Stripe fee calculator

Stripe's headline rate is one percentage and one fixed amount. The fixed amount is what makes small payments expensive, and two surcharges can push the percentage well above the number on the pricing page.

The Stripe fee stack

Standard Stripe pricing has two components per successful charge: a percentage of the amount and a fixed fee. In the US that's 2.9% + $0.30 for online card payments, according to Stripe's US pricing page. In the EEA it's 1.5% + €0.25 for standard European cards, and in the UK 1.5% + £0.20 for UK cards, per Stripe's UK pricing.

Two surcharges stack on top when they apply. A card issued outside your region costs more, and if the customer pays in a currency you don't settle in, currency conversion adds 1% in the US and 2% everywhere else.

So a US business taking a $100 payment from a foreign card in a foreign currency pays 2.9% + 1.5% + 1% + $0.30 — $5.70, not $3.20.

There's no monthly fee on standard pricing and no charge for failed payments. Refunds return the customer's money, but Stripe keeps the original fee.

The fixed fee is what hurts small payments

The percentage is flat. The fixed fee isn't, because $0.30 is a very different thing on a $2 charge than on a $200 one.

US online card pricing, 2.9% + $0.30. Domestic cards, no currency conversion.

At $5 the effective rate is 8.9%. At $500 it's 3%. If you sell cheap items one at a time, the fixed fee is your real cost, and raising your average order value cuts it faster than any rate negotiation.

Stripe fees for digital products

Digital products are exactly where this bites. Ebooks, presets, Notion templates and sample packs usually sell between $5 and $30, which is the range where the fixed 30¢ does more damage than the 2.9%.

Selling the same $180 of value as twenty $9 presets costs $11.20 in fees. Selling it as two $90 bundles costs $5.82. Same revenue, $5.38 less to Stripe, purely from paying the fixed fee twice instead of twenty times.

One thing worth being clear about: Stripe is a processor, not a storefront. It takes the payment, but it doesn't host your files, deliver downloads, handle VAT on digital goods, or give you a product page. You need something in front of it.

That's what Sellfy does. It charges zero transaction fees on every plan, so the cost of selling a digital product is your plan plus your processor's rate — not a plan, plus a processor, plus a cut of every sale.

Stripe fees by region

Stripe prices per country, and the spread is wide.

Note the middle column. The EEA and UK don't price cards as simply domestic or foreign — they price three tiers, and a card from next door sits in between. A UK business taking a French card pays 2.5% + 20p, not the 3.15% an American card would cost.

Europe is cheaper because of regulation, not currency. The EU caps interchange at 0.2% on debit and 0.3% on credit, and that cap is what Stripe's 1.5% is built on. It applies across the whole EEA including non-euro countries like Sweden, Poland and Denmark, and the UK kept the same cap after Brexit — which is why UK pricing tracks EEA pricing rather than US pricing.

Two nuances the calculator leaves out. Premium consumer and commercial cards cost 2.8% in both the EEA and the UK, not 1.5% — corporate cards, rewards cards and similar. You can't tell which card a customer will use, so if you sell business-to-business, budget closer to 2.8%. And Australia's international rate is due to fall: Stripe lists the current 3.5% with "lower pricing from 1 Apr 2027", so budget for a cheaper cross-border rate from then.

What international cards and currency conversion cost

These are two separate charges, and they're easy to confuse.

The international card fee depends on where the card was issued. A US business charging a customer whose card came from a French bank pays the surcharge even if the payment is in dollars.

The currency conversion fee depends on what currency the customer pays in. If you settle in USD and the customer pays in euros, Stripe converts and charges for it.

Both can apply to the same payment. At $100 in the US:

A cross-border sale costs 78% more in fees than a domestic one. Toggle both switches above to see what that does to your own amount.

Other Stripe fees

Card processing is the headline, but it isn't the only line on a Stripe invoice.

Bank debits are the one genuinely cheap route. A $500 invoice costs $14.80 on a card and $4.00 by ACH — the cap turns a percentage into a flat fee. For recurring B2B invoices above a few hundred dollars, moving customers to ACH is the single biggest saving available.

How much to charge to receive a set amount

If you need a specific amount to land in your account, you have to gross the charge up, and you can't do it by adding 2.9% — the fee applies to the larger number too.

The formula is charge = (target + fixed fee) ÷ (1 − rate). To receive $100 in the US: (100 + 0.30) ÷ 0.971 = $103.30. Charging a flat $103 leaves you $99.71, three cents short.

Flip the switch above the calculator to work backwards from any payout. It's worth knowing this is a pricing decision rather than a trick — the fee doesn't disappear, the customer pays it.

Stripe vs PayPal

Both are processors, and in the US Stripe is the cheaper of the two for standard card payments. PayPal charges 3.49% + $0.49 on an online sale collected through its own buttons, per PayPal's merchant fee schedule, checked on 2 September 2026.

PayPal wins in one place: its Micropayments rate card, 4.99% + $0.09, undercuts Stripe below about $10 and PayPal's own standard rate below about $27, because the fixed fee is so much smaller. If your typical order is a $3 sticker pack, that's worth applying for. Our full breakdown of PayPal's fees covers the other rate cards.

Stripe vs Square

Square's online rate depends on which plan you're on. On the free plan it's 3.3% + 30¢, and on Square Plus it drops to 2.9% + 30¢, matching Stripe — but Plus is a paid subscription, per Square's published fees.

Square wins clearly in person. Tap, dip or swipe costs 2.6% + 15¢ on its free plan, which no online-first processor matches, and its hardware works out of the box. If you sell at markets and online, Square is the simpler stack. If you sell only online, Stripe's free-plan rate is lower.

What this costs over a year

Fees are easier to judge annually than per transaction.

At $100 per charge and 100 charges a month on US domestic cards, Stripe takes $320 a month — $3,840 a year. You receive $9,680 a month. Shift a third of those to international cards and the annual figure passes $4,400.

Run your own amount and volume through the calculator above.

Stripe fees versus a marketplace

Stripe is a payment processor, not a marketplace. It moves money and takes a processing fee. There's no listing fee and no advertising fee, because there's no storefront and no traffic being sent your way.

That's why the numbers look so different from a marketplace's. Etsy charges a $0.20 listing fee and a 6.5% transaction fee on top of payment processing of its own, so a $25 sale costs $2.83 there against $1.03 through Stripe. That $1.80 difference is what Etsy charges for putting your listing in front of buyers. If you're driving your own traffic from a newsletter or a social account, you're paying a marketplace fee for an introduction you made yourself.

Compare the two with the Etsy fee calculator.