Chargeback Cost Calculator
A chargeback is never just the refund. Enter your numbers to see the real cost per dispute — including fees, lost inventory, shipping, and the hours your team spends fighting back.
Estimated annual chargeback cost
$17,460
Every $1 lost to a chargeback actually costs you $1.82.
Cost breakdown per chargeback
- Refund: $80.00
- Fee: $15.00
- Lost goods: $30.00
- Shipping: $8.00
- Time: $12.50
Estimate only, based on the values you enter.
Winning a dispute recovers the refund and the fee — and stops repeat offenders. ChargeGuard helps you win more disputes and block fraud.
Add to Shopify — FreeWhy a chargeback costs more than the sale
When a customer wins a chargeback, you lose the order revenue — but the costs do not stop there. Payment processors charge a dispute fee on every case, whether you win or lose. If you already shipped the product, you lose the goods and the outbound shipping you paid. And every dispute eats staff time pulling order data, tracking, and evidence together before the deadline.
That means a single chargeback on an $80 order can easily cost two or three times the sale price once you add everything up. Multiply that across every dispute in a month and the number gets painful fast — often without showing up clearly in your accounting.
What goes into the true cost of a chargeback
The refund is the obvious line item — the full order value returned to the cardholder. On top of that, Shopify Payments and other processors charge a per-dispute fee that is not refunded even when you win. Lost goods and shipping are the silent costs: if the product is not coming back, your COGS and fulfillment spend are gone for good.
Labor is the cost most merchants underestimate. Gathering IP addresses, tracking numbers, delivery proof, and writing a response letter can take 30 minutes or more per case. At an owner or operator's hourly rate, that time cost adds up across dozens of disputes — and it is time you are not spending on growth.
How to reduce your chargeback costs
You can attack chargeback costs from two directions: win more of the disputes you get, and get fewer disputes in the first place. Winning means submitting complete evidence before every deadline — delivery confirmation, AVS/CVV match, customer IP, and a clear response letter. Disputes you ignore or respond to late are disputes you lose by default, and every loss stacks the full cost on your business.
Prevention means flagging risky orders before you fulfill them, and blocking repeat fraudsters by email and IP so they cannot hit you twice. ChargeGuard handles both: it auto-collects evidence and generates dispute response letters the moment a case opens, tracks every deadline, and gives you risk scoring plus a customer blacklist to stop fraud before it becomes a chargeback.