PayPal Fee Calculator

This PayPal fee calculator helps you see how much PayPal keeps in fees and how much you actually receive in your balance on each USD payment. It also shows the minimum amount you need to charge if you want to walk away with a specific net payout after PayPal fees. It is built for freelancers, agencies, small businesses, creators, and anyone accepting client or store payments through PayPal.

1. Enter either the invoice amount, the target net, or both

Start by adding the payment amount in USD in the “Customer pays” box. This is the total your customer sends you via PayPal. The calculator will estimate the PayPal fees and show the net payout in USD after those fees. If you already know how much you need to receive, fill in the “You want to receive” box instead (or as well) and the tool will calculate the minimum amount to charge.

2. Keep the default PayPal rate or plug in your own fees

The fee section uses a simple percentage fee plus fixed fee model. By default it is set up as 3.49% and $0.49 per payment as an example for online sales. If your PayPal account uses different pricing (for example, lower merchant rates, donations, or special agreements), overwrite the percentage and fixed fee fields and run the calculation again so it matches your reality.

3. Read the breakdown to check your real margins

The results box highlights a headline number — either your net payout on the payment you entered or the minimum amount to charge to reach your target net. Under that, you see a breakdown: customer pays, total PayPal fees, net to you, and the effective fee rate as a percentage of the payment. This makes it easy to check whether small invoices or low-margin products are still worth running through PayPal.

4. Use it for quotes, pricing, and quick what-ifs

Use this PayPal fee calculator when you send quotes, set product prices, or compare PayPal against other processors. Try a few “what if” scenarios: adjust your price, change the fee percentage, or increase your target net to see how much room you have after fees. The Copy summary button gives you a clean, text-only breakdown you can paste into email, client messages, or an internal spreadsheet.

Keep in mind that this tool focuses on payment processing fees only. It does not consider disputes, refund fees, currency conversion, or tax obligations. Always verify your final numbers in the PayPal dashboard and discuss bigger decisions with your accountant or advisor.

This calculator models PayPal as a combination of a percentage fee and a fixed fee per payment. Let G be the payment amount in USD the customer sends, r be the percentage fee as a decimal (for example 0.0349 for 3.49%), and f be the fixed fee in USD (for example 0.49).

The total PayPal fee on a single payment is:

PayPal fees = G × r + f

The amount you receive after fees is:

Net payout = G − (G × r + f)

When you enter a target net amount instead, the calculator rearranges the equation to solve for the payment total. If N is the net you want to receive in USD, the minimum amount you must charge so that N is left after PayPal fees is:

Required charge = (N + f) ÷ (1 − r)

The effective fee rate shown in the results is simply PayPal fees ÷ payment amount expressed as a percentage. That lets you compare PayPal’s cost to other processors or different pricing tiers on an apples-to-apples basis.

• PayPal business pricing – Official overview of PayPal fees for online payments, invoicing, and other services.
• PayPal merchant fees explained – Detailed breakdown of fee structures, surcharges, and examples for different transaction types.