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Finder's Fee Calculator

Enter the deal value and fee percentage to see the fee, the effective rate and the net proceeds.

How it is calculated

The fee starts as a share of the deal: fee = deal_value × fee% ÷ 100. If this is below the minimum fee, the minimum is used instead. If a cap is set (greater than zero) and the fee is above it, the cap is used. The fee can never exceed the deal value itself. The effective rate is fee ÷ deal_value × 100, which differs from the agreed percentage whenever the minimum or cap applies, and net proceeds are deal_value − fee. The minimum and cap are optional: leaving them empty or entering 0 means none. The deal value must be above zero, the percentage between 0 and 100, and the minimum and cap not negative; otherwise no result appears. When the minimum is larger than the cap, the cap wins. A single flat percentage is used, not a tiered scale.

Worked example

A deal is worth 250,000 and the agreed finder's fee is 5%, with a 2,500 minimum and a 10,000 cap. Percentage fee: 250,000 × 5% = 12,500. This is above the minimum, but also above the cap of 10,000, so the fee is limited to $10,000.00. The effective rate is 10,000 ÷ 250,000 × 100 = 4.00%, not 5%. Net proceeds: 250,000 − 10,000 = $240,000.00. On a 30,000 deal, the same terms would give 1,500, which the minimum raises to 2,500.

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Common mistakes

  • Quoting the agreed 5% as the cost on every deal. Once the cap applies, the effective rate is lower, and with a minimum on a small deal it can be much higher: 2,500 on a 30,000 deal is 8.33%.
  • Setting a minimum above the cap and expecting the minimum to win. The cap is applied last, so it overrides the minimum.
  • Calculating on the wrong base. If the agreement pays on the price actually received, not the asking price or the headline value, enter that figure as the deal value.
  • Treating net proceeds as profit. It is only the deal value minus the fee, before costs and tax.
  • Entering the percentage as 0.05. The field is a percent, so 5 means 5%, and anything above 100 shows no result.

About this calculator

A finder's fee compensates someone for connecting two parties in a deal — introducing a buyer to a seller, a client to a business, or an investor to a startup — and is typically calculated as a percentage of the deal's total value, commonly ranging from 5% to 15% depending on industry and deal size, sometimes following a sliding scale where the percentage drops as the deal value gets larger (the “Lehman formula” is a well-known tiered version used in M&A).

Agreements often set a minimum fee to make small deals worth the finder's time regardless of percentage, and sometimes a cap so the fee doesn't become disproportionate on very large transactions — business brokers, real estate referral networks and recruiters who place candidates all use this same fee-percentage-with-floor-and-ceiling structure.

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