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.
- Figures below use PayPal's US rate card; other countries use their own published rates.
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 a flat 2.99% domestically, with no fixed fee — invoices and PayPal Checkout sit in separate rate tables and do add one. Friends & Family is meant for personal transfers between people who know each other, and it's free domestically 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%. 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. Friends & Family works differently: an international personal transfer costs 5% of the amount, with a minimum of $0.99 and a maximum of $4.99, whether it's funded by bank, balance or card — so the bank-funded option that's free at home stops being free once it crosses a border.
The fixed fee matters more than it looks on small amounts
Goods & Services payments carry no fixed fee, but card-funded Friends & Family transfers add a flat $0.30, and invoices or PayPal Checkout add $0.49 per transaction. A fixed fee like that is nearly invisible on a $2,000 payment but meaningfully eats into a $20 one — 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 builds a conversion spread into the exchange rate it applies, on top of the transaction fee. Its US fee pages put that spread at 4% when you pay for goods or services in another currency or send money that arrives in a different currency, and 3% on all other conversions — unless PayPal discloses a different amount during the transaction. This calculator leaves it out because it's baked into the exchange rate rather than charged as a separate fee, and which rate applies depends on the type of transaction, so it's worth checking the rate PayPal shows you against the 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 or international transfers), while domestic bank- or balance-funded transfers cost neither side anything.