PayPal Fee Calculator — Goods & Services, International, and Invoice Fees (2026)

What percentage does PayPal take?

For US goods-and-services payments through PayPal Checkout, 3.49% plus a fixed $0.49 per payment. The fixed component is what makes the headline percentage misleading in both directions: on a $10 payment the effective rate is 8.40%, on a $500 payment it is 3.59%, and on a $5,000 payment it approaches the 3.49% floor. Any answer that gives you a single percentage without asking the amount is wrong.

At what amount does PayPal micropayments pricing become worse than standard?

$26.67. Standard pricing is 3.49% + $0.49; micropayments is 4.99% + $0.09. Setting them equal — 0.0349x + 0.49 = 0.0499x + 0.09 — gives x = 0.40 ÷ 0.015 = $26.67. Below that, the 40¢ you save on the fixed fee outweighs the extra 1.5% on the percentage; above it, the percentage wins and keeps winning.

Because each side is rounded to the cent independently, real fees are identical for a few cents either side of the crossover: micropayments is strictly cheaper up to $26.55 and standard is strictly cheaper from $26.76. PayPal publishes both schedules but not the crossover, which is why the figure you usually see quoted — around $12 — is folklore rather than arithmetic.

Should I switch to micropayments pricing?

Only if most of your payments are below $26.67, because micropayments applies to your entire account rather than per transaction. You cannot route small payments through it and large ones around it. The test is not your average payment — one $2,000 invoice drags an average upward while contributing a single transaction — it is the median, and more precisely the share of your payment count that falls below the crossover.

A useful rule: work out your total fee both ways across a representative month. If you take 400 payments averaging $8 and two invoices of $1,500, micropayments saves roughly $100 on the small ones and costs about $45 on the two large ones, so it wins. Flip the mix and it loses badly. You must request micropayments pricing from PayPal; it is not a setting you can toggle yourself.

How much does PayPal charge for international payments?

Two separate surcharges that add to the rate rather than replacing it. The international commercial transaction fee is 1.50% and applies when the buyer's PayPal account is registered outside the US. Currency conversion is a further 4.00% spread over the wholesale exchange rate, charged whenever money moves between currencies.

Stacked on the standard 3.49%, a cross-border payment taken in the buyer's currency runs at 8.99% + $0.49. On the $500 payment above, that is $45.44 against $17.94 domestically — you keep $27.50 less for doing the same work. The 4% conversion spread is the larger of the two and the one sellers most often miss, because it is not itemised as a fee; it is buried in the exchange rate you are given.

Can I ask my client to pay the PayPal fee?

You can add it to the invoice, but adding the fee percentage to your total does not recover it — the fee is charged on the larger amount you now invoice, not on your original target. To receive exactly $500 at 3.49% + $0.49 you must invoice ($500 + $0.49) ÷ (1 − 0.0349) = $518.59, not the $517.94 that adding 3.49% gives you — which would land you $0.63 short. See the charge-to-receive calculator, which does this correctly.

Note also that PayPal's US user agreement does not permit surcharging a buyer specifically for using PayPal in the way card network rules are sometimes read to allow. Building the cost into your rate is uncontroversial; adding a visible "PayPal fee" line to a consumer invoice is worth checking against your current agreement.

Is Friends and Family really free, and can I use it for business?

It is free when funded by a PayPal balance or a linked bank account, and 2.99% when funded by a card — in which case the sender pays, not you. But using it for a genuine sale is a bad trade even when the fee is zero: Friends and Family payments carry no Purchase Protection and no Seller Protection, so a disputed payment has no structure behind it. PayPal treats systematic commercial use of Friends and Family as an account-level violation, and the remedy is a limitation on the account holding your money.

The 3.49% is, in substance, the price of dispute infrastructure. That is a real product and sometimes worth it, but it is worth being clear about what you are paying for rather than treating it as a toll.

Why did PayPal take more than this calculator shows?

Usually one of four things. A currency conversion you did not realise happened, which is the 4.00% above and is invisible because it is priced into the exchange rate. A chargeback, which costs $20.00 on top of the reversed amount. An instant transfer to your bank rather than the free standard transfer. Or a payment that was cross-border without looking it was — the surcharge follows the buyer's account country, so a client who lives in New York but registered their PayPal account in Canada triggers it.