Payment Processing Fee Calculator

Fees are a percentage plus a fixed amount

Most processors charge a percentage of the transaction plus a small fixed fee — commonly around 2.9% plus a fixed amount per payment. On small invoices the fixed fee bites hardest; on large ones the percentage dominates. Enter your processor's rates to see exactly what you net.

Switch to gross-up mode to work backwards: tell it the amount you want to actually receive, and it shows what to invoice so the fee does not eat into your fee.

Should you pass fees to clients?

Some freelancers add a small surcharge or simply price fees into their rate. Others absorb them as a cost of doing business. Either is fine — just decide deliberately rather than losing 3% silently on every payment.

Grossing up, and the fee nobody quotes you

If you want a specific amount to land in your account, adding the fee percentage to your invoice does not get you there. A 3% fee on a grossed-up invoice is charged on the larger total, so the correct figure is your target divided by 0.97, not multiplied by 1.03. On small invoices the difference is pennies; on a five-figure international transfer it is real money.

The fee that does the most damage is usually not the headline percentage but the currency conversion. Card processors and banks routinely apply a 2–4% spread on the exchange rate on top of the stated transaction fee, and it does not appear as a line item — it is simply a worse rate than the one you looked up. For cross-border work, compare the amount that actually arrives, not the fees each provider advertises.