Understand the calculation
Scope: PayPal accounts registered in Germany · EUR transactions
Last reviewed: 2026-10-31 · Fee schedules updated: 2026-09-07
The page update date is not proof of each rule’s effective date.
Table of Contents
Start with the payment product
Choose what you are doing before comparing percentages. Receiving a Goods & Services transfer is a different product from receiving a Checkout payment. A buyer paying for a purchase is asking another question again: the seller’s receipt fee is not automatically a fee paid by that buyer. Use the task selector to keep these perspectives separate. For commercial receipts, the default is the Goods & Services transfer tariff. Select Checkout only when that is how the payment is actually processed. Guest payments, Ratepay and other commercial transactions are grouped under the merchant schedule because the published base pricing matches, but their product conditions still apply. Alternative payment methods, card-processing agreements and charity products are not included in this group. If your agreement names another product, do not substitute the closest-looking label.
Gross payment, fee and amount received
For a commercial receipt, enter the entire payment amount. Shipping charges or tax already included in that payment remain part of this gross amount; the calculator does not remove them before calculating a fee. The model combines the base percentage, any applicable international percentage points and the product’s fixed fee. It then subtracts the rounded fee from the gross receipt. The effective fee rate divides the resulting fee by the full payment. It can therefore exceed the advertised percentage, particularly on small payments. A fixed fee is charged for each modelled payment, not just once across a group. The estimate says nothing about your accounting profit, VAT liability or income tax. Your business expenses and tax treatment are separate questions.
Work backwards from the amount you want to receive
Switch the receipt direction if your starting point is the amount that should remain after transaction fees. Adding the fee calculated on that target is insufficient, because the larger gross payment also attracts a fee. For a single percentage-and-fixed-fee tariff, the unrounded starting estimate is target plus fixed fee, divided by one minus the percentage rate. The calculator then checks whole-cent candidates with exactly the same forward fee model. It selects the smallest gross amount that reaches at least the target. For consumer QR it solves each gross tier separately and compares valid candidates. This is a pricing-planning calculation. It is not permission to add a payment-method surcharge, alter a contract or request that a commercial buyer uses a personal transfer.
Account registration determines the country group
The modelled account is always registered in Germany. For an incoming commercial payment, select the sender’s PayPal account market. For an outgoing personal payment, select the recipient’s account market. Nationality, shipping destination, current physical location and the country printed on a payment card do not replace this information. PayPal publishes fee-specific market groups, including listed territories, which this calculator keeps in a shared source-backed dataset. EUR and SEK transfers between accounts in the relevant EEA fee group receive domestic treatment under the schedule. Only EUR transaction calculations are enabled here; the SEK rule is not a claim of SEK fee support. The UK group and Switzerland are separate from the EEA group. An unknown market is rejected rather than silently assigned a domestic fee. Ukraine-related routes show an exception because the temporary waiver needs separate applicability verification.
Why the two QR schedules stay separate
The German consumer and merchant schedules publish different QR pricing. A choice between them must reflect the schedule applicable to the account and transaction, not a preference for the cheaper result. Consumer-schedule QR uses gross-payment tiers: up to EUR 10 and from EUR 10.01. Merchant QR uses its own percentage, without a fixed fee listed in the relevant row. International additions follow the selected schedule and product. A reverse calculation cannot determine the consumer QR tier from the desired net amount; the required gross may fall in another tier. The page keeps both the schedule and the resolved rate identifier visible in the result so that you can check which calculation was actually used.
Personal sending and receiving: who pays?
Use the personal-payment task only for genuine personal transfers without goods or services. The receipt sub-option estimates the amount received without deducting a sender fee. For an international personal send, the percentage is subject to a minimum and maximum in EUR. The fee is added to the principal to show the sender’s total cost; it is not taken away from the recipient’s principal in this model. Domestic personal sending without conversion is modelled as free. A zero PayPal transaction fee does not prove that every bank, card or conversion cost is zero. Friends & Family is not an alternative checkout method for purchases, and this page does not recommend it to bypass commercial fees or promise protection for a personal payment.
Withdrawals use personal-account rules
For withdrawals, the input means the amount removed from the PayPal balance. The estimate subtracts the modelled withdrawal fee and shows the remaining payout. Local bank withdrawals are separated into standard and instant where available; a listed price does not guarantee that instant withdrawal is offered to your account. A US bank destination and an eligible card have their own rules. Card withdrawals apply the EUR minimum and maximum to the percentage charge. The launch version does not apply these personal-account prices to business-account withdrawals. It also excludes currency conversion during a withdrawal. Check the amount, destination, fee and actual balance debit shown in PayPal’s confirmation before making a transaction, especially if its quoted debit semantics differ from this estimate.
Use a quoted transaction exchange rate once
Optional receipt conversion models a separate balance conversion after EUR receipt fees. Enter a PayPal quote with explicit direction: one EUR equals the entered number of destination-currency units. The calculator multiplies the remaining EUR net by that rate and rounds the destination amount to cents. It does not fetch a live rate or add another percentage markup to PayPal’s quote. An optional reference rate compares the same net principal; the difference is labelled as a comparison, not another fee debited by PayPal. Transaction fees stay in EUR and the converted amount stays in its own currency. If the quote is missing, only the EUR fee estimate is shown. Sender-funded purchase conversion and withdrawal conversion remain unsupported, so the calculator withholds a combined converted total for those flows.
