Why is Stripe charging me 4.4% instead of 2.9%?

Stripe’s 2.9% + 30¢ rate (US) applies only to US-issued cards. International cards are charged 4.4% + 30¢. If your customer paid with a card issued outside the US, that’s where the extra 1.5% comes from. Toggle "International card" in the calculator’s advanced options to match.

Does Stripe refund fees on refunds?

No. When you refund a customer, Stripe returns the principal but keeps the original processing fee. Partial refunds work the same way — Stripe still keeps the full original fee. The Refund mode in this calculator models the exact net loss for any refund scenario.

What’s the cheapest payment method on Stripe?

For US merchants: ACH Direct Debit, at 0.8% capped at $5. So a $1,000 ACH transaction costs you $5 — versus $29.30 if charged to a domestic card. The catch is that ACH is slower (3–5 business days to settle) and not all customer types will use it. For card-only customers, US-issued domestic cards at 2.9% + 30¢ are usually the cheapest. The calculator’s comparison view shows side-by-side rates so you can decide which methods to promote.

Can I pass Stripe fees to my customers?

Sometimes yes, depending on your country, payment method, and customer type. Card surcharging is legal in most US states and Canada (with disclosure rules), but illegal in most of the EU and UK for consumer transactions. Stripe also offers a "calculate fee" API for B2B services where surcharging is more common. This calculator focuses on what Stripe charges you; whether you can pass it on is a separate question that depends on your local regulations.

What’s the difference between Stripe Standard and Stripe Connect fees?

Standard Stripe charges your account directly — your customers pay you, Stripe takes its fee, you receive the rest. Stripe Connect adds platform infrastructure for marketplaces and SaaS: customers pay through your platform, money is split between your platform’s account and the connected account that delivered the service, with each party paying their share of fees. Standard Connect adds no extra fee on processing. Express and Custom add 0.25%. Cross-border (platform and connected account in different countries) adds another 0.25%.

Is this calculator accurate?

Every fee component is sourced from Stripe’s official per-country pricing pages, with the source URL surfaced under every calculation. The data is reviewed quarterly. We display the version and last-verified date in the footer of every result. That said: your account may have negotiated rates that differ from the published rates (especially over $80k MRR), and there are edge-case fees we don’t model (Issuing, Treasury, Identity edge cases). For exact statement reconciliation, your Stripe Dashboard is the source of truth — this calculator is for forecasting and education.

Does my data leave the browser?

No. Every calculation runs in your browser using fee tables bundled with the page. Nothing — not transaction amounts, not country, not anything — is sent to a server. You can verify in DevTools: open Network, calculate a fee, observe zero outgoing requests after the initial page load.

When was the fee data last updated?

See the badge under any result for the exact lastVerified date. The full version history is on the /tools/stripe-fee-calculator/changelog page. Stripe doesn’t change pricing often, but when they do we update within a quarter and bump the version. You can subscribe to the changelog page or watch this tool on DevZone.

Stripe Fee Calculator

Estimate Stripe fees for any transaction in seconds — 20 countries, every payment method, Stripe Connect, Subscriptions, Refunds, and Disputes. Calculate forward, reverse ("how much should I charge?"), or in bulk from CSV. 100% in your browser.

Last updated: May 2026

What it does

Forward and reverse modes

Enter a transaction amount and instantly see the Stripe fee plus what you actually receive. Or flip to reverse mode — enter what you want to receive, and the calculator works out the gross amount you need to charge (correctly handling the fixed-fee component, which most reverse calculators get wrong).

20 countries, all payment methods

Stripe’s rates differ by merchant country, card origin, payment method, and even card type. This calculator carries the full fee table for the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, Ireland, and 12 EU member states — across cards, ACH, SEPA, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Klarna, Afterpay, Cash App, Alipay, and WeChat Pay.

