Know exactly what you'll take home.

Stripe's published fee rates

Stripe charges different rates depending on the type of transaction. These are the standard, published rates that apply to most accounts without a custom pricing agreement:

Formula 1: Calculating the fee on a known charge

If you already know the Gross amount you're charging, calculating the Stripe fee is direct multiplication:

Stripe fee = (Gross amount × Rate) + Fixed fee
Net payout = Gross amount − Stripe fee

Worked example: you charge a US customer $250.00 on their domestic card. The fee is ($250.00 × 0.029) + $0.30 = $7.25 + $0.30 = $7.55. Your net payout is $250.00 − $7.55 = $242.45.

Formula 2: Working backward from your target payout

This is the calculation people get wrong most often. If you need to walk away with a specific Net amount — say, to cover an invoice for exactly $500.00 — you cannot simply add 2.9% of $500 to your price, because Stripe's percentage fee is calculated on the Gross amount you charge, not on the Net amount you keep. Adding the percentage to your target undercharges every time. The correct formula solves for Gross algebraically:

Gross amount = (Target Net + Fixed fee) / (1 − Rate)

Worked example: to net exactly $1,000.00 after Stripe's US domestic fee, Gross = ($1,000.00 + $0.30) / (1 − 0.029) = $1,000.30 / 0.971 = $1,030.18. Charging $1,030.18 incurs a $30.18 fee, leaving exactly $1,000.00 as your net payout — confirmed to the cent. This is precisely the calculation the Stripe calculator above runs when you select "I want to receive."

Why the two formulas aren't symmetric

Because the fee percentage is always calculated on the Gross amount — the number you're charging, not the number you're keeping — the reverse calculation has to divide by (1 − Rate) instead of just adding the rate back on. The fee itself grows as the Gross amount grows, so a simple addition always falls short. Dividing by (1 − Rate) accounts for that feedback loop precisely, which is why the two formulas above look different even though they describe the same relationship from opposite directions.

How Stripe's fees fit into your pricing

Whether the fee matters more as a percentage of revenue or as an absolute cost depends entirely on your business model. A freelancer invoicing a handful of large projects a month feels the percentage fee most — a few points off a $5,000 invoice is real money. A subscription business processing thousands of small recurring charges feels the fixed $0.30 fee most, since it repeats on every single transaction regardless of size. Knowing which one applies to you is the first step in deciding whether to build the fee into your list price, pass it through to the customer as a surcharge (where your processor and local regulations allow it), or absorb it as a cost of doing business.

A note on Stripe ACH pricing

ACH bank debits use the same two formulas, but with a floor and a ceiling on the fee itself: 0.8% of the transaction, never less than $0.30 and never more than $5.00. That cap makes ACH dramatically cheaper than card payments once a transaction crosses roughly $625 (0.8% of $625 is $5.00) — a $10,000 invoice paid by ACH costs $5.00 in fees, versus well over $290 on a card at the domestic card rate. If you regularly invoice large amounts, routing payment through ACH instead of a card can be one of the highest-leverage changes you make to your effective margin.

Common mistakes when estimating Stripe fees

• Adding the percentage instead of dividing. Adding 2.9% of your target Net to itself always undercharges — use the gross-up formula above instead.
• Forgetting the fixed fee on small charges. On a $5.00 charge, the $0.30 fixed fee alone is 6% of the transaction — small, frequent charges are where fixed fees hurt margin the most.
• Assuming domestic and international rates are the same. A card issued outside your home country is billed at the higher 3.9% rate, not 2.9%, even if the currency and amount look identical on the receipt.
• Not checking for a negotiated rate. Once your monthly volume grows large enough, Stripe may offer custom interchange-plus pricing below the published rates — the formulas here use the standard published rates as a baseline.

Using the Stripe calculator above

The calculator at the top of this page runs both formulas for you, for all three Stripe transaction types. Choose "I want to receive" and enter your target Net amount to see exactly what Gross amount to charge; choose "If I charge this amount" and enter a Gross amount to see what actually lands in your account. Either way, the Gross, fee, and Net figures always reconcile exactly to the cent, so you can quote a price with confidence instead of estimating.

