference. Rates also vary by country and by product, and PayPal revises them — check the current published schedule for your account and then run your real rate through the calculator rather than assuming the US default applies to you.

Goods & Services vs Friends & Family: why routing sales through F&F backfires

Friends & Family is genuinely free when it is domestic and funded from a bank account or PayPal balance. That is why sellers keep asking buyers to send commercial payments that way — a $200 sale as F&F saves $6.47.

Do not do it. Three things happen when you route business income through Friends & Family:

You lose Seller Protection entirely. F&F transfers are not covered. If the buyer files a claim, opens a dispute with their bank, or simply claims the account was compromised, you have no protection programme to fall back on and no transaction record structured the way PayPal's dispute process expects.

The buyer loses Purchase Protection, so they have every reason to refuse. A buyer who understands PayPal will not send F&F to a stranger. Asking them to is a recognised scam signal and costs you sales from exactly the cautious buyers who spend the most.

It violates PayPal's User Agreement. Using personal transfers for commercial activity is a stated breach. PayPal's systems are good at spotting repeating payments of similar size from many different senders. The consequence is not a warning — it is typically a limitation on the account, with funds held for an extended review period. Losing access to your balance for weeks costs far more than the fees you avoided.

There is also a tax angle. Business income is taxable whether it arrives as G&S or F&F, but F&F payments do not appear on the 1099-K PayPal issues for commercial activity, which produces a books-versus-forms mismatch that is genuinely awkward to explain later. If you are already tracking business income properly, look at the Self-Employment Tax Calculator — processing fees are a deductible business expense and lower your taxable profit.

PayPal micropayments: the cheaper rate below $20

If most of what you sell is small — digital downloads, single-song purchases, tip jars, low-cost printables — PayPal offers micropayments pricing at 4.99% + $0.09 as an opt-in on a separate account. The percentage is higher and the fixed fee is far lower, which flips the economics on small payments.

Payment	Standard fee (2.99% + $0.49)	Micropayments fee (4.99% + $0.09)	You save
$1.00	$0.52 (52.00%)	$0.14 (14.00%)	$0.38
$2.00	$0.55 (27.50%)	$0.19 (9.50%)	$0.36
$3.00	$0.58 (19.33%)	$0.24 (8.00%)	$0.34
$5.00	$0.64 (12.80%)	$0.34 (6.80%)	$0.30
$10.00	$0.79 (7.90%)	$0.59 (5.90%)	$0.20
$15.00	$0.94 (6.27%)	$0.84 (5.60%)	$0.10
$20.00	$1.09 (5.45%)	$1.09 (5.45%)	$0.00

The crossover is exactly $20. Set the two formulas equal and the fixed-fee saving of $0.40 is precisely cancelled by the extra 2.00% at a $20 payment. Below $20 micropayments wins; above $20 standard pricing wins, and the gap widens fast — on a $100 payment micropayments would cost $5.08 against $3.48.

So micropayments only makes sense if your average sale is genuinely under $20, and because it requires a separate account, the practical setup is a micropayments account for the cheap catalogue and a standard account for everything else. On a $3 product, moving from $0.58 to $0.24 in fees is the difference between giving away 19% of revenue and giving away 8% — often the difference between a viable low-ticket product and a pointless one.

Cross-border rates and the currency markup nobody itemizes

When the buyer's PayPal account is registered in a different country, the transaction becomes cross-border and the percentage rises to roughly 4.49% + $0.49 for US sellers.

Payment	Domestic fee	Cross-border fee	Cross-border effective rate	Extra cost
$25	$1.24	$1.61	6.44%	$0.37
$50	$1.99	$2.74	5.48%	$0.75
$100	$3.48	$4.98	4.98%	$1.50
$250	$7.97	$11.72	4.69%	$3.75
$500	$15.44	$22.94	4.59%	$7.50
$1,000	$30.39	$45.39	4.54%	$15.00

That is the visible half. The other half is currency conversion, and it is the cost sellers most consistently miss because it never appears as a line item. PayPal converts using its own exchange rate, which sits roughly 3% to 4.5% away from the mid-market rate depending on the currency pair. You do not see a "conversion fee" on the transaction — you simply receive fewer dollars than the market rate would have given you, and unless you compare against the mid-market rate on the day, the loss is invisible.

Stack the two and a cross-border payment with conversion runs around 8.49% plus $0.49. On a $500 payment that is a fee of $42.94, leaving $457.06 — an effective 8.59%. On $1,000 it is $85.39, leaving $914.61. For a freelancer billing overseas clients monthly, that is a meaningful share of annual income disappearing into a cost that never shows up on an invoice.

Three practical defences. Hold a multi-currency balance and withdraw in the currency you received, so you convert once at a time of your choosing rather than automatically on every payment. If the buyer is paying by card, decline PayPal's conversion offer at checkout and let the card issuer convert instead, which is usually cheaper. And for large recurring international payments, compare against dedicated transfer providers using the Wise vs PayPal vs Payoneer Calculator — on a $5,000 monthly retainer the difference between platforms is usually a few hundred dollars a year.

