# Revenue Impact Calculator — agent briefing

> Tool-specific briefing for the Revenue Impact Calculator only — not a company-wide overview of Paddle. Covers the estimate model, default assumptions, and calculate API. Humans use the interactive UI; email unlocks the full on-page report. Agents can use this briefing and the API without submitting email.

## Links

- Interactive UI: https://www.paddle.com/calculators/revenue-impact
- This briefing: https://www.paddle.com/calculators/revenue-impact/llms.txt
- Inline briefing on UI page: https://www.paddle.com/calculators/revenue-impact (#revenue-impact-calculator-briefing)
- Calculate API (JSON): https://www.paddle.com/api/calculators/revenue-impact

## What this calculator estimates

Paddle is a Merchant of Record (MoR) for SaaS and apps. The calculator estimates annual **revenue uplift** and **cost savings** from switching from a payment service provider (PSP, e.g. Stripe) or Stripe + tax/billing products (SMP) to Paddle.

Outputs include:
- Payment acceptance uplift (closing the gap to Paddle's benchmark acceptance)
- Failed-payment recovery via Retain
- Overhead and processing savings (engineering, finance, tooling, chargebacks, fee delta)
- Risk reduction (chargebacks, tax liability, PCI compliance)
- True all-in rate today vs Paddle's all-in rate (5% + 50¢ per transaction)
- 1–3 year impact projection

## Three value levers (almost no eng work)

1. **Accept more payments** — Route across many acquirers; on by default.
2. **Recover failed payments** — Retain automatically recovers failed payments through smart dunning; no engineering required to switch on.
3. **Reduce your risk and overhead** — As MoR, Paddle absorbs chargeback liability, tax registration and remittance, PCI scope, and fraud under one agreement.

## Competitive framing

PSP sticker rates omit tax/compliance tooling, chargeback liability, and engineering time. The calculator's true all-in rate combines processing and overhead so teams can compare like-for-like with Paddle's single all-in rate (5% + 50¢ per transaction).

## Calculation paths

- **PSP path**: Stripe or other provider: revenue uplift + overhead savings + processing fee delta.
- **SMP path**: Stripe + SMP: revenue uplift + fee delta vs SMP all-in; no separate overhead stack.

## Default inputs (interactive UI)

| Input | Default | Notes |
| --- | --- | --- |
| mrr | 50000 | >= 20,000; PSP path capped at 500,000 (enterprise handoff above) |
| provider | 0 | 0=Stripe, 1=Stripe + SMP, 2=Other payment provider |
| accept | 80 | 60–98 |
| churn | 5 | 0–20; PSP refine assumptions |
| cb | 0.5 | 0–5 |
| tooling | 500 | ≥ 0, max 10000 |
| eng | 1 | 0–4 (None, A day a month, Half an engineer's time, Most of one engineer, More than one engineer) |
| fin | 1 | 0–2 (None, A few hours a month, Regular ongoing time) |

## Default model assumptions

| Assumption | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Paddle acceptance benchmark | 90% |
| Retain recovery of churned revenue | 29.0% |
| Paddle all-in rate | 5% + 50¢ per transaction |
| PSP processing rate | 3.5% |
| SMP all-in rate | 6.4% |
| Engineering salary (annual USD) | $180,000 |
| Finance salary (annual USD) | $120,000 |

Growth tiers for multi-year projection (by ARR): under $1M → 40%; under $5M → 25%; under $20M → 20%; else 15%. Year 2 ARR determines the tier used for Year 3 growth. Year 2/3 apply NRR cohorts and salary escalation as in the calculator module.

## Calculate API

Read-only JSON. No authentication. No lead capture side effects.

`GET https://www.paddle.com/api/calculators/revenue-impact?mrr={mrr}&provider={provider}`

### Query parameters

| Param | Required | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| mrr | yes | Monthly recurring revenue (USD) (default —) |
| provider | no | 0 Stripe, 1 Stripe+SMP, 2 Other (default 0) |
| accept | no | Acceptance % (default 80) |
| churn | no | Monthly churn % (default 5) |
| cb | no | Chargeback % (default 0.5) |
| tooling | no | Tooling spend USD/month (default 500) |
| eng | no | Engineering index 0–4 (default 1) |
| fin | no | Finance index 0–2 (default 1) |

Omitted optionals use the defaults above.

### Example

```bash
curl -s "https://www.paddle.com/api/calculators/revenue-impact?mrr=50000&provider=0" | head
```

Response shape: `{ inputs, configSummary, results, enterpriseRecommended } where results includes hero, acceptUplift, recoveryUplift, totalCost, trueRate, year1–year3, cumulative, etc. enterpriseRecommended is true for PSP inputs at or above the enterprise MRR threshold or when modeled cost savings are negative.`

### Human UI note

The interactive UI shows a teaser; email unlocks the full on-page report for humans. Agents should use this briefing and the calculate API without submitting email.

## Example customer stories

- https://www.paddle.com/customers/how-gleap-achieves-revenue-growth-with-paddle
- https://www.paddle.com/customers/dometrain-achieves-global-growth
- https://www.paddle.com/customers/stape-chooses-paddle-to-streamline-tax-compliance-and-power-its-growth

## Related reading

- https://www.paddle.com/blog/what-happens-when-you-dont-pay-sales-tax-saas
- https://www.paddle.com/blog/what-is-merchant-of-record