When a customer pays you through PayPal, the amount they check out with is not the amount that lands in your bank account. PayPal takes a percentage fee plus a small fixed transaction fee on every domestic goods-and-services payment, and if you are a freelancer, an eBay seller, a small online store, or someone collecting payments from friends and clients, that gap can quietly erode your margin. This PayPal fee calculator shows you exactly how much PayPal takes on a sale and how much you actually keep after the platform cut.
Type in the sale amount, adjust the percentage and fixed fee to match your account type, and the result card updates instantly. You will see the percentage fee, the fixed transaction fee, the total PayPal cost, the net amount you receive, and the effective fee rate expressed as a single number — which is the figure you should be quoting when you price a product or write an invoice.
How to Use
- Enter the Sale Amount — the total the buyer pays at checkout, including tax and shipping if those are bundled into the price. This is the gross amount PayPal applies its fee to.
- Set the Percentage Fee. The default 3.49% matches PayPal's standard US domestic goods-and-services rate. If you have a merchant-rate agreement, sell through international payments, or use PayPal Here / QR codes, replace it with the percentage PayPal lists on your own fee page.
- Set the Fixed Transaction Fee. The default $0.49 is the flat per-charge amount for domestic US sales. For other currencies (EUR, GBP, AUD, CAD, etc.) PayPal uses a different fixed figure — usually in the $0.30–$0.50 range — and you should enter the one shown in your seller dashboard.
- Read the result card. Total PayPal Fee is everything PayPal keeps; Net Amount You Keep is what actually settles to your PayPal balance and eventually to your bank. The Effective Fee Rate tells you the true drag on the sale, which is always a little higher than the headline percentage because of the fixed fee.
Use the effective rate when you price. If you are selling a $20 item, the 3.49% fee sounds tiny, but adding $0.49 on top pushes the effective cost to roughly 5.9% — enough to change whether a low-ticket product is worth fulfilling.
The PayPal Fee Formula
PayPal's seller fee for a standard domestic transaction in the United States is a flat percentage of the sale plus a small fixed charge per payment:
Total Fee = (Sale Amount × Percentage Rate) + Fixed Fee Net Received = Sale Amount − Total Fee
Worked example on a $100 sale at the default 3.49% + $0.49: the percentage component is $3.49, the fixed component is $0.49, so PayPal keeps $3.98 and you receive $96.02. Your effective fee rate is 3.98%. That number climbs on smaller tickets because the $0.49 fixed fee is a larger share of the total: on a $10 sale the percentage part is only $0.35, but the fixed fee more than doubles the charge, pushing the effective rate to about 8.4%. On a $1,000 sale the fixed fee becomes negligible and the effective rate settles back to roughly 3.54%, very close to the headline 3.49%.
This is why sellers who move to invoicing, subscriptions, or a merchant account often renegotiate the percentage: the fixed fee stops mattering at volume, and every tenth of a percent you can shave off the rate becomes real money.
What the Numbers Mean for Your Business
- Percentage fee scales with the sale. It is the part PayPal negotiates; merchants with consistent volume sometimes qualify for a lower tier.
- Fixed transaction fee is the same $0.49 whether you sell a $5 eBook or a $5,000 sofa. It is the reason small-ticket items feel expensive to sell on PayPal.
- Total PayPal fee is the combined cut. Always compare this to your Stripe, Square, or Shopify Payments quote on a fee-equivalent basis, remembering that those processors also layer a percentage plus a fixed charge.
- Net received is the number that feeds your accounting. If you invoice $500 and PayPal remits $482.05, book the $17.95 as payment-processing expense, not as lost revenue.
- Effective fee rate is the honest cost-of-payment metric. Use it when you decide whether to absorb the fee, pass it to the buyer, or offer a discount for bank-transfer payment.
Examples
Example 1 — A $100 online order. A customer buys a $100 item and pays through PayPal Goods and Services. At 3.49% + $0.49, the percentage fee is $3.49, the fixed fee is $0.49, and PayPal deducts $3.98 total. You net $96.02, an effective rate of 3.98%.
