This one is for sellers and merchants, not cardholders. It answers one question the other tools do not: do chargeback alerts pay for themselves, on your own numbers? Enter your per-alert cost, your monthly alert volume, the share of alerts that prevent a chargeback, and your average cost per dispute, and it works out disputes avoided, alert spend, net saving, ROI — and the two guardrails that matter in your next provider negotiation: your break-even alert price and your break-even prevention rate. It promises nothing: your numbers decide.
Prices checked October 28, 2026 — and one honest gap first: no network publishes a flat merchant price for alerts. Mastercard does not publish a direct merchant rate for Ethoca, and Verifi does not publish a standard RDR price — every dollar figure you see quoted comes from a reseller or acquirer, not from the network. So this tool builds no price in: you enter your own contract price, and the two preset buttons below only fill in dated, sourced reseller figures that you can change before calculating. A calculator with a built-in "standard" alert price would be inventing one.
Do your alerts pay for themselves?
Everything is counted in your browser and never sent anywhere. This calculator asks for no card numbers, account numbers or merchant IDs — never enter those into any checker.
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The model, in one view
How alert ROI is worked out
Alerts bought × prevention rate = disputes avoided. Disputes avoided × cost per dispute = value avoided. Alerts × per-alert price, plus any monthly fee = alert spend. Value avoided minus alert spend = net saving; net saving divided by alert spend = ROI. Two guardrails fall out of the same figures: the break-even alert price (value avoided, less any monthly fee, divided by alerts bought) is the highest per-alert price at which the month still breaks even, and the break-even prevention rate (alert spend divided by alerts × cost per dispute) is the prevention rate the month needs to break even. If your provider quotes above your break-even price, or your prevention rate sits below your break-even rate, the dollar case does not close on your figures.
Network
What it does
Published reseller price (Aug 2026)
Visa RDR (Verifi, Visa)
Automatic: rules you set in advance auto-refund qualifying Visa disputes before they are filed
$15 (Redo; Chargeback.io $15; Dodo Payments $18)
Verifi CDRN (Visa)
Manual: 72-hour window to review and refund before the dispute becomes a chargeback
$15 (Redo; Chargeback.io $15)
Ethoca alerts (Mastercard)
Manual: near-real-time notice of a confirmed fraud or dispute claim; refund or stop fulfilment
$24 (Redo; Chargeback.io $29; Dodo Payments $27)
Three cautions sit under every row. First, no primary flat rate exists: Mastercard and Verifi do not publish merchant rate cards, so every figure above is a reseller's published card, dated 17 August 2026, and your contract price may differ — volume tiers (Redo: $13.50 Visa / $22 Ethoca at the top tier) move it further. Second, an alert refund still returns the order: the sale itself is not avoided, only the dispute fee, handling and staff time — so a cost-per-dispute figure that includes the order value overstates the saving, and the $128 average (fees + handling, excluding the sale) is the conservative input. Third, ratio protection is not priced here: whether an alert keeps a case off a monitoring ratio depends on the network and on data-extract timing, so confirm the treatment with your acquirer and check your position with the ratio calculator and the VAMP checker before letting a small dollar edge override ratio safety.
What this calculator is not
It is not the Chargeback Cost Calculator — that tool tallies what one lost dispute costs, and its $128 average is borrowed here only as a labelled reference. It is not the Fight-or-Refund Calculator — that tool compares fighting one filed dispute against refunding it, while this one prices a month of prevention. And it is not a copy of any competitor's ROI calculator: chargeback.io publishes its own ROI calculator for the same question, and this tool was built independently from the model above, with presets drawn from the published rate cards named here. Do not add this tool's saving to either of those tools' figures — the same dispute would be counted twice.
Calculator questions
No. Neither Mastercard (Ethoca) nor Visa/Verifi (RDR, CDRN) publishes a flat merchant rate card; alerts are priced in provider contracts and reseller rate cards. Published reseller figures as of August 2026 run from $15 per Visa alert to $24–$29 per Ethoca alert. This calculator therefore asks for your own contract price and only offers dated reseller figures as fill-ins you can change.
Disputes avoided = alerts received × prevention rate. Value avoided = disputes avoided × your cost per dispute. Alert spend = alerts × per-alert cost, plus any monthly platform fee. Net saving = value avoided minus alert spend; ROI = net saving divided by alert spend. The break-even alert price is the highest per-alert price at which the month still breaks even on your figures.
Usually not. An alert-resolved case normally still refunds the order, so the order value itself is not avoided — only the dispute fee, handling and staff time are. If your cost-per-dispute figure includes the order value, treat the saving shown as an upper bound; the conservative reading uses only the avoidable part, which is what the $128 published average (fees + handling, excluding the sale) measures.
No. It applies arithmetic to the figures you enter. If your prevention rate or cost per dispute is overstated, the saving shrinks or reverses. Your numbers decide, and ratio protection is never converted to dollars here.
Sources (checked October 28, 2026): Redo — chargeback alerts rate card, rates as of 17 August 2026 (Visa RDR/CDRN $15.00, Ethoca $24.00, falling to $13.50 / $22.00 at the top volume tier, no monthly fee; redo.com/articles/comparisons/chargeback-alerts-rate-card); Redo — Ethoca alerts cost, August 2026 (published reseller rates $24.00–$29; "Mastercard does not publish a direct merchant rate"; redo.com/articles/comparisons/ethoca-alerts-cost); Redo — Rapid Dispute Resolution guide ("Verifi does not publish a standard per-alert price; any dollar figure you see quoted comes from a reseller or acquirer"; redo.com/articles/chargebacks/rapid-dispute-resolution); Chargeback.io — Ethoca alerts explainer and RDR/CDRN comparison ($29 Ethoca, $15 RDR, $15 CDRN; chargeback.io/blog/what-is-ethoca-and-their-chargeback-alerts and chargeback.io/blog/rdr-vs-cdrn-vs-ethoca — competitor, cited honestly for its published prices, not copied); Dodo Payments — chargeback reason codes and VAMP guides (RDR $18, Ethoca $27; dodopayments.com/blogs/chargeback-reason-codes); Chargeflow — chargeback alerts guide, summarising Mastercard research with Javelin (2026) ($46 fees + $82 handling = $128 average, excluding the sale; chargeflow.io/blog/chargeback-alerts-how-it-works); Scenario Press — chargeback alerts explainer, summarising Javelin Strategy & Research (prevention 30–40% of disputes; scenario.press); FeeDecoder — chargeback alert fees, checked October 2026 (typical range $15–$40, monthly platform fees around $200 at some providers; payments.flswarehouse.com/chargeback-alert-fees-canada.html). DROPPED, not used as presets: any primary flat rate (none exists); Chargebacks911's claimed standardised $19 RDR rate from January 1, 2025 (contradicted by the August 2026 reseller cards at $15/$18); Solidgate's older Ethoca figure of roughly $35–$40 per alert (superseded by the August 2026 cards). Prices vary by provider, volume tier and contract; check your own invoice before budgeting.
General information only — not legal or financial advice. This calculator applies arithmetic to the figures you enter; it does not predict your prevention rate, your provider's price, or whether any one dispute would have become a chargeback. Never enter a card number, account number or merchant ID into any calculator — no genuine ROI check needs them.
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