How we calculate the effective rate
Most “Stripe fee calculators” multiply one amount by 2.9% and add 30¢. That answers a question nobody has: what a single charge costs. What you actually want is the blended effective rate across a month of real transactions, because that is the number that shows up as a percentage of your revenue. Start with your monthly card volume and your transaction count. Dividing the two gives your average ticket, the value that decides how much the fixed fee hurts. From there each component is straightforward, and every one is shown on the page so you can check it:
- Base card percentage: volume times the base rate (2.9% online, 2.7% in-person).
- Fixed per-transaction fee: transaction count times the fixed fee (30¢ online, 5¢ in-person).
- International surcharge: the international share of volume times 1.5%.
- Currency conversion surcharge: the conversion share of volume times 1%.
- Stripe Billing (optional): recurring card volume times 0.7%.
- ACH Direct Debit: 0.8% per transaction on the bank-debit share, capped at $5.00 each.
Total fees are the sum of those components. The effective blended rate is total fees divided by total volume, times one hundred. Everything recomputes live as you move a slider or edit a rate.
Stripe’s published US standard rates, 2026
The calculator ships pre-filled with Stripe’s public US standard pricing, year-tagged so you can see when it was last confirmed. Every value is editable, so negotiated interchange-plus pricing or a future rate change is a one-field edit. The current published figures are:
- Online cards: 2.9% + $0.30 per successful charge.
- In-person (Terminal): 2.7% + $0.05 per successful charge.
- International cards: +1.5%.
- Currency conversion: +1% when a conversion is required.
- ACH Direct Debit: 0.8%, capped at $5.00 per transaction.
- Stripe Billing (recurring): 0.7% of Billing volume.
These come straight from Stripe’s pricing page and its local payment methods page, both read in 2026. Stripe changes prices without much notice, so confirm against your own pricing page and latest invoice before you budget. Where a surcharge is not clearly published as a single number, the calculator exposes it as an editable default rather than pretending to a false precision.
Why the average ticket is the whole story
The fixed fee is what turns a friendly headline rate into a painful effective one. It does not scale with the charge, so it lands hardest on small tickets. At Stripe’s 2.9% + 30¢ online rate, with no international or conversion mix, the effective rate at different average tickets is roughly:
- $5 ticket: 2.9% plus 30¢ over $5 (6.0%) = about 8.9%.
- $15 ticket: 2.9% + 2.0% = about 4.9%.
- $50 ticket: 2.9% + 0.6% = about 3.5%.
- $100 ticket: 2.9% + 0.3% = about 3.2%.
- $500 ticket: 2.9% + 0.06% = about 2.96%.
A café on a $5 ticket pays close to 9% on the same published rate at which a B2B tool on a $500 ticket pays under 3%. If your tickets are small, cutting transaction count — bundling, order minimums, batching — moves your rate more than shaving the percentage ever will. The live table inside the calculator recomputes this for whatever base rate and mix you set.
Three worked examples
Online SaaS: $50,000 over 1,000 charges
Average ticket $50, online rate, 8% international, 4% needing conversion. Base percentage is $50,000 × 2.9% = $1,450. Fixed is 1,000 × 30¢ = $300. International surcharge is 8% of $50,000 × 1.5% = $60. Conversion is 4% of $50,000 × 1% = $20. Total is $1,830, an effective rate of about 3.66% — well above the 2.9% banner, and the fixed fee alone is $300 of it.
Small-ticket café: $20,000 over 4,000 charges
Average ticket $5, in-person Terminal rate. Base is $20,000 × 2.7% = $540. Fixed is 4,000 × 5¢ = $200. With a little international traffic the total is about $746, an effective rate near 3.73%. Even in-person, where the fixed fee is only a nickel, a $5 ticket still lifts the rate a full point above the 2.7% headline, because 4,000 nickels is real money on $20,000 of volume.
High-ticket B2B: $200,000 over 400 charges
Average ticket $500. On cards the fixed 30¢ barely registers, so the effective rate sits just above the base. Move a quarter of that volume to ACH and the $5 cap replaces the percentage on those large invoices — a $500 charge that costs $14.80 on a card costs $4.00 on ACH — pulling the blended rate down noticeably. This is the case where bank debit earns its keep, and the ACH slider shows exactly how much.
