Payhip Fee Calculator: What You Keep From Every Sale

How Payhip's fees work

Every Payhip sale passes through three hands before the money is yours: Payhip's own percentage, the payment company's fee, and, for some buyers, the tax office. Only the first one depends on your plan.

1. Payhip's transaction fee

Payhip's percentage is worked out on your price before tax. On the free plan it is 5%, which Payhip's ebook guide describes as "5% of the sale price of each ebook". On Plus it drops to 2% and on Pro to nothing. Because the percentage is the only thing that changes between plans, upgrading is pure arithmetic: you swap a slice of every sale for a fixed monthly fee. The calculator's "which plan costs least" box does that sum at your own sales.

The fee is on what the buyer actually pays you, so a coupon lowers it too. A 20% coupon on a $27 workbook turns the sale into $21.60, and the free-plan fee into $1.08 instead of $1.35.

2. The card or PayPal fee

Payhip does not process payments itself. You connect your own Stripe account to take cards, your own PayPal account, or both, and the buyer chooses at checkout. Payhip's pricing page is plain about it: "PayPal and Stripe will still charge at their standard rates once they complete a transaction." That is true on Pro as well, which is why a Pro seller still loses about 3% to 4% of a small sale.

The fixed part of those fees is what hurts cheap products. Stripe's $0.30 is 6% of a $5 ebook but under a third of 1% of a $97 bundle. PayPal's $0.49 in the US is heavier still: on a $9 ebook a PayPal sale leaves $7.75 against $7.99 by card. Payhip's help centre also lists connections for other payment providers (Mollie, Square, Mercado Pago, Razorpay and several more), each with its own rates; the calculator covers the two most sellers use.

3. Tax

When the buyer is in the EU or the UK, digital sales carry VAT at the buyer's local rate, wherever you live. Payhip says it "automatically collects, reports and remits digital EU/UK VAT as well as US/Canadian sales tax on your behalf", and its tax page explains that for EU and UK buyers it acts as your reseller. By default the tax goes on top of your price, so the buyer pays it and your share is untouched. The VAT section below explains the one setting that changes that.

Nothing else comes off. There is no listing fee, no fee for marketplace sales, no payout fee from Payhip and no minimum payout. Payhip says it deposits sales "immediately after a transaction has been completed", into the PayPal or Stripe account you connected.

Payhip and VAT, explained simply

If you sell a digital product to someone in the EU or the UK, VAT is due at the buyer's local rate, even if you live in the US, Canada or Australia. Payhip handles that for you: it works out the rate from the buyer's location, collects it at checkout, and pays it to the right tax office each quarter. For those sales you do not file EU or UK VAT returns yourself; Payhip, as the reseller, does.

The question that changes your payout is whether the VAT is added on top of your price or taken out of it. Payhip's help centre works through both with a $10 product sold to a buyer in France at 20%:

• Added on top (the default). The buyer pays $12.00. Payhip collects $2.00 of VAT and its 5% fee of $0.50. You keep $9.50, before the card or PayPal fee.
• Included in your price. The buyer pays $10.00. The price before VAT is $8.33, so VAT is $1.67 and the 5% fee is $0.42. You keep $7.91, before the card or PayPal fee.

So "on top" protects your margin and "included" protects a round price. If you like a clean $10 or £10 on your sales page for every buyer, include it and accept the smaller payout from EU and UK buyers; if your margin matters more, leave the default. Buyers outside the EU and UK pay your normal price either way. One detail Payhip's example leaves out: the card or PayPal fee is charged on the whole amount the buyer pays, so with VAT on top it is a little higher ($0.83 on that $12 sale by card from a US account, against $0.74 on the $10 one). The calculator includes that.

Which VAT rate applies to an ebook?

Rates vary by country, and books are often treated differently from other digital products. The UK has charged no VAT on electronic publications since 1 May 2020, though audiobooks are excluded, and an EU change in 2018 (Council Directive 2018/1713) lets EU countries apply their reduced book rates to ebooks too. A course, a template pack or a membership usually pays the standard rate, which is about 17% to 27% across the EU and 20% in the UK. Payhip's help article does not say how it classifies each product type, so we have left the rate as a box you can change: use 20% to match Payhip's example, or check a few lines in your Payhip sales report to see the rate actually charged.

US and Canadian sales tax

Since 1 July 2026 Payhip also collects and pays US sales tax on your behalf, and says it "won't charge you a cent" for doing so; it handles Canadian sales tax as well. As with VAT, your tax settings decide whether that tax is added on top or included. Some US states tax digital products and others do not, so many US buyers pay no tax at all. The calculator treats US buyers as untaxed, which is the same as the default "on top" setting for your share.

