PayPal rates vary by country, transaction type and account, so confirm your current rate. The percentage and fixed fee inputs are editable so you can match it exactly.
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A PayPal fee is usually a percentage of the payment plus a small fixed amount. For a $100 sale at a common US goods-and-services rate of 3.49% plus $0.49, the fee is $3.98 and you keep $96.02. The calculator above runs this from your own numbers, and rates change, so confirm your current percentage and fixed fee before you rely on a figure.
Most PayPal commercial transactions are priced as a percentage of the amount plus a fixed per-transaction fee in the currency you are paid in. The percentage covers the bulk of the cost on larger payments, while the fixed fee bites hardest on small ones: a $5 sale at 3.49% plus $0.49 loses about 13% to fees, where a $500 sale loses closer to 3.6%. That is why low-ticket sellers feel PayPal fees more than high-ticket ones.
The exact rate depends on several things: your country, the currency, whether the payment is domestic or cross-border, the transaction type such as standard checkout versus invoicing or micropayments, and any commercial or volume rate on your account. Cross-border and currency-conversion transactions typically add to the cost. Because of all this variation, treat any single rate as an example, not a guarantee. The safest move is to open a recent transaction in your own PayPal account, read the fee it charged, and enter that percentage and fixed fee into the calculator so the result matches your reality.
If you want a specific amount to land in your account, you cannot just add the fee to your price, because PayPal also charges its percentage on the part you added. The correct reverse calculation is: take your target net, add the fixed fee, then divide by 1 minus the percentage rate (as a decimal). To receive $100 net at 3.49% plus $0.49, you charge ($100 + $0.49) / (1 - 0.0349), which is about $104.13. Switch the calculator to the target mode and it does this for you, showing the gross amount to charge alongside the fee and your net.
You will rarely escape fees entirely on commercial payments, but you can trim them. Make sure you are on the right account and pricing for your business: micropayment pricing can be cheaper on very small sales, while a higher-volume merchant rate may apply once you cross certain monthly thresholds, so it is worth asking PayPal what you qualify for. Keep chargebacks and disputes low, since dispute fees and lost cases add real cost on top of the standard rate; clear product descriptions, fast shipping with tracking, and responsive support all help. Avoid unnecessary currency conversion by holding and withdrawing in the currency you are paid in where possible. And resist the temptation to route sales through friends and family to skip fees, as that breaks PayPal's terms and strips the buyer and seller protection that the fee pays for.
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