Credit card processing fee calculator
This calculator compares two card-processing structures, interchange-plus and flat rate, at your own monthly volume and average transaction. It publishes no rates: every figure comes from the ones you enter. Updated 5 September 2026.
No published fee schedule sits behind this page. Every figure below is worked out from the rate you enter. Page updated .
1,000 transactions a month
Interchange-plus
Flat rate
Interchange-plus costs $475.00 less a month at this volume.
Interchange-plus
2.1% + $0.20- Per transaction
- $1.25
- Transaction fees
- $1,250.00
- Monthly fees
- $25.00
- Effective rate
- 2.55%
Flat rate
2.9% + $0.30- Per transaction
- $1.75
- Transaction fees
- $1,750.00
- Monthly fees
- $0.00
- Effective rate
- 3.5%
At this volume one structure is cheaper at every transaction size.
How this is worked out
The percentage is taken from the amount and rounded half-up to the smallest unit of the currency; the fixed fee is added whole. What you keep is the amount less the two. Reverse runs the same arithmetic backwards and reports the smallest amount to charge that still leaves you what you asked for.
At $50,000.00 a month across 1,000 transactions a month, interchange-plus costs $1,275.00 and the flat rate costs $1,750.00. Interchange-plus costs $475.00 less a month at this volume.
| Worked example: $50,000.00 a month at a $50.00 average transaction | Interchange-plus | Flat rate |
|---|---|---|
| All-in rate | 2.1% + $0.20 | 2.9% + $0.30 |
| Per transaction | $1.25 | $1.75 |
| Transaction fees | $1,250.00 | $1,750.00 |
| Monthly fees | $25.00 | $0.00 |
| Total a month | $1,275.00 | $1,750.00 |
| Effective rate | 2.55% | 3.5% |
At this volume one structure is cheaper at every transaction size.
Two ways to price the same transaction
Every card payment carries the same underlying costs: interchange, which the card networks set and the customer's bank keeps; the network's own assessment; and whatever the processor charges to move the money and carry the risk. Interchange-plus and flat-rate pricing are two ways of dividing that bill, not two different bills.
Interchange-plus passes interchange through at cost and adds a stated markup, usually a small percentage and a few cents per transaction. Your statement shows both halves. A flat rate rolls everything into one advertised number, the same for every card, so a debit card that costs the processor very little and a corporate rewards card that costs it a great deal are billed to you identically.
Which one is cheaper depends on two numbers
This is not a matter of taste. Hold your monthly card volume and your average transaction fixed, and the two structures produce two totals; one of them is smaller.
The percentage difference scales with volume. The per-transaction difference scales with the number of transactions, which is volume divided by average transaction, so a shop taking a hundred $5 payments a day is affected by a 10 cent difference in the fixed fee far more than a business taking one $5,000 payment a day. Monthly account, gateway, statement and PCI fees do not scale at all: they are a constant, and a constant matters more the smaller your volume.
That is why this page asks for your volume and average transaction before it asks for a single rate, and why it names the average transaction at which the two structures meet.
What this calculator does not know
It does not know your interchange, and neither does anyone else in advance. Interchange varies by card type, by whether the card was physically present, by your industry and by the country the card was issued in. Rewards and commercial cards cost more, debit cards cost less, and your mix moves with your customers. The figure you enter is a forecast. The honest way to make it is to take three months of statements, add up the interchange charged, and divide by the volume it applied to.
It also does not know the parts of a merchant agreement that never appear as a rate: monthly minimums, early termination fees, PCI non-compliance charges, chargeback fees, batch fees, terminal leases. Some of those fit in the monthly fee field above. Some do not fit here at all, and a quote that looks cheap on rate and expensive on everything else is the oldest trick in the trade.
Read your own statement
The number worth knowing is your effective rate: total fees for the month divided by total card volume. It survives every difference in how a statement is laid out, and it is what both columns above report. If your effective rate is materially higher than the all-in rate you were quoted, the gap is in the charges that are not rates.
If your provider is one of the platforms on this site, its own calculator is the better page: those carry rates quoted from the provider's published pricing, with the date they were last checked.
Frequently asked questions
Is interchange-plus always cheaper than a flat rate?
- No. Interchange-plus usually wins on percentage, because you pay interchange at cost rather than an average that has to cover the expensive cards too. But it often carries a monthly account fee and sometimes a higher per-transaction amount, and those can outweigh the percentage saving at low volume or a small average transaction. Enter both structures above and the calculator says which is cheaper at your numbers, and at what average transaction the answer flips.
What is interchange?
- Interchange is the part of a card fee that goes to the bank that issued your customer's card. The card networks publish the tables and every processor pays the same rates, so nobody can discount them. It is the largest component of most card fees, which is why a pricing model that passes it through at cost and shows it as its own line is easier to check than one that hides it inside a single advertised number.
What interchange rate should I enter?
- Take your last three statements, add up the interchange charged, and divide it by the card volume it applied to. That blended figure is a better forecast than any published average, because it already reflects your card mix, your industry and where your customers bank. If you have no statements yet, ask the processor what blended interchange they see for businesses like yours, and treat the answer as provisional.
Why does my average transaction change the answer?
- Because the fixed part of a fee is charged per transaction, not per dollar. At a $10 average, $50,000 of volume is five thousand transactions, and a 10 cent difference in the fixed fee is $500 a month. At a $500 average it is a hundred transactions, and the same difference is $10. The percentage part behaves the opposite way: it depends only on volume. The calculator reports the average transaction at which the two effects cancel out.
Does this page publish real processing rates?
- No. It has no fee schedule behind it and no verification date, because it makes no claim about what anyone charges. Every figure it shows is worked out from the rates you type in, and the example it opens with is an illustration you are meant to replace. The calculators for named platforms on this site work the other way round: their rates are quoted from the platform's own published page and carry the date they were last checked.
Cite this page
Everything above is worked out from the rate you entered, not from any provider’s published schedule. Check that rate on your own contract or statement before you rely on it. See the methodology and the disclaimer.
Cite this page
Fees.tools. "Credit card processing fee calculator". https://fees.tools/credit-card-processing-fee-calculator. Page updated 2026-09-05. No fee data: figures come from the rate the reader enters.APA: Fees.tools. (2026). Credit card processing fee calculator. Retrieved 2026-09-05, from https://fees.tools/credit-card-processing-fee-calculator