Stripe fee calculator
Enter a price and see exactly how much Stripe charges and what lands in your account — with editable rates for international cards, currency conversion, or your country's pricing. Flip it around to find what to charge so you receive a target amount.
Defaults are Stripe's published US online card pricing. Rates vary by country and product — check stripe.com/pricing. Refunds don't return the original fee.
How Stripe's fee is calculated
One line covers it: a percentage of the price plus a fixed fee per charge.
On Stripe's published US pricing that's 2.9% + 30¢, so a $49 sale costs $1.72 and you keep $47.28. The percentage part is fair; the 30¢ is what quietly punishes small prices. On a $5 sale the effective fee is 8.9%, on $49 it's 3.5%, and on $249 it drops to 3.0% — the same headline rate, three very different realities. If you sell anything under $10, that fixed fee is your real pricing problem.
The refund gotcha
When you refund a customer, Stripe returns their money in full — but keeps the original processing fee. Refund that $49 sale and you're down $1.72 for the privilege of having briefly held someone's money. I price this into anything with a money-back guarantee.
Stripe direct vs merchant of record
Stripe direct is the cheapest way to take cards, but you are the seller of record: registering, collecting, and remitting sales tax and VAT worldwide is your job. Merchant-of-record platforms take that over — Freemius runs about 7%, Lemon Squeezy 5% + 50¢, Gumroad 10% — and remit global tax for you. Whether the spread over Stripe's 2.9% is worth it depends entirely on how many tax jurisdictions your customers live in. Neither answer is wrong; paying the higher rate without knowing you're buying tax compliance is.
Why this calculator is on a forms site
Core Forms runs Stripe checkout directly on WordPress payment forms, and its licensing server fulfills orders only after Stripe's verified webhook confirms payment. I built this calculator because I kept doing this math by hand while pricing digital products — now it does the arithmetic, including the reverse question: what to charge so a target amount actually reaches you.
Stripe fee questions
How much does Stripe charge per transaction?
Stripe’s published US online card pricing is 2.9% plus 30¢ per successful charge. International cards add 1.5%, and currency conversion adds another 1% on top. Rates differ by country and by product, so check Stripe’s pricing page for your account’s exact numbers before you rely on the defaults.
What are Stripe’s fees on $100?
At the standard US rate, a $100 charge costs 2.9% ($2.90) plus the 30¢ fixed fee — $3.20 total, so you keep $96.80. That works out to an effective rate of 3.2%. An international card on the same $100 would cost $4.70, leaving you $95.30.
Does Stripe refund fees when I refund a customer?
No. When you refund a payment, the customer gets their full amount back, but Stripe keeps the original processing fee. Refund a $49 sale and you are out roughly $1.72 with nothing to show for it — a real cost worth pricing in if your product sees frequent refunds.
Does Stripe charge monthly fees?
Standard Stripe pricing has no monthly subscription — you pay per successful transaction and nothing when you sell nothing. Some Stripe products and add-ons bill separately, though: certain billing tools, advanced reporting, and premium support carry their own charges. For plain card payments, per-transaction fees are the whole bill.
Is Stripe or a merchant of record better for sales tax?
Stripe processes payments; you remain the seller, responsible for registering, collecting, and remitting sales tax or VAT everywhere you owe it. A merchant of record like Freemius or Lemon Squeezy resells your product and handles global tax for you — in exchange for a noticeably higher cut of every sale.