What this calculator does
- Estimates PayPal's fee for both Goods & Services (business/client) payments and Friends & Family (personal) transfers.
- Accounts for the extra cost of international payments and card-funded personal transfers — the two most common surprises.
- Uses PayPal's published US rate card; other countries publish their own fixed-fee amounts that can differ slightly.
Goods & Services vs Friends & Family: pick the right one
PayPal's standard rate for receiving a Goods & Services payment — the type meant for business, freelance work, and anything you're actually selling — is 2.99% + $0.49 domestically. Friends & Family is meant for personal transfers between people who know each other, and it's free when funded from a bank account or PayPal balance (2.90% + $0.30 if the sender uses a card instead). Using Friends & Family to dodge the fee on a real client payment is against PayPal's terms and drops both buyer and seller protection — the lower fee isn't worth losing that safety net on money you're actually owed for work.
Why international payments cost more
A cross-border Goods & Services payment adds an extra 1.5% on top of the standard domestic rate, bringing the total to roughly 4.49% + $0.49. This cross-border fee applies simply because sender and receiver are in different countries, regardless of which currency is involved — and it's charged on top of any separate currency conversion cost, not instead of it.
The fixed fee matters more than it looks on small amounts
A flat $0.49 (or $0.30) fee is nearly invisible on a $2,000 invoice, but it meaningfully eats into a $20 payment — on a small transaction, the fixed portion can be a bigger share of the total cost than the percentage itself. Factor that in before setting a minimum invoice amount, or before deciding whether PayPal is the cheapest way to collect a specific payment.
Currency conversion: the cost the fee alone doesn't show
If a payment needs to convert between currencies, PayPal applies a separate conversion markup on top of the transaction fee — typically a few percent above the mid-market exchange rate, and not published as a single fixed number the way the transaction fee is. This calculator doesn't estimate that cost since it isn't a stable published rate, but it's worth checking the actual exchange rate PayPal applies against the real market rate before assuming the cross-border fee is the only extra cost on an international payment.
Who actually pays the fee
For Goods & Services, the fee is deducted from what the recipient receives — the amount a client sends isn't reduced, but what lands in the seller's account is. For Friends & Family, the sender is the one charged when a fee applies (card-funded transfers), while bank- or balance-funded transfers cost neither side anything.