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 — the table says so instead of guessing.
| Stripe | PayPal | Square Free | Square Plus & Premium | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10 sale (domestic online card) | $0.591 2 | $0.845 6 | $0.638 10 | $0.599 10 |
| $100 sale (domestic online card) | $3.201 2 | $3.985 6 | $3.608 10 | $3.209 10 |
| $1,000 sale (domestic online card) | $29.301 2 | $35.395 6 | $33.308 10 | $29.309 10 |
| $10,000 sale (domestic online card) | $290.301 2 | $349.495 6 | $330.308 10 | $290.309 10 |
| International card, $100 sale | $4.701 2 4 | $5.485 6 7 | $5.108 10 11 | $4.709 10 11 |
| Manually keyed card, $100 sale (Stripe only) | $3.701 2 3 | — | — | — |
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 on that condition — for Stripe and Square, a card issued outside the United States; for PayPal, an international commercial transaction, which PayPal defines by the transaction rather than by where the card was issued — 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.
Every processor compared above 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.
Cards issued outside the United States cost more to process with Stripe and Square, and the international row in the table above shows why: both add a flat 1.5% surcharge on top of their domestic rate the moment the card was issued abroad, regardless of what currency the sale itself was settled in. PayPal's 1.50% surcharge in that same row applies on a different condition — an international commercial transaction, which PayPal defines by the transaction rather than by where the card was issued. 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.
On a $100 sale, Stripe keeps $3.20 — its 2.9% rate plus the 30¢ per-transaction fee.
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.
Stripe and Square's Plus and Premium plans both keep $0.59 from a $10 sale, the lowest of the four processor columns in the comparison above.
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 and Square's Free plan keeps $5.10; on a $100 sale that is an international commercial transaction, PayPal keeps $5.48 — the most of the four.
Not on the provider's pricing page:
Gathered with AI assistance; every figure was checked against the linked provider page and signed off by Seonrye Kim.