Square Fee Calculator

Square prices by how the card is taken. In the US its published rates as of August 2026 are 2.6% plus 10 cents when a card is tapped, dipped or swiped in person, 2.9% plus 30 cents for online and Square Online orders, 3.5% plus 15 cents when a card is keyed in by hand or charged from a card on file, and 3.3% plus 30 cents on invoices. There is no separate gateway charge on top.

It depends on the channel. In person at 2.6% plus 10 cents, the fee is $2.60 plus $0.10, so $2.70, leaving $97.30. Online at 2.9% plus 30 cents the fee is $3.20, leaving $96.80. Keyed in at 3.5% plus 15 cents the fee is $3.65, leaving $96.35. The same sale can cost you nearly a dollar more purely because of how the card reached Square.

In person means the physical card or phone touched a Square reader, so the card was verified at the point of sale. Online covers Square Online, e-commerce checkouts and payment links, where the card details are typed by the customer. Keyed in means you typed the card number into the Square app yourself, or charged a card you already had on file. Risk rises at each step, and so does the rate.

Because the card is not present and nobody has verified that the person holding it is the cardholder. There is no chip authentication, no tap, and often no address or security code check that Square controls. Keyed-in payments are disputed far more often than tapped ones, so the 3.5% plus 15 cents rate prices in the fraud and chargeback losses that come with them.

Divide the amount you want plus the fixed fee by one minus the rate. To land $100 in person at 2.6% plus 10 cents: ($100 plus $0.10) divided by 0.974 gives $102.77. Square takes $2.77 of that and $100.00 reaches you. Simply adding 2.6% would give $102.60 and leave you 17 cents short, because the fee applies to the larger amount too.

Square's core payment processing has no monthly subscription, so the processing rate is the whole cost for many sellers. Paid tiers exist for the specialist products, such as Square Appointments, Restaurants, Retail and the higher Square Online plans, and hardware such as a Square Terminal or Register is bought outright. This calculator covers the processing fee only, so add any subscription and hardware costs separately.

Invoices paid by card carry 3.3% plus 30 cents on Square's published US pricing, which is higher than a standard online checkout because the payer is entering card details away from a controlled storefront. Square Invoices Plus is a paid tier with extra features, and it does not change the processing rate. Enter your own figure in the rate field if your account is priced differently.

When a customer disputes a payment, Square withholds the disputed amount while the card network reviews the evidence you submit. Square does not add its own dispute fee the way some processors do, and it covers a capped amount of dispute losses each month for eligible sellers. If you lose the dispute the sale amount is deducted, so a high keyed-in volume is worth watching closely.

No. Square's published policy is that the processing fee is not returned when you refund a payment, so a refunded $100 in-person sale still costs you the $2.70 that Square took. That makes a high return rate more expensive than it looks, and it is worth factoring in when you price low-margin items that get sent back often.

They are close, and which wins depends on the channel. On both companies' published US pricing as of August 2026, Square's in-person rate of 2.6% plus 10 cents matches Shopify Payments on the Basic plan for card-present sales. Online, Square's 2.9% plus 30 cents is the same as Shopify Payments on Basic, but Shopify's rate falls on higher plans while Square's headline online rate does not. Shopify also adds a transaction fee if you use an external gateway, which Square has no equivalent of.

On standard US online pricing they are effectively identical, with both publishing 2.9% plus 30 cents as of August 2026. In person they diverge rather than one simply winning: Square charges 2.6% plus 10 cents and Stripe Terminal charges 2.7% plus 5 cents, which cross over at about $50, so Stripe is cheaper on smaller tickets and Square is cheaper on larger ones. Square also bundles point of sale software and invoicing at no subscription cost, so for most small sellers the decision comes down to the tooling rather than a few basis points.

Yes. The figures in this calculator are the published US rates as of August 2026, and Square charges different rates in Canada, the UK, Australia, Japan and the rest of its markets. Currency conversion on foreign cards can add a further cost. Overwrite the rate and fixed fee fields with your local pricing to get an accurate answer.

Take payment in person wherever you can, since tapping a card is the cheapest route by a clear margin. Avoid keying in card numbers by hand. Raise your average transaction value, because the fixed 10 to 30 cents shrinks as a share of a larger sale. If you process a high monthly volume, ask Square about custom pricing, which is available to larger accounts.

Yes. No signup, no email and no limit on how many payments you run through it. It is built by Mage Loyalty, a loyalty, referrals and store credit app for Shopify.