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Processors take their cut from the amount your client pays, not the amount you wanted to keep — so just adding "2.9% + $0.30" to an invoice quietly leaves you short. This grosses it up the right way, and works the other direction too: tell it a charge, get the exact amount that lands in your account.
Nothing you type leaves your browser. Fee rates vary by processor, plan, card type, and country — always confirm your own. This isn't financial advice.
Almost every online processor — Stripe, PayPal, Square, and the rest — charges the same shape of fee: a percentage of the transaction plus a small fixed amount, often quoted as something like "2.9% + $0.30." The catch that trips up most freelancers is what the percentage applies to. The fee is taken from the amount the client pays, not the amount you wanted to receive. So if you're owed $1,000 and you simply add 2.9% + $0.30 to your invoice, you'll still come up short — because once the client pays that slightly higher number, the percentage is recalculated on the bigger amount.
To actually pocket a target amount you have to solve for the charge, not just mark it up. That's the "gross up" the calculator does:
Flip to Net from charge and it runs the simple forward direction instead: it takes a charge you name, applies the percentage and the fixed fee, and shows the net that lands in your account along with the effective rate — the total fee as a share of the charge, which is always a little higher than the headline percentage because of the fixed cents.
That little "+ $0.30" is nearly invisible on a $1,000 invoice — it adds about three-hundredths of a percent. But on a $5 charge it is the fee: thirty cents plus 2.9% is an effective rate north of 8%. If you sell low-priced items, templates, or take lots of small payments, the fixed fee is the part to watch, and it's the strongest argument for batching work into fewer, larger invoices. Enter a small charge in Net from charge mode and watch the effective rate climb to see exactly how much.
Grossing the fee into your price is legal and common, but surcharging rules vary by card network, by your processor's terms, and by where you and your client are — some places restrict or ban it outright. Many freelancers skip the politics entirely and simply build processing costs into their rate from the start, the same way they build in software and taxes. If that's your approach, the rate calculator is where that overhead belongs.
Because the processor charges its percentage on the total the client pays, not on your original amount. If you add 2.9% to $1,000 and bill $1,029, the 2.9% is then taken from $1,029 — leaving you with less than $1,000. The correct gross-up divides by (1 − the fee rate) instead of multiplying, which is exactly what this calculator does so you land on your target to the cent.
Treat them as a convenient starting point, not gospel. Processing rates change over time and differ by plan, card type, currency, whether the payment is online or in person, and your country. The presets fill in widely published figures, but you should confirm your processor's current rate and edit the percentage and fixed-fee fields to match. The math is exact regardless of the numbers you put in.
It's the total fee divided by the amount charged — the real percentage you're paying once the fixed fee is folded in. It's always a touch above the headline percentage, and the gap grows as the charge shrinks: the fixed fee is a bigger slice of a small payment. On a $5 charge a "2.9% + $0.30" fee has an effective rate over 8%; on a $5,000 charge it's barely above 2.9%.
Only if you include them yourself. Many processors add an extra percentage for cross-border cards or currency conversion (often around 1–2%). If that applies to you, add it into the percentage field — for example, enter 4.4 instead of 2.9 to layer a 1.5% international fee on top. The calculator works with whatever combined percentage and fixed fee you give it.
No. Every calculation runs entirely in your browser — nothing you type is sent to a server or stored. The link in your address bar updates so you can bookmark or share a scenario, but it only contains the numbers and direction you chose.
Keep going
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