Paddle Fee Calculator

Guide

About the Paddle Fee calculator

Our Paddle fee calculator is a free tool that shows exactly what Paddle takes on a sale and what lands in your payout. Paddle is a merchant of record (MoR) for software and digital products, which makes it popular with SaaS founders and indie developers who want to sell globally without becoming tax-compliance experts. But because Paddle's fee bundles several things together, it's easy to misjudge the real cost — this calculator makes it clear. Enter your price and see the fee and your net instantly.

What "merchant of record" means for the fee

The most important thing to understand about Paddle is that it isn't just a payment processor — it's the legal seller of your product. That means Paddle's 5% + $0.50 fee already includes card processing, fraud and chargeback handling, and the calculation, collection and remittance of sales tax and VAT in every country you sell to. With a plain payment gateway you'd pay a processing fee and then separately handle global tax compliance yourself (or pay another service for it); with Paddle, it's one fee. So when you compare Paddle's 5% against a processor's 2.9%, you're not comparing like with like — the processor's number doesn't include tax compliance, which for a global software business is a significant hidden cost and risk.

How the fee is calculated

The math is simple: fee = sale price × 5% + $0.50, and your payout = price − fee. Because of the fixed $0.50, the effective rate is much higher on low-priced products: a $5 sale costs $0.75 (15%), a $20 sale costs $1.50 (7.5%), and a $100 sale costs $5.50 (5.5%), approaching the headline 5% as prices rise. The calculator shows the effective rate so you can see exactly what a given price point costs. If you sell subscriptions or one-off products and want to net a specific amount, switch to reverse mode and it grosses the price up so your payout hits the target.

Who this tool is for

SaaS founders use it to model net revenue after Paddle's cut; indie developers and digital-product creators use it to price products so the fixed fee doesn't eat small sales; and finance teams use it to reconcile payouts. A frequent question is "Paddle vs Lemon Squeezy" — both are merchants of record at 5% + $0.50, so on a domestic sale they cost the same; the difference shows up on international cards and add-ons, which our comparison calculator breaks down. Everything runs in your browser with no signup.

Accuracy and important notes

Paddle's standard rate is 5% + $0.50, but products under $10 and large or scaling companies are directed to custom pricing, so we store the rate in a dated file and stamp the page with a "fees last verified" date. Remember the fee is genuinely all-in for an MoR — it would be a mistake to add a separate processing fee on top — but currency conversion on payouts and specific billing features can carry their own costs. Always confirm the final figure in your Paddle dashboard before relying on it, but for fast, dependable estimates of what you'll keep on a sale, this calculator gives you a clear answer in seconds.