Every card sale splits two ways: what you keep and what the processor takes. The table below shows exactly what Stripe, PayPal and Square keep from a $10 sale, a $100 sale, a $1,000 sale and a $10,000 sale — domestic online card payments in the United States, computed the same way for every row from each provider's own published rate. An international-card row and a manually-keyed-card row are included below the four headline sizes, because both add cost that a plain percentage-and-fixed-fee summary leaves out.
Where a processor does not publish a separate rate for something — Square's manually-keyed rate, for instance — this page says so instead of guessing.
What each processor keeps, by sale size — Stripe vs PayPal vs Square
What each processor keeps, by sale size — Stripe vs PayPal vs Square
Each column is one processor's published online-card rate, and each row is one sale size, computed the same way for every column so they are directly comparable. The four rows above the international and manually-keyed rows use each processor's headline percentage — Stripe and PayPal each publish one flat rate, while Square splits its Free plan (3.3%) from its Plus and Premium plans, which charge less — plus each processor's per-transaction fixed fee, applied to that row's sale size. The international row adds the surcharge each processor charges when the card was issued outside the United States, applied to a $100 sale. The manually-keyed row exists because only one of the three processors compared here — Stripe, which adds 0.5% on top of its standard rate for a card typed in by hand — publishes a separate rate for that kind of entry, instead of tapped, swiped or entered online by the customer.
Why the fixed fee dominates small tickets
Every processor compared on this page charges two things: a percentage of the sale, and a flat fee that does not change with the sale size. On a large order, that flat fee is close to irrelevant — it disappears into the percentage. On a small one, it is the opposite: the flat fee can be the majority of what the processor keeps, and it is the reason two processors with a similar headline percentage can end up keeping very different shares of a small sale. Compare the smallest row in the table above with the largest, and the shift is visible without doing any arithmetic yourself — the fixed fee's share of what the processor keeps shrinks every time the sale size grows, and the percentage's share grows to fill the rest.
Paying with an international card
Cards issued outside the United States cost more to process everywhere, and the international row in the table above shows why: every processor adds a flat percentage surcharge on top of its domestic rate the moment the card was issued abroad, regardless of what currency the sale itself was settled in — 1.5% for Stripe and for Square on every plan, 1.50% for PayPal. That surcharge is where the processors compared here sit closest to each other on a percentage basis — closer than they sit on the domestic rows above it — so switching processors changes your international cost only through the domestic rate underneath the surcharge, not through the surcharge itself.
What this table can't tell you
A fee table like the one above answers a narrow question well: what does the processor keep from one sale. It cannot tell you what that sale is actually worth to your business once the processor, the platform, returns and the cost of finding the customer have all taken their share — and fee schedules get published precisely because every processor is comfortable with everyone seeing them, while margins are not published anywhere, for exactly the opposite reason.
The method we use for that is a free worksheet, The Hidden Margin Teardown Kit. It is a short list of questions you run against any company, product or subscription — including your own — using only public information of the kind cited on this page. If you can read a fee table, you can fill it in.
Figures on this page were collected and cross-checked with the help of AI tools; every one links to the provider's own page and was reviewed by a person before publication.
What these providers do not publish
Blank cells in the table above
Manually keyed card, $100 sale (Stripe only) — PayPal
Manually keyed card, $100 sale (Stripe only) — Square Free
Manually keyed card, $100 sale (Stripe only) — Square Plus & Premium
Limits of this page
These are things we did not verify, listed so you can judge the rest.
Search demand for this page's topic was measured in Bing Webmaster Tools only; Google search volume was not measured.
All four source pages were re-checked on the date shown next to each source below. PayPal has moved its fee page since our first comparison was published; this page cites the current address.
Stripe, PayPal and Square publish their international-card and manually keyed surcharges as percentages only, not as dollar amounts per sale size. Every dollar figure in the table is our arithmetic applied to the sale size in that row, shown step by step under 'How these numbers were computed'.
PayPal does not publish a calculator for these four sale sizes; the PayPal column is entirely our arithmetic from PayPal's published rates.
Square does not publish a separate rate for manually keyed cards on either of its fee pages; that cell is left as 'Not published' rather than estimated.
A short list of questions for working out where a company, product or subscription actually makes its money, using only public information like the pricing pages cited on this page. It opens on the page — no email required.
On a $100 sale, Stripe keeps $3.20 — its 2.9% rate plus the 30¢ per-transaction fee.
How much does PayPal keep from a $100 sale?
On a $100 sale, PayPal keeps $3.98 — a 3.49% rate plus a 0.49 USD fixed fee, more than Stripe or Square keep at this size.
Which processor keeps the least from a $10 sale?
Stripe and Square's Plus and Premium plans both keep $0.59 from a $10 sale, the lowest of the four processor columns compared on this page.
Does paying with an international card change which processor is cheapest?
Yes. On a $100 sale paid with a card issued outside the United States, Stripe and Square's Plus and Premium plans both keep $4.70, Square's Free plan keeps $5.10, and PayPal keeps $5.48 — the most of the four.
What we could not verify
Search demand for this page's topic was measured in Bing Webmaster Tools only; Google search volume was not measured.
All four source pages were re-checked on the date shown next to each source below. PayPal has moved its fee page since our first comparison was published; this page cites the current address.
Stripe, PayPal and Square publish their international-card and manually keyed surcharges as percentages only, not as dollar amounts per sale size. Every dollar figure in the table is our arithmetic applied to the sale size in that row, shown step by step under 'How these numbers were computed'.
PayPal does not publish a calculator for these four sale sizes; the PayPal column is entirely our arithmetic from PayPal's published rates.
Square does not publish a separate rate for manually keyed cards on either of its fee pages; that cell is left as 'Not published' rather than estimated.
Sources
Stripe's Standard plan charges 2.9% + 30 cents per successful online transaction for domestic (US) cards. — https://stripe.com/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Stripe's Standard plan charges a 30-cent fixed fee per successful online transaction for domestic (US) cards, in addition to its percentage rate. — https://stripe.com/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Stripe adds 0.5% to its standard rate for domestic cards that are keyed in manually instead of entered by the customer online. — https://stripe.com/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Stripe adds 1.5% to its standard rate for cards issued outside the United States. — https://stripe.com/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
PayPal adds an additional 1.50% fee on top of the domestic rate for international commercial transactions. — https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Square's Plus and Premium plans charge 2.9% + 30 cents per online or invoiced card payment. — https://squareup.com/us/en/payments/our-fees (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Square charges a 30-cent fixed fee per online or invoiced card payment, on the Free plan as well as Plus and Premium. — https://squareup.com/us/en/payments/our-fees (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Square adds a 1.5% international card fee to payments made on credit or debit cards issued outside the United States, on the Free, Plus and Premium plans alike. — https://squareup.com/us/en/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