How to invoice so you receive exactly what you quoted

If you quoted a client $2,500 and invoice exactly $2,500, you will receive $2,424.76. To land on a target net you have to gross the invoice up, and adding 2.99% does not work — you have to solve for the charge amount.

Charge = (Target net + Fixed fee) ÷ (1 − Rate)

At the 2.99% + $0.49 US rate:

You want to receive	Invoice this amount	PayPal fee	Actually received
$50.00	$52.05	$2.05	$50.00
$100.00	$103.59	$3.59	$100.00
$250.00	$258.21	$8.21	$250.00
$500.00	$515.92	$15.92	$500.00
$1,000.00	$1,031.33	$31.33	$1,000.00
$2,500.00	$2,577.56	$77.56	$2,500.00

Note that the gross-up is always slightly more than the fee on the original amount. Invoicing $2,500 costs $75.24 in fees, but invoicing $2,577.56 costs $77.56, because the percentage now applies to the larger figure too. Adding a flat 3% would leave you $2.32 short on a $2,500 invoice — small, but it compounds across a year of billing.

The same formula works at any rate. For a cross-border client at 4.49% + $0.49, a $100 target means invoicing $105.21. Freelancers setting rates from scratch should build this into the hourly number rather than bolting it on later — the Freelance Rate Calculator accounts for the overheads that eat billable income, and processing fees belong in that list.

What happens to the fee when you issue a refund

This is the single most expensive misunderstanding on this page. Under PayPal's current US terms, when you refund a Goods & Services payment the buyer gets 100% of their money back and PayPal keeps the merchant fee. It is not returned to you.

Work through a $120 order. You received $115.92 after a $4.08 fee. The customer refunds, you send back the full $120.00, and your net position on that order is −$4.08. You have shipped nothing, sold nothing, and paid $4.08 for the privilege.

Now scale it. A store doing $12,000 a month at a $250 average order value with a 6% refund rate refunds about three orders a month, forfeiting roughly $23.91 in fees monthly, or $287 a year — on revenue that was reversed. High-return categories such as apparel and footwear, where 20% to 30% return rates are normal, lose considerably more.

Two consequences worth acting on. Partial refunds are cheaper than full ones in absolute terms but the fixed fee is still gone, so a $5 goodwill refund on a $100 order still leaves you having paid $3.48 for a transaction you partly reversed. And because the fee is sunk either way, the cost of a prevented refund is higher than most sellers assume — better product photography, accurate sizing charts, and clear delivery expectations pay back at more than face value. Refund fees belong in your unit economics; feed them into the Profit Margin Calculator as a percentage-of-revenue cost rather than treating them as an occasional accident. Check PayPal's current refund terms for your country before relying on this — the policy has changed before.

Chargebacks, disputes, and what one bad order really costs

A chargeback is worse than a refund because you lose the goods, the money, the original fee, and a chargeback fee of around $20 in the US. Sellers with an elevated dispute ratio can face a higher standard dispute fee, so treat $20 as a floor rather than a fixed number.

Order value	Original PayPal fee	Chargeback fee	Total loss	Loss as % of order
$25	$1.24	$20.00	$46.24	185%
$50	$1.99	$20.00	$71.99	144%
$80	$2.88	$20.00	$102.88	129%
$150	$4.98	$20.00	$174.98	117%
$400	$12.45	$20.00	$432.45	108%

Every row loses more than the order was worth. On a $25 order the loss is nearly double the sale price, which is why low-ticket sellers are disproportionately damaged by fraud and why chargeback rates matter far more than they appear to in a monthly P&L.

Translate it into orders. At a 30% contribution margin, a single $80 chargeback wipes out the profit from five clean $80 orders. A $25 chargeback wipes out seven clean $25 orders. If your dispute rate is 1%, roughly one in twenty of your gross-profit dollars is being consumed by fraud and disputes before anything else touches it.

Winning disputes comes down to evidence: tracked, signature-confirmed delivery to the address on the transaction, shipping within the stated window, and a recognisable descriptor on the buyer's statement so they know who charged them. Qualifying for Seller Protection requires exactly the record-keeping most small sellers skip — and it is only available on Goods & Services transactions, which is the practical reason the Friends & Family shortcut is a false economy.

What PayPal costs you per month at real volume

The per-transaction number feels small. The annual number does not.

