PayPal Fee Calculator

A free PayPal fee calculator that shows every fee line, your net payout and your actual profit. Enter what the buyer pays.

Every PayPal seller fee, in one table

What a PayPal sale actually costs, at several price points

These are not illustrative figures. Every row below was produced by the PayPal fee calculator on this page, at default settings, with the buyer paying nothing towards shipping.

Notice the effective rate falling as the sale price rises: 5.44% on a $25 sale against 3.59% on a $500 one. That is the fixed per-transaction charge being spread across a bigger sale. Small items are where fees bite hardest, and that is exactly the range sellers underestimate.

Add shipping the buyer pays and the numbers move again — on most platforms the selling fee is charged on that too. Put your real figures into the calculator above rather than reading a number off this table.

How the PayPal fee is worked out, step by step

If you would rather do this on paper than trust a box on a web page, here is the whole calculation.

1. Work out which rate you are actually on

PayPal does not have one seller rate, it has 5. How the buyer paid decides which one applies — anywhere from 2.29% to 4.99%. The calculator defaults to 3.49% + $0.49, the common checkout case.

2. Apply the percentage, then the fixed charge

The percentage is taken on the full transaction total, and the fixed charge is added on top. That fixed part is why small transactions hurt: on a $5 payment, $0.49 on its own is already 10% of the sale.

3. Add cross-border and currency conversion where they apply

An overseas buyer adds 1.5%. Converting currency costs up to 4%. 4% spread when the buyer pays in a currency other than the transaction currency; 3% for other standard conversions. These stack on the base rate rather than replacing it.

4. Consider micropayments only if you sell cheap items

4.99% + $0.09 beats the standard rate on small amounts and loses above roughly $12. Not applied automatically — you have to apply for it and be approved.

5. Subtract your own costs to reach real profit

Fees give you the net payout. Profit is what survives after what the item cost you and what shipping cost you. A sale can clear PayPal's fees comfortably and still lose money once the label is paid for — the last two boxes in the calculator exist for exactly that reason.

What this PayPal fee calculator deliberately leaves out

These are real PayPal costs that we do not fold into the figure above, because they follow from choices you make rather than from the sale itself. Ignoring them is how a listing that looked profitable turns out not to have been.

• Disputes and chargebacks — Charged per case when one is opened against you. Rare enough to leave out of a per-sale calculation, expensive enough to be worth knowing about.
• Instant transfer to your bank — Standard transfers are free and slow. Paying to move money faster is a genuine cost of the sale even though it is not a selling fee.

Everything we do include carries a source link in the section above. Where a rate could not be confirmed from PayPal itself, it is named here as a gap rather than filled in with a guess.

The same $100 sale, across every platform we cover

Identical sale, identical settings, all of them run through the same engine as the calculator above. The spread between cheapest and dearest is $10.02 on a single $100 order — 10.0% of the sale.

Read this as a fee comparison, not a recommendation. eBay settles through its own managed payments now, so eBay sales no longer run through PayPal. This page is for the other cases — your own store, selling direct on social, or invoicing a client. And a marketplace charging more that actually puts your listing in front of buyers can still be the better place to sell — fees are one input to that decision, not the decision itself.

Questions sellers actually ask

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