Stripe Fee Calculator

Add the percentage fee and the fixed fee for a single transaction, divide the total fee by the transaction amount, and multiply by 100. For a 50 dollar charge at 2.9 percent plus 30 cents, the fee is 1 dollar 45 cents plus 30 cents, which is 1 dollar 75 cents, or an effective rate of 3.5 percent. The smaller your average order value, the higher your effective rate climbs because the fixed 30 cents becomes a larger share of the charge. This calculator does that math across your whole monthly volume so you can see your true blended cost, not just the headline 2.9 percent.

Because of the fixed 30 cent per transaction fee. The advertised 2.9 percent is only the percentage component. Once you add 30 cents to every charge, your real rate is always higher than 2.9 percent, and it rises sharply as average order value falls. At a 100 dollar average order value the fixed fee adds only 0.3 percent, so your effective rate is about 3.2 percent. At a 10 dollar average order value the same 30 cents adds 3 percent, pushing your effective rate near 5.9 percent. International cards and currency conversion push it higher again. This is the single most overlooked number in SaaS and ecommerce unit economics.

Sometimes, but be careful. Surcharging credit card fees is regulated and is banned or capped in some United States states and many countries, and Stripe has rules about how it must be disclosed. A cleaner approach used by most SaaS and ecommerce businesses is to bake the cost of payment processing into your pricing rather than adding a visible surcharge at checkout, because surcharges measurably hurt conversion. If you do want to recover the fee, the math is a gross-up: to actually receive a target net amount you need to charge more than the net plus a flat fee, because the percentage fee also applies to the extra you add. This calculator includes a gross-up tool for exactly that.

The highest-leverage move for most businesses is raising average order value or encouraging annual billing, because billing once a year instead of twelve times removes eleven fixed 30 cent fees and eleven percentage hits spread across small charges. Offering ACH or bank debit for larger invoices can cut the cost from roughly 3 percent to under 1 percent. Reducing failed payments with card retry logic and dunning avoids paying fees on retries. At scale, once you process meaningful volume, Stripe offers custom interchange-plus pricing that can beat the flat 2.9 percent plus 30 cents. Negotiate only when your monthly volume makes the conversation worthwhile.

For standard online card payments the headline rates are very close. Stripe and PayPal both sit around 2.9 percent plus a fixed fee for online transactions, and Square is similar online while cheaper for in-person card present payments. The real cost difference shows up in the details: currency conversion spreads, international card surcharges, payout timing, chargeback fees, and how each platform handles your specific mix of transaction sizes. The right way to compare is to run your actual average order value and monthly volume through each provider rate card rather than trusting the headline percentage. Use the effective rate this tool gives you as your apples-to-apples benchmark.

When you refund a charge, Stripe returns the full amount to your customer, but historically it did not return the original processing fee to you, so a refunded sale still cost you the fee. Policies have shifted over time and vary by region and account, so check your current Stripe agreement. The practical takeaway for unit economics is to assume a refunded order is not free: you may eat the original processing cost even though the revenue reverses. High refund or chargeback rates therefore quietly inflate your true payment processing cost well above the effective rate on completed sales.