Free Stripe Fee Calculator

How to Use the Stripe Fee Calculator

This quick walkthrough shows the calculator in action. Stripe works the same way: enter a charge to see the 2.9% + $0.30 online fee (or 2.7% + $0.05 in person) and your exact net, or reverse-solve the price for a target payout. Use the platform dropdown to switch.

The tool has two modes. Pick the one that matches what you already know:

1. Charge to payout: Enter the amount you charge the customer. The calculator shows the processing fee and the net amount that lands in your Stripe balance. Add your item cost to see profit and profit margin too.
2. Net to charge: Enter the payout you want to keep. The calculator solves for the charge amount that leaves you exactly that much after Stripe's fee, then shows the breakdown so you can confirm it reconciles.

A small Payment method selector lets you switch between an online card charge and an in-person charge taken through Stripe Terminal, because the two have different rates. The calculator opens on Stripe, but you can use the platform dropdown to compare the same amount against Etsy, Square, PayPal, or any other supported platform.

The tool links to Stripe's official pricing page with the date we checked it. Rates change and vary by country and card type, so treat the numbers as a fast, accurate starting point and confirm anything critical against the source.

How Stripe Fees Work in the US

Stripe is a payment processor, not a marketplace. That means it charges one fee to move money from a customer's card into your account, and it does not take a separate selling or listing cut on top. Stripe's standard US pricing has two parts on every successful charge:

• A percentage of the charge amount.
• A fixed fee in cents, the same on every transaction no matter the size.

For a standard online card charge the rate is 2.9% + $0.30. For a card taken in person through Stripe Terminal the rate is lower, 2.7% + $0.05, because card-present payments carry less fraud risk. There is no monthly fee and no setup fee on Stripe's standard plan, so the per-charge fee is the whole cost for most sellers.

The percentage scales with the charge, but the fixed part does not. That single detail drives almost every decision about how to price and batch your payments.

A Worked Example

Say you charge a customer $100 online.

• Percentage fee: 2.9% of $100 = $2.90
• Fixed fee: $0.30
• Total Stripe fee: $3.20
• Net payout: $96.80

Take that same $100 in person through Terminal at 2.7% + $0.05 and the fee is $2.75, leaving you $97.25. The calculator prints this breakdown for any amount, so you never have to run the arithmetic by hand.

Why the $0.30 Fixed Fee Hurts Small Charges

On a big charge the flat $0.30 barely registers. On a small one it dominates. Watch what happens as the charge shrinks:

• Charge $100: fee $3.20, or about 3.2% of the payment.
• Charge $20: fee $0.88, or about 4.4%.
• Charge $5: fee $0.45, or about 9%.
• Charge $1: fee $0.33, or about 33% of the payment.

The effective percentage climbs as the amount falls because the fixed fee is a bigger slice of a smaller pie. If you sell low-priced items or take lots of tiny payments, that is where your margin quietly leaks. Two common fixes: set a sensible minimum charge, or aggregate several small items into one larger transaction so the $0.30 is paid once instead of many times.

Fees the Calculator Does Not Include

The tool models Stripe's core per-transaction processing fee, which is what applies to the overwhelming majority of card charges. It does not try to guess situational fees that depend on your specific setup, including:

• International cards: charges on cards issued outside your country carry an extra percentage.
• Currency conversion: presenting or settling in another currency adds a conversion fee.
• Instant payouts: moving your balance out immediately, rather than on the standard schedule, costs extra.
• Chargeback fees: a disputed payment carries a fixed fee, refunded if you win the dispute.
• Add-on products: Stripe Billing, Tax, Radar advanced fraud tools, and similar products have their own pricing.

If any of those apply to you, add them on top of the figure here and confirm the exact number on Stripe's pricing page. Leaving them out keeps the core estimate clean and honest rather than burying a headline rate under assumptions that may not fit your account.

Using the Reverse Mode to Set a Price

Most sellers know what they want to walk away with, not what to charge. The reverse mode is built for that. Switch to the Net to charge tab, type the payout you want to keep, and the calculator solves for the charge amount that nets exactly that after Stripe's fee.

This is the fast way to set an invoice total or a product price so your deposit lands on a round number. Because the fee has a fixed part, you cannot simply add 2.9% back on and be done; the tool handles the exact reconciliation for you and shows the breakdown so you can see the solved charge really does net your target.

Stripe vs Other Platforms

Because Stripe is a pure processor, its fee is often lower than a marketplace that bundles processing with a selling fee. A marketplace like Etsy or Poshmark takes a listing or selling cut and then charges processing on top, so more comes out of each sale. Stripe, PayPal, and Square are the processing layer only.

That is exactly why comparing them side by side is useful. Switch the platform dropdown to run the same charge through Square (which changes rate by how the card is taken), PayPal, or a full marketplace, and the calculator re-computes the breakdown for each. If you sell through your own checkout on Stripe as well as on a marketplace, you can see in seconds how much more of each sale you keep by driving buyers to your own store.

Frequently Asked Questions

The questions below are answered in full in the FAQ section on this page, and they are also marked up as structured data so search engines can surface them directly. In short: Stripe's US standard fee is 2.9% + $0.30 online and 2.7% + $0.05 in person, there is no marketplace cut, the fixed $0.30 is what makes small charges expensive in percentage terms, and the reverse mode solves the charge you need to net a target. Always confirm the live rate for your country and card type on Stripe's official pricing page before you rely on it.