Does Lemon Squeezy charge extra for abandoned cart recovery and affiliate sales?

Yes, and these are the two fees most Lemon Squeezy fee calculators leave out. The fee docs list them under marketing fees: plus 5 percent for payments recovered through abandoned cart emails and plus 3 percent for affiliate referrals on the merchant side. They stack on top of the 5 percent plus 50 cents base the same way the international and PayPal surcharges do. A 49 dollar sale that was both recovered by a cart email and credited to an affiliate carries 5 plus 5 plus 3, so 13 percent plus 50 cents, which is 6.87 dollars rather than 2.95 dollars. A third fee in that same list, plus 2 percent for affiliate payouts, is charged to affiliates rather than to merchants, so this calculator does not apply it to your side of the ledger.

Is the Lemon Squeezy 5 percent charged on the product price or on the price plus VAT?

On the total, tax included. The Lemon Squeezy docs work this through with a 15 dollar product sold to a UK buyer: 20 percent VAT adds 3 dollars, the order total becomes 18 dollars, and the platform fee is calculated as 50 cents plus 5 percent of the total plus the 1.5 percent international surcharge, which comes to 1.67 dollars. That is 5 percent of 18 dollars, not of 15 dollars. Enter your tax inclusive order value in the price box above if your buyers are in VAT territories, otherwise the fee here will read low.

How many Lemon Squeezy payout fees will I actually pay?

Lemon Squeezy processes payouts twice a month, so a one month period carries two payout fees and a twelve month period carries twenty four. That matters most on the PayPal tier outside the US, which is 3 percent capped at 30 dollars per payout, not per period. A store paying out 100,000 dollars a year to a non-US PayPal account hits the cap on every payout and pays 24 times 30 dollars, so 720 dollars, rather than 3 percent of 100,000 dollars. The calculator splits your net across the payout count before applying the rate and the cap, which is why the payout fee here can differ from a flat percentage estimate.

Back to the five platform comparison

Lemon Squeezy Fee Calculator

Every Lemon Squeezy surcharge, including recovered carts and affiliate referrals. Put in a price and a sales count and see the whole Lemon Squeezy fee stack: 5 percent plus 50 cents, the international, PayPal and subscription surcharges, and the two marketing fees most calculators skip, 5 percent on recovered carts and 3 percent on affiliate referrals. Every rate is read from the Lemon Squeezy fee docs.

Price per sale (USD) Number of orders Over how many months

Orders recovered by abandoned cart email (percent) Lemon Squeezy adds 5 percent to the platform fee on these orders. Orders that came from an affiliate referral (percent) Lemon Squeezy adds 3 percent to the platform fee on these orders. This is the merchant side of the affiliate program, separate from the commission you pay the affiliate. Orders from outside the US (percent) Adds 1.5 percent. Orders paid with PayPal (percent) Adds 1.5 percent. These are subscription payments (adds 0.5 percent)

Payout method Where your payout account is Stripe payouts are free inside the US and 1 percent outside. PayPal is a flat 50 cents inside the US and 3 percent capped at 30 dollars outside.

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What Lemon Squeezy keeps, line by line

Lemon Squeezy fee breakdown for the entered order volume
Fee line	Rate	Applies to	Amount

What this calculation assumes

Against the other four platforms. On a 29 dollar product sold 100 times with no surcharges, Lemon Squeezy nets 2,705 dollars against Gumroad's 2,560 dollars, because its 5 percent covers card processing that Gumroad's 10 percent also covers but at twice the rate. Run your own numbers in the five platform payout comparison.

Selling tips and shop items instead of licences? Use the Ko-fi fee calculator, which models tip income and the Gold break-even separately.

What the merchant of record premium actually buys

Lemon Squeezy's headline 5 percent is about 2.1 percentage points above Stripe's 2.9 percent standard card rate. On 600,000 dollars of annual subscription revenue that gap alone is 12,600 dollars a year, before the 50 cents per order and the 0.5 percent subscription surcharge. That is a real cost, so it is worth being precise about what the extra buys, because it is not nothing.

