Work out exactly what PayPal keeps from a sale and what reaches your bank. Enter the price, the shipping the buyer pays and what the item cost you, and this shows the fee on every line, the total taken, your net, and the effective percentage on the whole order.
PayPal charges a percentage plus a fixed amount per commercial transaction, and the rate depends on how the payment arrives: a checkout button, an invoice and a QR code are all priced differently. The fixed part is what makes small transactions expensive.
The reason this matters is that a percentage alone tells you almost nothing. A flat fee per order is a rounding error on a $200 basket and a fifth of the margin on a $4 one, so two sellers quoting the same headline rate can keep wildly different shares of their revenue. The only number worth knowing is the effective rate on your own average order, and that is what this calculates.
Every rate below is an editable field rather than a number baked into the page. Marketplace fee schedules change without notice and differ by country, by category and by seller tier, so the figures here are pre-filled defaults and the marketplace's own fee page is the authority. Open it, check the rate that applies to you, and type it in. The arithmetic is the part this tool is good at.
The rates. Defaults are typical published figures, and the PayPal fee page is the authority. Check yours and change anything that differs.
PayPal adds a percentage when the buyer is in another country, and another when it converts the currency. Both are on top of the standard rate.
What PayPal charges, and for what
| Fee | What it is |
|---|---|
| Commercial transaction fee | A percentage plus a fixed amount, per payment received. |
| The fixed part | Unchanged whether the order is $5 or $500, which is why it dominates small baskets. |
| Cross border fee | An extra percentage when the payer is in a different country from you. |
| Currency conversion | A spread applied on top of the exchange rate when the money changes currency. |
Rates and which of these apply to you depend on your country, your category and your seller tier. PayPal publishes them here and that page is the one to trust.
Three things sellers get wrong about marketplace fees
Shipping is usually part of the fee base. On most marketplaces the commission is charged on the total the buyer paid, which includes what they paid for postage. Charging $6 shipping does not hand you $6; it hands you $6 minus the commission on it, and if your actual postage cost $6 you are out of pocket.
The fixed fee is the one that hurts. A 30 cent flat fee is 0.15 per cent of a $200 order and 7.5 per cent of a $4 one. Any seller whose average order is under about $15 should be pricing around the flat fee rather than around the percentage.
The effective rate is not the headline rate. Stack a commission, a payment percentage, a flat fee and a listing fee and the number you actually pay is always higher than the biggest one on the list. The figure to plan with is the one at the bottom of this calculator, on your own typical order.