For taxes Payhip does not handle itself, it collects the amount at checkout and passes it to you, with a monthly sales report, so you can file it. Payhip collecting VAT is not the same as your own income tax: what you keep is still income in your own country. Gumroad and Lemon Squeezy go further by acting as merchant of record for tax worldwide; our where to sell ebooks guide sets out who handles what. Flat-fee platforms go the other way: Sellfy, for one, is not the merchant of record, so the tax there is yours to file, as our Sellfy guide explains.

What affiliates and coupons really cost

Both are included free on every Payhip plan, and both come straight out of what you keep, so it is worth running them through the calculator before you set a number.

Affiliates. You choose a percentage for each product when you add an affiliate. Payhip tracks the sales but, in its own words, "is not able to pay your affiliates for you": each month you download the affiliate report, which lists every affiliate's PayPal email and commission, and pay them yourself, for example with PayPal's mass payments. The commission is a cost on top of Payhip's fee and the card fee. A 30% commission on a $27 workbook sold on the free plan leaves you $16.47 instead of $24.57, because the affiliate's $8.10 comes on top of $2.43 in fees. Worth it if the affiliate reaches buyers you would never have reached; expensive if they mostly earn commission on your own fans.

Coupons. Payhip coupons take a percentage or a fixed amount off, and can apply to the whole order, one product or a collection, with an overall usage limit and an expiry date. A discount lowers Payhip's percentage fee in proportion, but not the fixed part of the card fee, so deep discounts on cheap products lose more than they seem to. A 20% coupon on a $27 workbook takes your share from $24.57 to $19.59, a drop of $4.98 on a $5.40 discount. Payhip also has upgrade discounts, which offer a past buyer a lower price on another product after they buy, and these are often a better use of a discount than a public code.

If you run both at once, the calculator applies the coupon first and the commission to the discounted price, which is how most stores set affiliate terms. If only some of your sales come through affiliates, run it once with and once without, and blend the results.

Eight ways to keep more of every Payhip sale

1. Raise the price of very cheap products, or bundle them. The fixed $0.30 card fee (or $0.49 on PayPal in the US) is the biggest single fee on anything under about $10. Three $5 guides sold as one $12 bundle pay one fixed fee instead of three.
2. Make card checkout easy for local buyers. In the UK and Ireland a home card through Stripe costs 1.5% plus a small fixed fee, about half of PayPal's rate. In the US the gap is smaller but still there. Keep PayPal on for buyers who want it.
3. Leave VAT on top unless a round price really matters to you. Including VAT costs you about a sixth of every sale to a buyer in a country with a 20% rate.
4. Check the plan every few months against an average month. At $967 a month Plus starts to pay; at $3,500 Pro does. Downgrade after a seasonal peak if a quiet stretch is coming.
5. Use upsells and cross-sells. Payhip lets you offer a second product at checkout or after purchase, on every plan. A second item in the same order earns more than a second order, because the order pays one fixed card fee.
6. Price affiliate commission for new buyers, not existing ones. Generous rates for partners with their own audience, and no affiliate link in your own newsletter, where buyers would have come anyway.
7. Stamp PDFs with the buyer's email. Payhip can stamp the buyer's email address onto the PDF they download, which discourages casual sharing without the hassle of locked files. Fewer shared copies means more paid ones.
8. Use the marketplace and your own list. Payhip charges no extra for marketplace sales, so there is no reason not to list there. But most direct sales come from people who already know you, so the cheapest sale of all is to someone on your email list: a free lead magnet is how most authors start one, and our guide to lead magnets that convert covers what to offer.

If you are still deciding what to charge, our guide on how to price an ebook looks at what buyers actually pay by category, and digital product ideas lists formats that suit a direct store.

Making the product you sell on Payhip

Disclosure: Inkfluence AI is our product. It is an AI book writer: you describe the book, it plans the chapters with you, writes a draft of each one for you to edit, and exports the finished book. Here is how that fits a Payhip store, including what it does not do. If you have never made an ebook before, start with how to create an ebook.

• Files Payhip sells well. Export a PDF for anything people print or fill in, an EPUB for reading on a phone or e-reader, or a Word file if you want to edit further elsewhere. Upload one or both to your Payhip product. See our notes on ebook formats if you are choosing.
• Workbooks and course companions. The workbook generator drafts exercises and reflection prompts in each chapter, and the course creator turns a topic into lesson-by-lesson material for a bundle.
• Length. You choose how many chapters the book has; a chapter usually runs about 1,000 to 1,500 words. There is no page or word target beyond that.
• What it does not do. Inkfluence AI does not connect to Payhip: you upload the files yourself, which takes a couple of minutes. On the Creator and Premium plans it can publish straight to your own Etsy shop or Gumroad account. It does not print or ship books.

Plans: a free plan to try it, Creator at $9.99 a month and Premium at $19.99 a month (full pricing). Payhip, for its part, does not publish a rule against AI-assisted ebooks; our store-by-store AI rules cover the platforms that do. For the full setup, from account to first sale, read how to sell ebooks on Payhip.