PayPal's fees, cheapest in person, dearest online.
2.29% + 9¢ card present is the best published in-person rate in this comparison. 3.49% + 49¢ for PayPal Checkout is among the worst online rates. Which one applies to you decides everything.
What this page settles.
Three questions, in the order most people ask them.
What it actually is
PayPal is two things at once, and most comparisons only count one of them.
It is a payment processor: an online checkout, a card-present product through Zettle readers, invoicing, subscriptions and payouts, with a published fee schedule for all of it.
It is also a payment method — a button a meaningful share of buyers trust and prefer, and that some will abandon a checkout for lacking. That second role is why many online sellers run PayPal alongside a cheaper processor rather than instead of one, and why comparing it purely on rate misses what it is for.
Structurally, PayPal is an aggregator: you are a sub-merchant under PayPal’s master account rather than an underwritten merchant in your own right. Fast to start, and the risk review happens after you are trading. Merchant account versus aggregator.
Every published price
| PayPal | |
|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat rate |
| In person | 2.29% + $0.09 card-present through PayPal Point of Sale / Zettle |
| Keyed | 3.49% + $0.09 manual card entry in person |
| Online | 2.99% + $0.49 standard cards; PayPal Checkout and Venmo 3.49% + $0.49; advanced card payments 2.89% + $0.29 |
| Monthly | $0 on standard; advanced products priced separately |
| Contract | Not published |
| Monthly minimum | Not stated |
| Funding | Not stated on the fee page; instant bank withdrawal 1.50%, standard withdrawal no fee |
| Chargeback fee | $20.00 per chargeback on transactions not paid through a PayPal account or guest checkout |
| Hardware | Sold outright |
| Account type | Aggregator (sub-merchant under PayPal) |
PayPal publishes these at www.paypal.com. Read 2026-10-08.
Also published:
- Pay by Bank (ACH) 1%, capped at $10.00
Published prices change. These are list prices for a business buying direct, read on the date above, and a quote you are given may differ.
What it costs in practice
The spread between PayPal’s cheapest and dearest published rate is wide enough that the channel decides your cost entirely.
In person at 2.29% + $0.09, a business with a $45 average ticket doing $30,000 a month (667 transactions) pays $687 + $60.03 = $747.03, an effective rate of 2.49%. That is the best published in-person figure on this site.
Online at 2.99% + $0.49 on a $60 average order, $30,000 a month (500 orders) is $897 + $245 = $1,142, an effective rate of 3.81%. Through PayPal Checkout at 3.49% + $0.49 it is $1,292, or 4.31%.
Those are very different businesses paying very different prices to the same company, and the difference is nothing to do with negotiation.
The $20 chargeback fee is published and is at the higher end. On a business with a 0.5% dispute rate across 500 monthly orders, that is two or three disputes a month and $40 to $60 before the reversed sales. Chargeback fees.
Pay by Bank at 1%, capped at $10.00 is the line to notice for anyone invoicing large amounts. On a $5,000 invoice that is $10 against $150 on a card. B2B processing.
What it is good at
The in-person rate is the best published figure here. 2.29% + 9¢ beats Square, SumUp, Clover direct, Chase and Shopify. For a mobile trade or a small counter taking almost everything in person, that is the headline and it is a real saving.
The fee schedule is long and specific. Every channel, every product, the chargeback fee, the withdrawal fees, the payout rates. More disclosure than most.
The button converts. Offering PayPal online generally lifts conversion, because some buyers will only pay that way. That effect can easily outweigh the rate difference on the orders it saves.
Pay by Bank is cheap and capped, which makes PayPal a reasonable invoicing tool for larger amounts.
No monthly fee on standard products, no contract published, nothing to sign.
Where it costs you
The online rates. 2.99% + 49¢ for standard cards and 3.49% + 49¢ for Checkout are at the expensive end of this market, and the 49¢ fixed fee hurts particularly at smaller order values. On a $20 order, 49¢ is 2.45% on its own.
The schedule is long enough to get lost in. Venmo, invoicing, subscriptions, payouts, multi-currency and micropayments all carry their own lines. The headline rate is one of many, and the one that applies to you may not be the one you read.
The $20 chargeback fee, and PayPal’s own buyer-protection disputes run on PayPal’s process rather than the card networks’. If you run PayPal alongside another processor you have two dispute regimes to learn.
Hold risk. Aggregator structure, post-hoc review, and PayPal has a long history of holds that merchants find hard to resolve quickly. If a two-week hold would stop you trading, that is the argument against. When an aggregator freezes you.
The point-of-sale product is a payment tool, not a business platform. No real inventory, staff or reporting layer in the way Square has one.
Who it suits, and who it does not
PayPal suits a mobile trade, market stall, pop-up or small counter taking cards in person, where 2.29% + 9¢ is simply the best published deal available and the lack of software does not matter. PayPal against SumUp and against Square.
PayPal also suits every online seller as a secondary method, sitting alongside a cheaper processor, for the conversion it adds rather than the rate it charges.
PayPal does not suit an online store as its primary processor at any real volume — the rates are too high and Stripe or an interchange-plus account costs less — nor a business that needs operational software, nor one where a funding hold would be an emergency.
What we charge
Interchange + 0.50% + 10¢ in person, interchange + 0.75% + 25¢ keyed, with no contract, no monthly fee and no monthly minimum.
PayPal publishes its rate, which makes this easy to settle: work out your effective rate from a statement and compare it to interchange plus our published margin at your own card mix. Below roughly $12,000 a month in card volume we will usually tell you to stay where you are.
While we are on the subject
Is PayPal cheaper than Square?
In person, yes — 2.29% + 9¢ against 2.6% + 15¢. Online, no: PayPal Checkout is 3.49% + 49¢ against Square’s 2.9% + 30¢ on its paid tiers.
Why is my PayPal rate higher than I expected?
Almost always the channel. PayPal’s rates vary widely between card present, keyed, standard online cards and PayPal Checkout, and the schedule has separate lines for Venmo, invoicing, subscriptions and payouts.
What does a PayPal chargeback cost?
$20.00 per chargeback on transactions not paid through a PayPal account or guest checkout, plus the reversed sale.
Should I offer PayPal alongside another processor?
Many online sellers do, for the conversion rather than the rate. Measure whether it is actually converting orders before deciding.