Monthly PayPal revenue	Average order	Orders	Fee per order	Monthly fee	Effective rate	Annual fee
$600	$30	20	$1.39	$27.80	4.63%	$333.60
$2,000	$50	40	$1.99	$79.60	3.98%	$955.20
$5,000	$100	50	$3.48	$174.00	3.48%	$2,088.00
$12,000	$250	48	$7.97	$382.56	3.19%	$4,590.72
$30,000	$600	50	$18.43	$921.50	3.07%	$11,058.00

Compare rows two and three. Revenue is 2.5× higher in row three but the effective rate falls from 3.98% to 3.48% purely because the average order doubled. Raising average order value is the only fee reduction available to most sellers that does not require negotiating with anyone.

If PayPal is one processor among several, remember these fees stack on top of marketplace commissions. An Etsy or eBay order carries a platform fee and payment processing; the Marketplace Fee Comparison Calculator shows the combined load across channels, and the hidden costs that quietly eat ecommerce profit covers the ones that never appear on a fee schedule at all.

PayPal vs Stripe on the same charge

Stripe's US standard rate is 2.9% + $0.30, against PayPal's 2.99% + $0.49. Both differences are small, and both favour Stripe:

Charge	PayPal fee	Stripe fee	Stripe saves
$10	$0.79	$0.59	$0.20
$25	$1.24	$1.02	$0.22
$50	$1.99	$1.75	$0.24
$100	$3.48	$3.20	$0.28
$250	$7.97	$7.55	$0.42
$500	$15.44	$14.80	$0.64
$1,000	$30.39	$29.30	$1.09

At 500 orders a year averaging $100, Stripe saves $140 — real, but not decisive. The decision usually turns on other factors. Stripe keeps the customer on your site and is generally cheaper on international cards (+1.5%) and conversion (+1%) than PayPal's cross-border stack. PayPal's advantage is conversion rate: a meaningful share of buyers trust the PayPal button more than a card form, and if offering it lifts checkout completion by even two or three percent, that outweighs a 0.28% fee difference several times over. Most sellers run both. Model your own numbers side by side with the Stripe Fee Calculator before switching anything.

How to pay PayPal less

• Raise average order value. Bundles, minimum order thresholds, quantity breaks and free-shipping floors all dilute the fixed $0.49. Going from a $30 to a $60 average order drops your effective rate from 4.63% to 3.81%.
• Bill in one invoice, not several. Six $100 invoices cost $20.88; one $600 invoice costs $18.43. Same money, $2.45 less in fees, and one less thing to chase.
• Switch to micropayments pricing if your average sale is under $20. On a $5 product it halves the fee.
• Gross up invoices instead of absorbing the fee. Use the formula above so a $1,000 quote actually nets $1,000.
• Avoid automatic currency conversion. Hold multi-currency balances, withdraw in the currency received, and decline PayPal's conversion at card checkout.
• Ask about merchant rate pricing once you have volume. PayPal publishes reduced rates above certain monthly thresholds, and the request costs nothing.
• Cut disputes before cutting fees. One $80 chargeback costs more than a month of fee optimisation on a small store.
• Build the fee into your price from the start. Around 3.5% of headroom on domestic sales, and closer to 9% if you sell internationally with conversion.
• Use the right rail for the payment. Large recurring international transfers usually belong somewhere other than PayPal — how to reduce seller fees covers the alternatives channel by channel.

Common mistakes

Applying the percentage without the fixed fee. Estimating PayPal at "about 3%" understates the cost on every payment under about $1,000, and by more than 60% on a $10 sale. The fixed fee is the whole story at low ticket sizes.

Adding 3% to invoice for a target net. Grossing up requires dividing by (1 − rate), not multiplying by (1 + rate). On a $2,500 invoice the shortcut leaves you $2.32 short; on a cross-border invoice at 4.49% the gap is wider.

Assuming refunds return the fee. They do not, under current US terms. A refunded $120 order leaves you $4.08 out of pocket, and stores modelling refunds as cost-neutral understate their real cost of returns every single month.

Forgetting that the percentage applies to shipping and tax. PayPal charges on the gross amount received. If you collect $18 of shipping and sales tax on an $80 item, you are paying 2.99% on $98, not $80 — money you are only holding on someone else's behalf.

Treating cross-border as a 1.5% difference. The visible rate gap is 1.5%, but conversion adds another 3% to 4.5% that never appears as a line item. The true gap on a converted payment is closer to 5.5%.

Routing sales through Friends & Family to dodge the fee. It removes Seller Protection, breaches the User Agreement, and risks an account limitation that holds your balance for weeks. The saving on a $200 sale is $6.47; the downside is your entire working capital.

Related calculators

• Stripe Fee Calculator — compare processors on identical charges before you switch
• Wise vs PayPal vs Payoneer — the cheapest rail for international payouts and conversion
• Profit Margin Calculator — see what your margin looks like once processing fees are in it
• Marketplace Fee Comparison — combined platform plus payment costs across Etsy, eBay, Amazon and Shopify
• Etsy Fee Calculator — transaction and payment processing fees on Etsy orders
• Freelance Rate Calculator — set an hourly rate that already covers processing costs