Finder's Fee Calculator

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.

This calculator takes the deal value and fee percentage — along with an optional minimum and cap — and returns the finder's fee, the effective rate actually paid, and the net proceeds left after the fee.