What the calculator does not include
The number here is Stripe’s processing fee on the mix you describe, and only that. A real statement can carry more, and pretending otherwise is how teams get surprised. Budget for these separately:
- Dispute and chargeback fees.
- Refund handling, where Stripe keeps the fixed fee on some refunded charges.
- Instant payout fees.
- Radar for Fraud Teams, Tax, and other add-on products.
- Failed-payment and bank-account-validation fees on ACH.
- Interchange-plus or custom negotiated pricing for large merchants.
Reconcile against your real Stripe dashboard fees before committing a budget, and treat any surcharge you cannot confirm on Stripe’s own pricing page as an editable estimate.
Sources
- Stripe standard US pricing — cards, in-person, international, currency conversion (stripe.com/pricing, 2026)
- Stripe local payment methods — ACH Direct Debit rate and per-transaction cap (stripe.com/pricing/local-payment-methods, 2026)
FAQ
What is an effective (blended) Stripe rate, and why is it higher than 2.9%?
The effective rate is your total monthly fees divided by your total monthly volume, expressed as a percent. The headline 2.9% + 30¢ is only the percentage half of one online charge; the 30¢ fixed fee, international surcharges, currency conversion, and any Billing or ACH share all fold in too. Add them across a real month of transactions and the blended number almost always lands above the sticker rate. This calculator adds up every fee component and divides by volume so you see the rate you actually pay, not the one on the pricing banner.
Why do small-ticket businesses pay a much higher effective rate?
Because the fixed per-transaction fee does not shrink with the charge. On Stripe's standard US online rate the fixed part is 30¢. On a $5 average ticket that 30¢ is 6.0% all by itself, so even before the 2.9% you are near 9%. On a $500 ticket the same 30¢ is 0.06%, a rounding error. That is the single biggest driver of a surprising effective rate: a coffee shop and a B2B invoicing tool can be on the identical published rate and pay wildly different real percentages. The average-ticket table on this page makes the gap explicit.
What are Stripe's standard US rates in 2026, and where do they come from?
As published on stripe.com/pricing for the US standard plan in 2026: online cards are 2.9% + $0.30 per successful charge, in-person (Terminal) is 2.7% + $0.05, international cards add 1.5%, currency conversion adds 1%, and ACH Direct Debit is 0.8% capped at $5.00 per transaction. Stripe Billing adds 0.7% of recurring volume. Every rate in the calculator is pre-filled with these numbers, year-tagged, and editable, so if Stripe moves a price or you have negotiated custom pricing you can type your own and the blended rate recomputes.
How do international cards and currency conversion change my rate?
They stack on top of the base rate for the affected share of volume. An international card adds 1.5%, and if the payment also has to be converted to your settlement currency that adds another 1%. So a US business taking a European card in euros pays 2.9% + 1.5% + 1% = 5.4% + 30¢ on that charge. Because only some of your volume is international, the calculator applies each surcharge to the percentage of volume you set on the sliders and blends it into the total — which is why a small share of international traffic nudges, rather than dominates, the effective rate.
When does ACH or bank debit lower my effective rate?
ACH Direct Debit is 0.8% capped at $5.00 per transaction, with no percentage-plus-fixed structure, so it is dramatically cheaper than cards on large tickets. On a $2,000 invoice a card at 2.9% + 30¢ costs about $58.30, while ACH is capped at $5.00 — roughly a tenth of the fee. The higher your average ticket and the more of your volume you can move to bank debit, the more the cap pulls your blended rate down. On small tickets the 0.8% is cheap too, but the savings versus a card are smaller because the card fixed fee is the thing hurting you there.
How exact is this number, and what does it not include?
The arithmetic is exact for the rates and mix you enter, and the default rates were checked against Stripe's published US pricing in 2026. It is a planning estimate, not an invoice. It does not model disputes and chargeback fees, refunds (Stripe keeps fixed fees on some refunded charges), instant payouts, Radar for fraud teams, Tax, failed-payment or account-validation fees, or negotiated interchange-plus pricing for large merchants. Always reconcile against your real Stripe dashboard fees before committing a budget, and treat surcharges you cannot confirm as editable defaults.