Lemon Squeezy is the merchant of record, which its docs define as the legal entity selling to the end customer. In its words, the merchant of record "is responsible for handling all payments and takes responsibility for everything relating to the purchase, including collecting sales tax, processing refunds and chargebacks, and ensuring PCI compliance", and Lemon Squeezy states it takes on all of that liability so sellers do not have to. Concretely, that covers four jobs you would otherwise do yourself:

Sales tax and VAT collection and remittance. The docs state you do not have to collect or remit sales tax, including international tax like VAT, because Lemon Squeezy is technically selling on your behalf. It adds the tax at checkout, shows it on the order, and deducts it from your next payout so it can report and remit it.
US sales tax liability. The same merchant of record status moves the collection duty for US sales tax off you and onto Lemon Squeezy.
Chargebacks and fraud exposure. Chargeback handling sits with the merchant of record, not with you.
Refunds and PCI compliance. Refund processing and PCI compliance are named in the same list of merchant of record responsibilities.

The calculator above prints a merchant of record premium line so you can see this trade in dollars rather than in the abstract: it is the Lemon Squeezy platform fee minus what Stripe's published 2.9 percent plus 30 cents would have cost on the same orders. If that number is smaller than what a tax compliance service plus your own time would cost, the premium is paying for itself. If it is much larger, that is the number to take to a comparison.

Lemon Squeezy fee questions

Does Lemon Squeezy charge extra for abandoned cart recovery and affiliate sales?: Yes, and these are the two fees most Lemon Squeezy fee calculators leave out. The fee docs list them under marketing fees: plus 5 percent for payments recovered through abandoned cart emails and plus 3 percent for affiliate referrals on the merchant side. They stack on top of the 5 percent plus 50 cents base the same way the international and PayPal surcharges do. A 49 dollar sale that was both recovered by a cart email and credited to an affiliate carries 5 plus 5 plus 3, so 13 percent plus 50 cents, which is 6.87 dollars rather than 2.95 dollars. A third fee in that same list, plus 2 percent for affiliate payouts, is charged to affiliates rather than to merchants, so this calculator does not apply it to your side of the ledger.
Is the Lemon Squeezy 5 percent charged on the product price or on the price plus VAT?: On the total, tax included. The Lemon Squeezy docs work this through with a 15 dollar product sold to a UK buyer: 20 percent VAT adds 3 dollars, the order total becomes 18 dollars, and the platform fee is calculated as 50 cents plus 5 percent of the total plus the 1.5 percent international surcharge, which comes to 1.67 dollars. That is 5 percent of 18 dollars, not of 15 dollars. Enter your tax inclusive order value in the price box above if your buyers are in VAT territories, otherwise the fee here will read low.
How many Lemon Squeezy payout fees will I actually pay?: Lemon Squeezy processes payouts twice a month, so a one month period carries two payout fees and a twelve month period carries twenty four. That matters most on the PayPal tier outside the US, which is 3 percent capped at 30 dollars per payout, not per period. A store paying out 100,000 dollars a year to a non-US PayPal account hits the cap on every payout and pays 24 times 30 dollars, so 720 dollars, rather than 3 percent of 100,000 dollars. The calculator splits your net across the payout count before applying the rate and the cap, which is why the payout fee here can differ from a flat percentage estimate.

Where every rate on this page comes from

docs.lemonsqueezy.com/help/getting-started/fees Platform fee 5 percent plus 50 cents on the total order value, covering card transaction fees, currency conversion and taxes. Additional processing fees: plus 1.5 percent international, plus 1.5 percent PayPal, plus 0.5 percent subscriptions. Marketing fees: plus 5 percent for payments recovered through abandoned cart emails, plus 3 percent for affiliate referrals on the merchant side, plus 2 percent for affiliate payouts on the affiliate side. Payout fees: Stripe free for US bank accounts and 1 percent per payout outside the US, PayPal a flat 50 cents per payout in the US and 3 percent capped at 30 dollars per payout outside the US.
lemonsqueezy.com/pricing The 5 percent plus 50 cents headline rate, and payouts processed twice a month, which is where this page's payout count comes from.
docs.lemonsqueezy.com/help/payments/merchant-of-record Definition of merchant of record and the list of responsibilities it carries: handling all payments, collecting sales tax, processing refunds and chargebacks, and ensuring PCI compliance. Lemon Squeezy states it takes on that liability.
docs.lemonsqueezy.com/help/payments/sales-tax-vat Sellers do not collect or remit sales tax, international VAT included. The worked example confirms the platform fee is charged on the tax inclusive order total: a 15 dollar product plus 3 dollars of UK VAT is an 18 dollar total and a 1.67 dollar platform fee.
stripe.com/pricing Stripe standard pricing, 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per successful transaction for domestic cards. Used only as the baseline for the merchant of record premium line, never as a Lemon Squeezy fee.

All five pages last checked on 7 September 2026. Platform pricing changes without notice, and rates outside the United States can differ. Nothing Lemon Squeezy does not publish is estimated here.