About FreelanceCalc
Why these tools exist, how the math was built, and who made them.
Who built this
FreelanceCalc was built by a fintech professional with direct experience in card processing and payment economics — the same domain these calculators live in. Before freelancing, I worked in payment processing infrastructure at a card-network company (i2c), which is where I learned that most publicly available payment fee calculators get the math subtly wrong: they ignore FX spread, conflate domestic and cross-border rates, or skip the nuances that actually determine what you keep.
As a freelancer myself, I ran into the same frustrations everyone else does: "What will I actually receive if a client pays me via PayPal?" or "Am I paying too much in estimated taxes because I had a slow Q1?" I couldn't find a tool that answered those questions correctly, so I built one.
Every formula on this site was written from primary sources — IRS publications, official processor fee pages — and then verified by working through real examples by hand before a single line of code was written.
Why these five tools
These calculators weren't chosen randomly. They cluster around one question that matters more than any individual keyword: what do I actually keep when a client pays me? Payment processor fees, late fees, and quarterly tax are the three deductions between a client's payment and real money in your pocket. Understanding all three together gives you a complete picture.
The payment processor comparison is the hardest to get right — normalizing Stripe's percentage-plus-fixed against Wise's corridor-specific rate against PayPal's embedded FX spread into one "net received" number requires understanding how each processor actually makes money, not just reading their headline rates.
The quarterly estimated tax calculator is the most defensible tool here. Most competitors just divide an annual estimate by 4. The IRS Form 2210 annualized income installment method is the correct approach for freelancers with lumpy income, and almost no publicly available calculator implements it properly.
Methodology & accuracy
Every fee rate has a source and a "last verified" date. Payment processors change their rates — sometimes with little notice. Each calculator page shows when the rates were last confirmed against the processor's official fee page. If a rate has changed, please use the contact below to report it.
Tax data comes from IRS publications. The quarterly tax calculator uses 2024 and 2025 federal tax brackets from IRS Rev. Proc. 2023-34 and Rev. Proc. 2024-40 respectively. The annualized income installment method follows IRS Form 2210 Schedule AI and IRS Publication 505.
All calculations run in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server. The JavaScript source is readable in any browser's developer tools — you can verify the formulas yourself.
This is not tax advice. The quarterly tax calculator produces estimates based on the inputs you provide. It does not account for tax credits, the additional Medicare tax, state-specific rules beyond a flat rate, or prior-year safe harbor calculations. Work with a CPA for your actual tax filing.
Contact
Found a calculation error? Have a processor rate that's out of date? Want to suggest another tool? I'd genuinely like to know.
Email: hello@getfreelancecalc.com