Example 2 — A low-ticket digital product. You sell a $10 PDF template. The percentage fee is only $0.35, but the $0.49 fixed fee nearly doubles it. Total fee: $0.84, net received: $9.16, effective rate about 8.4%. This is the math behind the common advice to bundle cheap digital products or raise prices to at least $15–$20 before routing them through PayPal.
Example 3 — A large B2B invoice. A consultant invoices $2,500,000 through PayPal Business at 3.49% + $0.49. The percentage fee is $87,250.00, the fixed fee rounds to $0.49, total PayPal cost is $87,250.49, and the consultant nets $2,412,749.51. The fixed fee is now invisible: the effective rate is essentially 3.49%. At this volume it is worth asking PayPal (or a competing processor) for a merchant rate below the standard 3.49%.
Example 4 — International buyer. A US seller receives €200 from a customer in Germany. The standard cross-border fee is higher than domestic, and the fixed fee is denominated in euros. Set the percentage to the cross-border rate PayPal lists in your fee dashboard and enter the euro fixed amount (around €0.39). The calculator will then reflect the real cost of that sale instead of the domestic default.
FAQ
How much does PayPal take from a $100 sale?
At the standard US domestic rate of 3.49% plus a $0.49 fixed transaction fee, PayPal takes $3.98 on a $100 sale, leaving you with $96.02. The effective fee rate is about 3.98%, slightly above the headline 3.49% because of the fixed charge.
What is the current PayPal seller fee in the US?
As of PayPal's published merchant fees page, the standard domestic fee for Goods and Services in the United States is 3.49% plus a $0.49 fixed fee per transaction. Rates differ for charitable donations, micropayments, PayPal Here / QR-code transactions, international receipts, and merchant accounts that have negotiated a custom rate. Always confirm the number on your own PayPal seller dashboard, because fees are account- and region-specific.
Why is my effective PayPal fee higher than 3.49%?
Because PayPal adds a flat $0.49 fixed fee on top of the percentage. On small tickets that fixed fee is a meaningful share of the sale: a $10 payment carries an 8.4% all-in cost even though the headline rate is 3.49%. On sales of $1,000 or more the fixed fee is negligible and the effective rate sits almost exactly at the percentage rate.
Can I pass the PayPal fee on to my customer?
Adding a surcharge to cover card and processing fees is permitted in many US states and in most of the EU, but the rules vary by jurisdiction and by processor. PayPal's user agreement historically discouraged explicitly labeling a line item as a "PayPal fee," and some platforms (eBay, Etsy) forbid surcharges on top of the platform's own checkout. If you want to offset the cost, the safer, more common approach is to bake the effective fee rate into your listed price or offer a discount for payment methods that avoid PayPal.
How do I calculate the net amount I actually receive?
Subtract the total fee from the sale amount. If the buyer pays $250 through PayPal at 3.49% + $0.49, the percentage component is $8.72, the fixed component is $0.49, the total fee is $9.21, and your net received is $240.79. Use the Net Amount You Keep figure on this page as the settlement number for your bookkeeping.
Does PayPal charge a fee for sending money to friends and family?
Personal friends-and-family payments funded with a PayPal balance or a US bank transfer are free for domestic senders. Payments funded by a debit or credit card, and all international friends-and-family transfers, do carry a fee. This calculator models the seller / goods-and-services flow, which is the rate that applies when you are paid for a product or service and are covered by PayPal Purchase Protection.
Are PayPal fees different for international sales?
Yes. Cross-border transactions add a percentage on top of the domestic rate (typically an extra 1.5%–2.0% depending on region) and use a fixed fee denominated in the receiving currency. If you regularly sell internationally, update the percentage and fixed-fee inputs on this page to the numbers PayPal shows in your cross-border fee table rather than relying on the domestic defaults.
Disclaimer
This PayPal fee calculator is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, accounting, or legal advice. Fee assumptions (3.49% plus $0.49 fixed) reflect standard US domestic goods-and-services pricing published by PayPal and may not match your account tier, region, currency, merchant-rate agreement, or any promotional pricing. Actual fees are set by PayPal and may change without notice; cross-border, charity, micropayment, QR-code, and card-funded personal payments all follow different schedules. Confirm your exact rates in your PayPal seller dashboard and consult a qualified accountant or tax professional before pricing products or reporting income.