Square Fee Calculator

Square Fees at a Glance

Square charges its fees on the transaction amount.

Fee	Percentage	Flat	Notes
Online payment	2.9%	$0.30	—

Fees That Apply in Some Cases

Fee	Percentage	Flat	When
Manually keyed	0.6%	—	Card-not-present surcharge

What You Keep

The flat component is what makes small sales expensive. The same fee schedule costs a very different effective rate depending on the order size:

Sale	Fees	You receive	Effective rate
$5.00	$0.44	$4.56	8.90%
$20.00	$0.88	$19.12	4.40%
$50.00	$1.75	$48.25	3.50%
$100.00	$3.20	$96.80	3.20%
$500.00	$14.80	$485.20	2.96%

Rate by Channel

Square prices by how the card is presented, and the spread is wide:

Channel	Rate
In person (tap, dip, swipe)	2.6% + 10¢
Online / e-commerce	2.9% + 30¢
Invoices	3.3% + 30¢
Manually keyed / card on file	3.5% + 15¢

On a $50 sale that is $1.40 in person and $1.90 keyed — a 36% difference in fee for the same money, which is why getting a card physically present is worth the effort at volume.

Instant Transfers

Standard transfers are free and land in one to two business days. Instant transfer costs 1.75% of the amount — the most expensive money in the whole schedule. Use it only when cash flow genuinely requires it.

Charging to Hit a Target Payout

Adding 2.90% to your price under-recovers, because the percentage then applies to the larger amount as well. The correct gross-up divides:

`` charge = (target + flat fees) ÷ (1 − percentage rate) ``

To receive	Charge
$100.00	$103.30
$1,000.00	$1,030.18

Reducing What You Pay

• Raise average order value. The flat fee is fixed, so bundling two $20.00 orders

into one $40.00 order saves the second flat charge outright.

• Watch the optional surcharges. International and currency-conversion fees stack on top

of the base rate and are easy to miss when you price for a domestic market.

• Negotiate at volume. Most processors will discuss custom rates once you are processing

meaningful monthly volume; the published rate is a starting point, not a law.

• Do not migrate for 0.2%. The engineering and support cost of changing platforms

usually exceeds a small rate difference for years.

Online rate. In-person is 2.6% + 10¢ and invoices differ again.

Square Against Every Other Channel

What each platform takes from the same $100 sale:

Platform	Effective rate	You keep
Airbnb	3.00%	$97.00
BigCommerce	3.08%	$96.92
Stripe	3.20%	$96.80
Shopify	3.20%	$96.80
Square	3.20%	$96.80
GoFundMe	3.20%	$96.80
Podia	3.20%	$96.80
Wix	3.20%	$96.80
PayPal	3.98%	$96.02
Lemon Squeezy	5.50%	$94.50
Paddle	5.50%	$94.50
Squarespace	6.20%	$93.80
Ko-fi	8.20%	$91.80
Buy Me a Coffee	8.20%	$91.80
Kickstarter	8.20%	$91.80
Teachable	8.20%	$91.80
Indiegogo	8.30%	$91.70
Etsy	9.95%	$90.05
Upwork	10.00%	$90.00
Gumroad	10.00%	$90.00
Patreon	11.20%	$88.80
Whatnot	11.20%	$88.80
StockX	12.00%	$88.00
Substack	13.20%	$86.80
Mercari	13.40%	$86.60
eBay	13.55%	$86.45
Bandcamp	14.70%	$85.30
Amazon FBA	18.22%	$81.78
Fiverr	20.00%	$80.00
Poshmark	20.00%	$80.00
DoorDash	30.00%	$70.00

Read this as a cost of demand, not a league table. The platforms at the bottom charge more because they bring the customer; the ones at the top expect you to.

The Rate Is Not Fixed

Square's effective rate on a $10 sale is 5.90%, and on a $1,000 sale it is 2.93%. The flat component does not scale, so raising average order value lowers your effective rate without negotiating anything.

Sale	Fees	You keep	Effective rate
$10	$0.59	$9.41	5.90%
$100	$3.20	$96.80	3.20%
$1,000	$29.30	$970.70	2.93%

Bundling two $50 orders into one $100 order saves the second flat fee outright — usually more than any rate negotiation would.