PayPal Fee Calculator

PayPal charges different rates depending on what kind of payment it is. A standard domestic "goods & services" payment — the kind you'd use for freelance work, a product sale, or any transaction PayPal's buyer protection covers — runs about 3.49% plus a fixed $0.49. International goods & services payments cost more, typically around 4.99% plus the fixed fee, because PayPal absorbs more cross-border processing risk and cost.

Friends & Family payments are the cheapest option but come with a catch: they're free only when funded directly from a linked bank account or PayPal balance. If the sender funds it with a debit/credit card or PayPal Credit instead, PayPal charges roughly 3% even on an F&F transfer — and critically, F&F payments carry no buyer or seller protection, so using them for a real transaction to dodge fees is risky for both sides.

Currency conversion is the fee people miss most. If a payment arrives in a currency your account doesn't hold, PayPal converts it automatically at a rate that includes roughly a 4% markup above the market exchange rate — on top of whatever transaction fee already applies.

For domestic sales, PayPal's ~3.49% + $0.49 sits close to Stripe and most card processors, so it's rarely the reason to switch. Where it gets expensive is international sales and currency conversion — a freelancer regularly paid from clients abroad can lose 8–9% of every invoice to PayPal's international rate plus conversion, versus 1–2% through a service built specifically for cross-border transfers.

If international payments are a regular part of your income, it's worth having the client pay in your own currency (avoiding conversion entirely) or routing payments through a lower-fee cross-border transfer service and only using PayPal for the domestic, buyer-protected transactions it's genuinely competitive for.

A $500 invoice paid domestically as goods & services costs $17.94 in fees (3.49% + $0.49), leaving $482.06. The same $500 paid internationally costs $25.44 (4.99% + $0.49) — and if it also triggers currency conversion, add another $20, dropping the payout to $454.56. That's a 9% total cut versus 3.6% for the equivalent domestic payment — a gap worth pricing into international invoices upfront.