- Which PayPal fee applies to you?
- It depends entirely on how the money was sent, and this is the thing most people get wrong. Goods & Services — the option that gives the buyer purchase protection — is 2.99% in the US with no fixed fee. Payments through invoicing, PayPal Checkout or Venmo are 3.49% plus $0.49. Standard credit and debit card payments are 2.99% plus $0.49. Donations through a donate button are 2.89% plus $0.49, registered charities pay 1.99% plus $0.49, and micropayments pricing is 4.99% plus $0.09. Friends & Family, sent domestically from your balance or bank, is free. Same $100, and the fee ranges from nothing to $3.98 depending purely on which button someone pressed.
- How much does PayPal take from $100, or from $5,000?
- On the standard Goods & Services rate, $100 costs $2.99 and leaves $97.01. $5,000 costs $149.50 and leaves $4,850.50 — the percentage is flat, so the fee scales straight up with the amount. If the payment came through an invoice or PayPal Checkout instead, that same $100 costs $3.98 because those rates are 3.49% plus a $0.49 fixed fee, and the $5,000 costs $175.00. The gap between the two rates is small on a coffee and meaningful on a contract, which is the whole reason the transaction type is a control on this page rather than an assumption.
- How do I avoid the PayPal fee entirely?
- Use Friends & Family for domestic payments funded by your PayPal balance or a linked bank account, and PayPal takes nothing. That is the honest answer and almost nobody publishes it, because most fee calculators are funded by selling you something else. The catch is real and worth stating plainly: Friends & Family gives you no purchase protection. If the goods never arrive or aren't what was described, you have no claim through PayPal. Use it to split rent with a roommate or pay back a friend. Don't use it to buy a used phone from a stranger, and be suspicious of any seller who asks you to — that request is one of the most common patterns in marketplace fraud.
- How do I charge someone so I receive an exact amount?
- Switch the direction toggle to "I want to receive" and enter the number you need to end up with. To net exactly $500 on the Goods & Services rate you need to ask for $515.41. The arithmetic is less obvious than it looks: you can't just add the fee percentage to your target, because the fee is charged on the larger amount, so the answer is target divided by one minus the rate, not target times one plus the rate. Adding 2.99% to $500 gives $514.95, which nets you $499.55 — forty-five cents short. This calculator solves it the right way and then forward-checks the result, recomputing the fee on the answer to confirm the net lands exactly on your target rather than a cent under.
- Why is PayPal charging me more than the rate says?
- Usually one of three things. First, an international payment: if the sender's account is registered in another country, PayPal adds 1.50% on top of the percentage rate, which turns 2.99% into 4.49%. Tick the International box here to see it. Second, currency conversion: if the money arrives in a currency other than yours, PayPal applies a spread of roughly 3 to 4% on the exchange rate, which is separate from the transaction fee, is usually larger than it, and is deliberately not modelled here — it needs a live exchange rate to be honest about. Third, a different transaction type than you assumed, which is the most common cause of all.
- Why does a small payment lose such a big percentage?
- Because of the fixed fee, on the rates that carry one. A $0.49 fixed fee is half a percent of a $100 payment and ten percent of a $5 one. Send $5 through an invoice and you pay $0.66 — over 13% — of which the fixed fee is three quarters. That's what the effective fee percent on this page is for: it divides the total fee by the amount sent, so the real cost of small payments stops hiding behind a percentage that looks reasonable. It's also why PayPal's micropayments pricing exists. On that same $5, micropayments costs $0.34 instead of $0.66. Micropayments trades a higher percentage (4.99%) for a much smaller fixed fee ($0.09), so it wins on small amounts and loses on large ones.
- Can the fee ever be larger than the payment itself?
- Yes, on any rate with a fixed fee, and this calculator shows it as a negative number rather than hiding it or clamping to zero. Send $0.25 through an invoice and the fee is $0.50 — one cent of percentage plus the $0.49 fixed fee — so you end up 25 cents down. It sounds like a contrived edge case, but it's exactly what happens to anyone trying to collect very small amounts through the wrong product, and a calculator that quietly rounds it away would be hiding the one thing worth knowing.
- Are these rates current, and what if mine are different?
- The date the rate table was recorded is printed under the fee rows, so you can tell at a glance whether it predates a schedule change. That matters more here than you'd think: the page that currently ranks first for this search publishes rates it last updated in 2021. Every rate on this page is also editable. If you're on a negotiated merchant rate, reading a non-US schedule, or PayPal has revised its fees since the date shown, type your real percentage and fixed fee into the fields and everything recalculates. The transaction type switches to Custom and your amount stays put.
- Does this handle currency conversion?
- Deliberately not. PayPal's currency conversion spread is real money — usually 3 to 4% over the base exchange rate, often more than the transaction fee itself — but modelling it honestly requires a live exchange rate feed, and a fee calculator that guesses at exchange rates is worse than one that says it doesn't do them. This page does one job: the transaction fee, correctly. If your payment involves a conversion, treat the number here as the transaction fee only and expect the conversion to cost more on top.
- Do buyers pay any of this?
- No. On a standard commercial payment the fee comes out of the recipient's side — the buyer pays the sticker price and the seller receives less. That's why the reverse mode on this page exists: if you need to clear a specific amount, you have to price the fee in yourself before you send the invoice. Some sellers add a surcharge line to cover it, though PayPal's own seller policies restrict that in various places and several US states regulate it, so check before you do. The arithmetic for it is the reverse direction here.
