What this calculator does
- Estimates Stripe's card fee for a single online payment, using the rates Stripe publishes for the country your account is registered in.
- Adds the extras Stripe charges on top — international cards, currency conversion and, in the US and Canada, manually entered cards — since they stack rather than replace the base rate.
- Covers the US, the UK, ten euro countries, Switzerland, Canada and Australia. Anywhere else, choose Other and enter the rate from Stripe's pricing page for your country.
The base rate, and why it's rarely the whole story
Stripe's headline US rate is 2.9% + $0.30 per successful card charge, and for a purely domestic, online-checkout, single-currency payment, that's the entire fee. The moment any of those conditions change — the card was issued abroad, a currency conversion happens, or the card number was typed in rather than tapped or entered through checkout — an extra surcharge applies on top, and more than one can apply to the same transaction at once.
International cards cost more
This surcharge is about where the card itself was issued, not where the cardholder happens to be sitting when they pay. A card issued by a bank outside the country your Stripe account is registered in counts as international, even if the person paying is physically in your country at the time. A US account pays 1.5% extra (4.4% in total) and a Canadian account 0.8% extra. A UK account pays 2.5% for EEA cards and 3.15% for cards from anywhere else, and a euro-area account pays the same 2.5% for UK cards.
Currency conversion: +1% in the US, +2% elsewhere
This is separate from the international-card surcharge and triggers whenever Stripe converts the payment into the currency your account settles in. It can apply even on a domestic card if the customer pays in a different currency than your account uses — and it can stack with the international surcharge if both conditions are true at once.
Manually entered cards: +0.5% (US and Canada)
Typing a card number in directly — over the phone, or into a manual-entry field — carries more fraud risk than a chip, tap, or standard checkout-form payment, since there's no chip or contactless authentication backing it up. Stripe prices that extra risk in as a small additional surcharge.
These stack, and the worst case adds up
On a US account, a card that's international, needs currency conversion, and is manually entered picks up all three surcharges at once: 2.9% + 1.5% + 1% + 0.5% = 5.9%, plus the fixed $0.30. That's roughly double the advertised headline rate, which is exactly why it's worth checking which of these actually apply before assuming Stripe's cost is simply "2.9% + 30 cents."
Why the fixed fee still matters on small charges
The percentage gets most of the attention, but the flat $0.30 (20p in the UK, €0.25 in the euro area) is a fixed cost no matter the transaction size — on a $500 invoice it barely registers, but on a $5 microtransaction it can be a bigger share of the total fee than the percentage itself. If a business collects a lot of small payments, that fixed fee is worth modeling separately rather than folding into a single blended "percentage fee" assumption.
Rates differ by country, not just by card
Stripe's rates depend on the country your account is registered in, not on where you or your customer live. A UK account pays 1.5% + 20p for a standard UK card, about half the US rate, and accounts in the euro area pay 1.5% + €0.25 for a standard EEA card. Premium cards, such as corporate and some rewards cards, cost 2.8% in both. Pick your account's country above; if it isn't listed, choose Other and enter the rate from Stripe's pricing page for your country.