Rounding, small payments and repeated transactions
All fee arithmetic uses whole currency minor units and exact integer multiplication. The estimator rounds a combined fee half up to the nearest cent. This is a declared modelling policy, not confirmation of PayPal’s internal settlement rounding. Displayed percentage components are reconciled if their separate presentation differs from the rounded total. A cap adjustment is also shown for a minimum or maximum fee. If the fee would exceed the amount in a receipt or withdrawal, no negative payout is invented. For repeated identical transactions, the fee is calculated and rounded per payment before multiplying by the count. That is different from processing one large payment and does not imply a volume discount. The arithmetic safety limit does not describe a PayPal transaction allowance.
Custom agreements and the supported scope
Advanced settings allow an explicit custom percentage and fixed EUR fee. Custom results are labelled as user assumptions rather than standard PayPal pricing. No international addition or separate UK service fee is silently stacked on a custom agreement. Include any applicable component deliberately in the total rate you enter. The standard presets also exclude the agreement-dependent additional UK service fee. Donations, approved charity rates, refunds, disputes, chargebacks, micropayments, alternative payment methods, POS products, mass payouts and negotiated card processing are outside the launch scope. Receiving a foreign currency does not necessarily involve conversion, but foreign-currency transactions are not enabled here. Only the separate post-receipt conversion scenario supports the listed destination currencies. Entries remain in the page’s memory and are neither automatically saved nor put into a share URL.
EUR fee rules
On small screens, scroll the tables sideways. Tables can be focused with the keyboard.
| Product | Base fee | Schedule |
|---|---|---|
| Goods & Services | 2.49 % + €0.35 | Merchant |
| Checkout | 2.99 % + €0.39 | Merchant |
| Guest / Ratepay / other | 2.99 % + €0.39 | Merchant |
| Merchant QR | 0.9 % + €0.00 | Merchant |
| Consumer QR up to EUR 10 | 1 % + €0.05 | Consumer |
| Consumer QR from EUR 10.01 | 0.5 % + €0.10 | Consumer |
| Sender account market | Goods & Services / consumer QR | Checkout / merchant QR / other |
|---|---|---|
| PayPal EEA group | 0 % | 0 % |
| PayPal UK group | 1.29 % | 1.29 % |
| US / Canada | 1.99 % | 1.99 % |
| Other markets, excluding Ukraine exception | 2.99 % | 1.99 % |
| Task | Modelled fee | Fee payer |
|---|---|---|
| Personal send, domestic | €0.00 | None |
| Personal send, international | 5 % · €0.99–€3.99 | Sender, added to principal |
| Personal receipt / purchase | €0.00 | No modelled transaction fee |
| Local bank, standard/instant where available | €0.00 | None |
| US bank, standard | 3 % | Account holder |
| Eligible card | 1 % · €0.25–€10.00 | Account holder |
Worked examples
Independent arithmetic examples with fixed assumptions, not confirmed PayPal settlements.
| Scenario | Fee | Result |
|---|---|---|
| €100.00 · Goods & Services, domestic | €2.84 | €97.16 received |
| €100.00 · Checkout · domestic | €3.38 | €96.62 received |
| €100.00 · Goods & Services, US | €4.83 | €95.17 received |
| €100.00 · desired net, domestic Goods & Services | €2.91 | €102.91 required gross |
| €50.00 · personal international send | €2.50 | €52.50 total cost |
Common questions
Why does Checkout cost more than a Goods & Services transfer?
They have separate rows and fixed-fee tables in the German merchant schedule. Choose the product actually used; this is not a discount selector.
Can I calculate a non-German account?
No. The modelled receiver, sender, buyer or withdrawing account holder is registered in Germany. The other party’s market only selects the relevant international rule.
Does a zero fee guarantee Buyer Protection?
No. Fees and protection eligibility are separate. Check PayPal’s terms for the transaction. Do not use personal payments for purchases.
Why can the estimate differ from my PayPal statement?
The actual product, agreement, account market, conversion quote, fee eligibility or settlement rounding may differ. Match those details before comparing amounts; a schedule’s update date is not every rule’s effective date.
Is this an official PayPal tool or a tax calculation?
Neither. It is an independent fee estimate. It does not connect to PayPal, execute transactions or calculate your tax liability.
Sources and scope
- PayPal: German consumer fees · 2026-09-07Personal payments, purchases, personal withdrawals, EUR card caps and consumer QR.
- PayPal: German merchant fees · 2026-09-07Goods & Services with its own fixed fee; Checkout, guest, Ratepay, other commercial payments and merchant QR with product-specific international additions.
- PayPal: market groups and market codesPayPal fee groups rather than a generic EU classification; account registration determines treatment.
- PayPal: available countries and regionsThe country selector includes only listed markets with verified fee mapping. Individual features may have additional restrictions.
- PayPal: transaction exchange rates and conversion chargeThe quoted rate contains the conversion charge; no second markup.
- PayPal: upcoming policy changesChecked 31 Oct 2026: Ratepay terms change announced for 20 Nov 2026. No blanket fee-rate change is inferred from that notice.
- PayPal user agreementCheck the applicable agreement and product conditions. This calculation does not establish surcharge rights or protection eligibility.
All sources verified: 2026-10-31. Individual effective dates are stated only where explicitly documented. This independent estimate is not an official PayPal product, a transaction execution service or a tax calculation.