The 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator is a free online tool that works out what a PayPal fee costs you, in either direction. Enter an amount and it either tells you what a buyer has to pay so that you receive that amount after PayPal's cut, or what you are left with after PayPal takes its cut from a payment of that size. It shows the fee split into its two parts - a percentage of the payment and a fixed fee - and it prints the exact percentage and fixed fee it applied, so you can always check the arithmetic. It runs entirely in your browser, needs no PayPal connection and no 3Dsellers account, and stores nothing.

In this article:

The 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator applies one PayPal fee pair - a percentage rate plus a fixed fee per payment - to a single amount, and it can run that calculation forwards or backwards. Forwards is "a payment of this size arrives, what do I keep?". Backwards is "I need to end up with this much, what do I have to charge?". The second one is the harder sum to do in your head, and it is the reason the tool exists.

What it does:

What it does not do:

The 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator is a public page on the 3Dsellers website under Free Tools. Nothing is gated and there is no sign-in step.

The screenshot below is the calculator set up for a United States seller in USD. The four controls are your seller country (1), the amount you are working from (2), the transaction type (3) and the specific fee option within that type (4).

The I want to: card in the 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator has two radio buttons, and they are the whole point of the tool. They decide which way round the sum runs. The amount you type means something different in each one.

Pick the direction first, then type the amount, then press Tab to commit it:

Use the RECEIVE direction. This is the calculation that is easy to get wrong by hand, because adding the fee to your target is not enough: PayPal charges its percentage on the higher total, so the fee on the grossed-up price is bigger than the fee on your target.

Worked example, verified on the live tool. United States, USD, RECEIVE, amount 100.00, transaction type COMMON PAYMENT METHODS, fee option PayPal Checkout - which is 3.49% + 0.49 USD:

Note that 3.63 USD plus 0.49 USD is 4.12 USD, and 104.12 minus 4.12 is exactly the 100.00 you asked for. If you had simply added 3.49% and 0.49 USD to your 100.00 target you would have charged 103.98 USD and come up 14 cents short, because the fee would then have been charged on 103.98 rather than on your 100.00. The gap widens as the amount grows.

Use the SEND direction. Here the amount you type is the payment itself, and the answer is what is left once PayPal's percentage and fixed fee come out of it.

The same example the other way round - United States, USD, SEND, amount 100.00, COMMON PAYMENT METHODS / PayPal Checkout at 3.49% + 0.49 USD:

Both directions of the 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator come from the same two variables, so you can reproduce any figure it shows with a pocket calculator. Write the rate as a decimal - 3.49% is 0.0349 - and call the fixed fee F:

The rate and the fixed fee are whatever the transaction type and the fee dropdown currently select, and the cross-border checkbox raises the rate before either formula runs. Everything is rounded to two decimal places only for display, so a figure may be a fraction of a cent away from the exact result.

PayPal charges a different rate depending on what kind of payment it is, so the 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator asks you twice: the Choose a Transaction Type: radio group picks the family, and the Monthly Sales Volume, Transaction Type, or Sender Location: dropdown beside it picks the specific fee inside that family. Changing either one recalculates the answer straight away - unlike the amount field, these do not wait for you to click elsewhere.

Select the transaction type (1), then the specific fee option in the dropdown (2):

For a United States seller, these are the transaction types this article covers, with the rates the calculator applies. They match PayPal's currently published US business fees:

Two things about the dropdown are worth knowing before they confuse you. First, several entries in the COMMON PAYMENT METHODS list are the same fee - PayPal Checkout, PayPal Guest Checkout, Pay with Venmo, Invoicing and All Other Commercial Transactions are all 3.49% + 0.49 USD - so switching between them will not move the total, and that is not a fault. Second, for some transaction types there is only one fee option and it carries no label, so the dropdown looks empty; the rate is still applied, and you can read it next to Percent Fee in the result.

INTERNATIONAL? sits under the transaction-type list in the 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator and it models PayPal's cross-border charge: the extra PayPal adds when the person paying you is in a different country from your account. On the United States rate card it adds a flat 1.50 percentage points to whichever rate you selected, and it leaves the fixed fee alone.

Ticking INTERNATIONAL? moves the rate and the total immediately - no Tab needed. In the screenshot below the box is ticked, the rate beside Percent Fee has gone from 3.49% to 4.99%, and Buyer should pay has gone from 104.12 USD to 105.77 USD on the same 100.00 USD target:

So a cross-border payment costs the buyer 1.65 USD more on a 100.00 USD target, and costs you 1.50 USD more out of a 100.00 USD payment. The 1.50 percentage points are the same for every US transaction type: PayPal Checkout goes 3.49% to 4.99%, DONATIONS goes 2.89% to 4.39%, and MICRO PAYMENTS goes 4.99% to 6.49%.

Check them before you rely on them. The 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator does not read PayPal's fee page live - it applies a rate table that is shipped inside the page, and the page states its own date in a Last Update line just below the calculator: August, 28th, 2021. PayPal has changed its published fees since then. The calculator's arithmetic is correct for the rate it shows, but the rate itself is only as current as that date.

The 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator gives you everything you need to check it. The percentage it used is printed beside Percent Fee in the result box, and the fixed fee beside Fixed Fee. The page it should be checked against is one click away: the PayPal Fees Page link sits under the country and currency selectors, highlighted in the screenshot below, and opens PayPal's own fee page in a new tab.