Refund and dispute scenarios

When a transaction is refunded, Stripe does not return the original processing fee — a fact that surprises a lot of merchants. The Refund/Dispute mode shows the exact net loss for full refunds, partial refunds, and disputes won, lost, or accepted. Including the $15 dispute fee retained by Stripe when you lose a chargeback.

Stripe Connect (platform/marketplace)

Standard, Express, and Custom Connect each have different fee structures, plus a cross-border surcharge when the platform and connected account live in different countries. The Connect calculator splits the settlement so you see exactly what the platform receives, what the connected account receives, and what the application fee comes to.

Subscriptions, Tax, Radar, Identity

Toggle Stripe Billing (0.5% on recurring), Stripe Tax (0.5% on every taxed transaction), Radar for Fraud Teams ($0.05 per screen), and Stripe Identity ($1.50 per verification) — each adds its own line to the breakdown, and you see the cumulative effective rate.

Bulk CSV calculation

Paste a CSV of transactions (amount, currency, country, method) and get fees calculated for every row plus totals. Useful for forecasting monthly Stripe costs, auditing past statements, or estimating Connect fees across a marketplace — entirely client-side, no upload, no account.

How to use Stripe Fee Calculator

1
Enter the transaction amount
Type the amount the customer is being charged. The calculator updates live — no button to click.
2
Pick country and payment method
Defaults to your auto-detected country and standard card. Change either if needed. Currency follows from your country, but you can override for cross-border scenarios.
3
Read the breakdown
The headline shows what you receive. Below it, every fee component is itemized with the exact formula — base processing, international surcharge, currency conversion, Stripe Tax, Stripe Billing, Connect platform fee, and so on.
4
Switch modes if needed
Use the tabs to flip to Reverse (target receive amount), Refund/Dispute (net loss scenarios), Connect (platform/connected account split), or Bulk (CSV mode). All four modes share the same fee data and breakdowns.
5
Share or export
Copy the permalink — your inputs are encoded in the URL, so anyone opening the link sees the same calculation. Or export the breakdown as a PDF or plain-text summary for invoicing, accounting, or pasting into Slack.

When to use this

SaaS founder forecasting margins

You charge $49/mo, your average customer is in the US, paying with a domestic card, and you have Stripe Tax enabled. You want to know what your gross margin looks like at 1,000 customers. Switch to Annual mode, enter your assumptions, and see the projected monthly and yearly Stripe spend with effective rate.

Marketplace builder estimating Connect fees

You’re building a two-sided marketplace where sellers in 8 countries process payments to buyers in 30+. Use the Connect calculator with the cross-border toggle to see exactly how much Stripe takes off the top, how much your platform earns from the application fee, and what the seller actually receives.

Freelancer charging international clients

You’re a UK consultant invoicing a US client for £2,000. Currency conversion plus international card surcharge means you’ll receive less than the simple percentage suggests. Run the calculator with country=GB, international card, currency conversion enabled, and you’ll see the full breakdown — plus a one-click PDF for your records.

E-commerce optimizing payment-method mix

Your store accepts cards, Klarna, and Afterpay. Use the comparison view to see the effective rate for each method on a typical $80 order. The output makes it obvious which methods are eating your margin and which are profitable enough to promote at checkout.

Accountant estimating month-end fees

You’ve been handed a CSV of 1,200 client transactions and asked to forecast the Stripe expense before the next board report. Paste it into Bulk mode, get the per-row fees + totals + weighted effective rate, download the result as a CSV, and ship it.