Gross vs. Net: the two directions of the math

Gross is the total amount charged to the payer — the number on the invoice or checkout page. Net is what actually lands in your account after the processor takes its cut. The Processing fee is the difference between the two: Fee = Gross − Net. Most calculators (and most people doing this by hand) only ever compute the fee moving forward: you know the Gross amount you're charging, and you solve for what you'll actually receive. That direction is simple:

Fee = (Gross × Rate) + Fixed Fee
Net = Gross − Fee

The harder, more useful direction is the reverse: you know the exact Net amount you need to walk away with — say, to cover a contractor invoice or hit a specific payout — and you need to know what Gross amount to charge so the fee doesn't eat into it. Because the fee itself is calculated as a percentage of the Gross amount (the number you're solving for), you can't just add the fee rate on top of your target Net — that undercharges every time, since the fee grows as the Gross amount grows. Solving the equation algebraically for Gross gives:

Gross = (Target Net + Fixed Fee) / (1 − Fee Rate)

For a $1,000 target net on Stripe's US domestic rate (2.9% + $0.30), that's Gross = ($1,000 + $0.30) / (1 − 0.029) = $1,030.18, with a $30.18 processing fee — charge $1,030.18 and exactly $1,000.00 lands in your account. FeeWise runs both directions of this formula for you, so you never have to do the algebra by hand.

Domestic vs. international: why interchange rates differ

Every card-network transaction routes through an interchange fee set by the card-issuing bank, plus assessment fees from the network (Visa, Mastercard, etc.) and a markup from your processor. Domestic transactions — where the card, the merchant, and the bank are all in the same country and currency — carry the lowest interchange rates, because fraud risk and settlement complexity are lowest. Cross-border transactions add extra cost on three fronts: higher fraud risk (cross-border card-not-present fraud is measurably more common), currency-conversion overhead when the card's currency differs from the settlement currency, and higher interchange rates that card networks charge specifically for cross-border interchange. That's why Stripe's international card rate (3.9% + $0.30) runs a full percentage point above its domestic rate (2.9% + $0.30), and why PayPal, Square, and every other major processor follow the same pattern.

Comparing Stripe, PayPal, Wise, and Square

Rates below reflect each provider's standard published pricing for card and transfer payments as of this writing. Providers change pricing periodically and offer custom rates to high-volume merchants, so treat this as a starting point and confirm current pricing directly with each provider before making a pricing decision.

Wise's pricing model is structurally different from card processors — it is typically quoted per currency corridor and payout method rather than as a single flat card-processing rate, so the range above is illustrative, not a quote.

Choosing the right processor

For US-only card payments, Stripe and PayPal land within a few basis points of each other, so the tiebreaker is usually your typical transaction size: PayPal's slightly lower percentage plus higher fixed fee tends to win on larger invoices, while Stripe's lower fixed fee edges ahead on smaller ones. Square is worth a look if you also take in-person payments, since its card-present rate (2.6% + $0.10) undercuts both Stripe and PayPal's online rates. If you're paying international contractors or getting paid by clients abroad in a different currency, Wise's transfer-based model frequently comes out cheaper than routing that money through a card network at all — it's worth comparing the actual quote for your specific corridor against the international card rate before deciding.

A note on estimates and rate changes

FeeWise's calculator applies each provider's standard published rate to the amount, currency, and transaction type you select, and reconciles the three figures so Gross minus Processing fee always equals Net exactly, down to the cent. What it can't account for is a rate that's specific to your account: negotiated interchange-plus pricing, promotional rates, non-profit discounts, or a processor updating its published pricing since this guide was last reviewed. Treat every figure here as a close estimate for planning and invoicing purposes, and confirm the exact rate on your account before finalizing a price that depends on it.

Tips to lower your processing costs

• Prefer bank-to-bank transfers (like ACH) for large invoices — the capped fee is far cheaper than card rates at scale.
• Batch smaller charges where possible to reduce the number of fixed per-transaction fees.
• Price in the amount you want to receive using FeeWise's "I want to receive" mode, so fees never eat into your margin.
• For recurring cross-border payouts, get an actual quote from Wise or a similar transfer service and compare it against your card processor's international rate — the cheaper option can vary by corridor and amount.
• Once your monthly volume climbs into the tens of thousands of dollars, ask your processor about interchange-plus or custom pricing — published rates are a starting point, not a ceiling.