The Seller's country and sale currency: dropdown at the top of the 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator lists a long set of countries, but this article documents the United States rate card only, because the US rates are the ones that have been checked against PayPal's current published fees. If you select any other country, treat the percentage and the fixed fee the calculator then shows as unverified: read them off the Percent Fee and Fixed Fee rows, compare them against PayPal's own fee page for your country, and price on PayPal's figures rather than on the calculator's until the country rate data on this page has been reviewed. If a rate looks implausibly low or a figure reads NaN, that is the rate table, not your input - stop and use PayPal's page.

No - do not use the 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator to work out the fees on an eBay sale. eBay handles payments itself now, and its payment processing is already inside the final value fee, so an eBay seller does not pay a PayPal fee on an eBay order at all. Adding one on top will overstate your costs and make you price too high.

For an eBay sale use the 3Dsellers eBay Fee Calculator instead. It applies eBay's final value fee for your category, adds eBay's fixed per-order fee, and gives you the profit, the break-even price and the payout. The full walkthrough is in the 3Dsellers eBay Fee Calculator article.

The 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator is the right tool when the money moves through PayPal itself and not through a marketplace - a PayPal invoice, a PayPal button or checkout on your own store, a Shopify or WooCommerce order paid with PayPal, or a payment a customer sends you directly for goods and services.

The 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator is a single-fee estimator. It will not:

The amount field in the 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator only commits when it loses focus. Typing does not trigger a recalculation, and pressing Enter does not either - the result you are looking at is still the answer for the previous amount. Press Tab, or click anywhere else on the page, and it updates immediately. The small up and down arrows at the right-hand end of the field also recalculate on each click, but they step in whole units, so they will round 42.50 up to 43.

Click one of the Choose a Transaction Type: radio buttons again. Changing the country in the 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator rebuilds the transaction-type list, and while it does that it hides both result boxes and puts nothing in their place, so the calculator looks broken when it is only waiting. Selecting a transaction type brings the result back. Do this after every country change, before you read any figure.

For some transaction types the 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator has only one fee option and that option carries no label, so the Monthly Sales Volume, Transaction Type, or Sender Location: box renders empty. The rate is still being applied - read it off the Percent Fee and Fixed Fee rows in the result, and compare it against PayPal's fee page before you use it.

That is what the currency selector does in the 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator: it changes the symbol in front of the figures and nothing else. It does not convert the amount and it does not switch to a different fixed fee for that currency, so the fee pair stays exactly as it was. Treat the currency selector as a label, not as a conversion.

The 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator has no Calculate button by design. The transaction-type radios, the fee dropdown, the SEND and RECEIVE radios and the INTERNATIONAL? checkbox all recalculate the moment you click them. Only the amount field waits, and it waits for the field to lose focus rather than for a button.

Check these in order. First, the transaction type and the fee option - a commercial payment, a donation and a micropayment are all charged differently. Second, whether the payment was cross-border, which adds 1.50 percentage points on the US rate card. Third, whether a currency conversion was involved, because PayPal's conversion spread is not modelled here at all. If all three match and the figures still differ, compare the percentage and the fixed fee the calculator printed against PayPal's current fee page: the rate table on this page is dated August, 28th, 2021, and PayPal's published rates have changed since then.

Yes - the 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator is completely free, with no account, no sign-in and no card. It calculates in your browser, so nothing you type is sent anywhere, and the fee tables are part of the page itself.

On the US rate card the calculator applies to an ordinary commercial payment, PayPal takes 3.49% plus a fixed 0.49 USD. On a 100.00 USD payment that is 3.49 USD plus 0.49 USD, so 96.02 USD reaches you. Going the other way, to actually receive 100.00 USD you have to charge 104.12 USD. A cross-border payment is 1.50 percentage points more.

Set the direction to RECEIVE in the 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator, type the amount you want to end up with, and press Tab. The Buyer should pay figure is the price to charge. The formula it uses is (your target + the fixed fee) divided by (1 - the rate), which is why the answer is slightly more than your target plus the fee - PayPal's percentage is charged on the higher total.

No - the 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator does not convert currencies. The currency selector only changes the symbol shown beside the numbers; the rate and the fixed fee stay as they were. If your payment crosses currencies, PayPal's own conversion spread applies on top of the fee this tool shows, and the tool does not model it.

The INTERNATIONAL? checkbox adds PayPal's cross-border charge, which on the US rate card is a flat 1.50 percentage points on top of whichever rate you selected, with the fixed fee unchanged. On a 100.00 USD target it takes the buyer's price from 104.12 USD to 105.77 USD; on a 100.00 USD payment it takes what you keep from 96.02 USD down to 94.52 USD.

No - you do not pay a separate PayPal fee on an eBay sale. eBay processes payments itself and its processing is included in the final value fee, so for an eBay order you should use the 3Dsellers eBay Fee Calculator rather than this one. Use the PayPal Fee Calculator for payments that go through PayPal directly - invoices, your own store's checkout, or a payment a customer sends you for goods and services.

Not necessarily - the page's own Last Update line reads August, 28th, 2021, and PayPal has changed published fees since then. The arithmetic the calculator does is correct for whatever rate it shows, and it prints that rate and the fixed fee on the result, so the safe way to use it is to check those two numbers against PayPal's own fee page for your country and account type before you price anything on the answer.

No - the 3Dsellers PayPal Fee Calculator neither saves your numbers nor connects to PayPal. There is no sign-in, no account link and no history; the amount resets to its default of 100 when you reload the page, and every calculation happens locally in your browser.