The calculator is designed for first-pass SaaS payment decisions. It turns a few business inputs into a comparable fee estimate across direct processors and merchant-of-record providers.
Each provider is modeled from the same revenue, order count, international card share, refund rate, and chargeback rate. The calculator estimates a blended fee, subtracts that fee from revenue, and ranks providers by estimated take-home revenue.
This keeps the comparison fair. A founder can change one assumption, such as international card share or order volume, and see which part of the business model moves the result.
SaaS pricing can look similar at the monthly revenue level while producing very different payment costs. A company making $10,000 from 50 annual invoices has a different fee profile from one making $10,000 from 2,000 small monthly payments.
Fixed per-transaction fees matter most when average order value is low. That is why the calculator asks for orders, not only revenue.
Direct processors are treated as payment infrastructure. They may offer lower raw processing costs and more checkout control, but the business usually keeps more responsibility for tax setup, invoice handling, disputes, support, and compliance operations.
The calculator focuses on transaction economics. It does not pretend that operational work is free; it simply keeps that work outside the numeric fee estimate so founders can judge it separately.
Merchant-of-record providers are treated as bundled commerce platforms. Their visible fee can be higher because more seller-side work may be included, such as tax handling, buyer receipts, dispute workflows, and some payment support.
A merchant of record does not automatically win or lose. The right decision depends on whether the bundled operations are worth more than the extra fee for the specific SaaS.
Refund and chargeback assumptions are directional. They help founders avoid comparing providers only under perfect conditions. Even a small dispute rate can matter if the product has low order value or high international volume.
The model is not a risk engine. If disputes, fraud, or refund abuse are central to the product, use the calculator as a starting point and review the provider's official dispute rules before choosing.
International cards can change the blended cost of direct processing. For global SaaS products, the domestic card rate is often not the rate that describes the whole business.
The international-card slider exists so a founder can test whether a product that looks cheap domestically still looks cheap after global demand appears.
The calculator does not include every possible cost. It does not estimate sales tax collected from customers, custom enterprise pricing, currency conversion edge cases, bank payout fees, accounting time, chargeback representment labor, or the cost of building internal billing operations.
Those omissions are deliberate. A simple model is easier to use early, but the result should be treated as a decision prompt, not a final accounting report.
Run at least three scenarios: current monthly revenue, expected revenue six months after launch, and a stress case with more international cards or lower average order value. If the same provider wins across all three, the decision is usually clearer.
If the result flips between providers, the payment decision probably depends on operations, tax coverage, checkout control, or support burden rather than headline fee alone.
No. It is a planning tool for comparing payment-provider economics. Confirm final numbers with official pricing pages and qualified professionals where needed.
Early SaaS decisions need a model that is understandable. The calculator prioritizes the variables that most often change the answer: revenue, order count, fixed fees, international cards, refunds, and chargebacks.
Use monthly revenue if most customers pay monthly. If annual billing is important, run a separate scenario with annual invoices converted into the monthly revenue and order pattern that actually occurs.
If the fee difference is small, choose based on operational fit: tax coverage, checkout control, reporting, refunds, disputes, customer support, and how much billing infrastructure you want to own.