Common errors & fixes

Stripe is charging me 4.4% but the calculator shows 2.9%: You’re likely processing an international card. In the US, Stripe’s 2.9% rate applies only to US-issued cards. International cards are charged 4.4%. Toggle the "International card" option in advanced mode and the breakdown will match your statement.
My subscription fees are higher than the headline rate: Stripe Billing adds 0.5% on top of the standard processing fee for recurring transactions. Toggle "Recurring / Subscription" in advanced mode to include it. Stripe Tax (0.5%) is also additive if enabled on your account.
My Connect platform isn’t making what I expected: Express and Custom Connect each add 0.25% to the processing fee. If your platform and the connected account are in different countries, there’s an additional 0.25% cross-border surcharge. The Connect calculator’s settlement breakdown shows where every cent goes.
I refunded a customer but Stripe still kept the fee: Correct — that’s Stripe’s policy and it surprises a lot of merchants. Stripe does not return the original processing fee on refunds (full or partial). Use the Refund mode to see the exact net loss and plan your refund policy accordingly.

Technical details

Country coverage at launch	20 countries — US, CA, GB, IE, DE, FR, IT, ES, NL, BE, AT, PT, FI, SE, DK, PL, AU, NZ, SG, JP
Payment methods	Cards (domestic, international, Amex, manually entered), ACH Direct Debit, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Klarna, Afterpay, Cash App, Alipay, WeChat Pay
Calculator modes	Forward, Reverse, Refund/Dispute, Connect, Subscription, Bulk CSV, Annual projection, Comparison
Fee data version	1.0.0
Data source	Stripe’s official per-country pricing pages — links surfaced on every result
Privacy posture	100% client-side. Transaction data never leaves your browser. No accounts.
Sharing	lz-string-compressed URL state (?s=...) — same scheme as DevZone’s other calculators
Performance budget	TTI < 800ms on 4G, total page weight < 400KB gzipped

How Stripe’s fee structure actually works in 2026

Stripe markets a single headline rate per country (2.9% + 30¢ in the US, 1.5% + 20p in the UK for European cards), but every real transaction layers on additional fees that the headline number hides. International cards add 1.5–2% on top of the domestic rate. Settling in a currency different from the charging currency adds another 1–2%. Stripe Billing adds 0.5% on every recurring charge. Stripe Tax adds 0.5% on every taxed transaction. Radar for Fraud Teams adds 5¢ per screened transaction. Premium card networks (American Express in the US) add their own surcharge.

The practical effective rate for a typical SaaS business — international customers, a few percent of cards being premium, Stripe Tax on, recurring billing — lands somewhere between 3.5% and 5.5%, not the 2.9% on the pricing page. The calculator shows you exactly which components contribute, so you can model your real cost rather than the marketing one.

Stripe also operates very differently in different markets. In the UK, the headline rate for European cards is 1.5% + 20p — half the US rate. In Japan, it’s a flat 3.6% with no fixed component. In Singapore, it’s 3.4% + S$0.50 with no domestic/international split. The right fee model depends entirely on which country your Stripe account is registered in, which is why the calculator’s country selector changes everything below it.

Why refunds don’t return fees (and what it costs)

When you refund a customer, Stripe returns the principal — the original transaction amount — but keeps the processing fee. So a refunded $100 US card transaction nets you –$3.20: you returned $100 to the customer, and Stripe kept the $3.20 it charged you originally. Partial refunds work the same way, pro-rated.

This is significant in industries with high refund rates. A $50/mo SaaS with a 14-day refund window, 5% of customers refunding, processes 1,000 transactions a month: you’re paying around $80 a month in non-refundable Stripe fees on transactions that ended up as $0 in revenue. Many merchants don’t notice until they look at the line-item statement.

Disputes are worse. Stripe charges $15 per dispute, retained whether you win or lose — though you get the $15 back if you win. Lose, and you’re out the $15 fee, the original transaction amount (returned to the customer via the chargeback), and the original processing fee. The Refund/Dispute mode in this calculator models all three scenarios: full refund, dispute won, and dispute lost — so you can plug in your actual refund and dispute rates and see what they cost you in a year.

Choosing between Standard, Express, and Custom Connect

Stripe Connect comes in three flavors with very different fee structures. Standard Connect is the simplest: connected accounts have their own dashboard and pay Stripe directly; your platform charges an application fee on top. Express Connect adds 0.25% to processing in exchange for a managed onboarding flow and dashboard hosted by Stripe. Custom Connect also adds 0.25% but gives you full control over the connected account UX (your branding, your dashboard, your support flow).

If platform and connected account are in different countries, an additional 0.25% cross-border surcharge applies — not always obvious until you’re mid-build. The Connect calculator in this tool models all of this: pick Standard/Express/Custom, set your application fee (percent or fixed), toggle cross-border, and see the settlement breakdown — what your platform takes, what the connected account receives, and what Stripe keeps.

The trade-off most marketplaces face: Standard is cheapest but pushes UX off your domain (your sellers see Stripe’s dashboard). Express is the sweet spot for most consumer marketplaces. Custom is right when you’re building something where the connected accounts shouldn’t even know Stripe is involved (e.g., embedded financial products inside a SaaS). The 25 basis points is real money at scale — work it through with the calculator before you commit to a Connect type.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Stripe charging me 4.4% instead of 2.9%?: Stripe’s 2.9% + 30¢ rate (US) applies only to US-issued cards. International cards are charged 4.4% + 30¢. If your customer paid with a card issued outside the US, that’s where the extra 1.5% comes from. Toggle "International card" in the calculator’s advanced options to match.
Does Stripe refund fees on refunds?: No. When you refund a customer, Stripe returns the principal but keeps the original processing fee. Partial refunds work the same way — Stripe still keeps the full original fee. The Refund mode in this calculator models the exact net loss for any refund scenario.
What’s the cheapest payment method on Stripe?: For US merchants: ACH Direct Debit, at 0.8% capped at $5. So a $1,000 ACH transaction costs you $5 — versus $29.30 if charged to a domestic card. The catch is that ACH is slower (3–5 business days to settle) and not all customer types will use it. For card-only customers, US-issued domestic cards at 2.9% + 30¢ are usually the cheapest. The calculator’s comparison view shows side-by-side rates so you can decide which methods to promote.
Can I pass Stripe fees to my customers?: Sometimes yes, depending on your country, payment method, and customer type. Card surcharging is legal in most US states and Canada (with disclosure rules), but illegal in most of the EU and UK for consumer transactions. Stripe also offers a "calculate fee" API for B2B services where surcharging is more common. This calculator focuses on what Stripe charges you; whether you can pass it on is a separate question that depends on your local regulations.
What’s the difference between Stripe Standard and Stripe Connect fees?: Standard Stripe charges your account directly — your customers pay you, Stripe takes its fee, you receive the rest. Stripe Connect adds platform infrastructure for marketplaces and SaaS: customers pay through your platform, money is split between your platform’s account and the connected account that delivered the service, with each party paying their share of fees. Standard Connect adds no extra fee on processing. Express and Custom add 0.25%. Cross-border (platform and connected account in different countries) adds another 0.25%.
Is this calculator accurate?: Every fee component is sourced from Stripe’s official per-country pricing pages, with the source URL surfaced under every calculation. The data is reviewed quarterly. We display the version and last-verified date in the footer of every result. That said: your account may have negotiated rates that differ from the published rates (especially over $80k MRR), and there are edge-case fees we don’t model (Issuing, Treasury, Identity edge cases). For exact statement reconciliation, your Stripe Dashboard is the source of truth — this calculator is for forecasting and education.
Does my data leave the browser?: No. Every calculation runs in your browser using fee tables bundled with the page. Nothing — not transaction amounts, not country, not anything — is sent to a server. You can verify in DevTools: open Network, calculate a fee, observe zero outgoing requests after the initial page load.
When was the fee data last updated?: See the badge under any result for the exact lastVerified date. The full version history is on the /tools/stripe-fee-calculator/changelog page. Stripe doesn’t change pricing often, but when they do we update within a quarter and bump the version. You can subscribe to the changelog page or watch this tool on DevZone.

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