Your side never moves. You pay the printed rate whatever anyone holds, and nothing anybody can do raises or lowers it after the token is live.

The create screen and the trade panel both name the exact amount before you sign. Paying NEAR for a coin in another pair adds a NEAR Intents swap, which has its own cost, also shown before you sign.

Creating a token is 0.5 NEAR on a Shards pool and 1.25 NEAR on a Rhea pool: the same 0.5, plus 0.75 for Rhea. It is always paid in NEAR, whatever the token's pair, and you pay it once. The create screen shows the exact amount the contract is asking for before you sign, and that figure is the one to trust.

The creator's tax is chosen by the creator, from 1% to 10% on each side, or up to 4% on a Rhea pool, and charged on the pair's side of the trade (NEAR, on a NEAR coin). After a Rhea coin graduates, the tax is taken in the coin instead, as it moves into or out of its pool. Say a token's sell tax is 5%: selling 100 NEAR of it returns about 95, before price impact. Look at the sell tax before you buy: a token that is cheap to enter and expensive to leave is allowed here.

The pool's fee is 1% on every token, on a Shards pool and on a Rhea pool alike, and it only exists after graduation. On a graduated token with, say, a 3% tax, a trade costs about 4%, and the trade panel names both parts separately before you sign.

Where the tax ends up is its own page.

Paying with NEAR for a coin in another pair

You can pay for a ZEC or stock coin with NEAR. The NEAR is first swapped into the pair through NEAR Intents, which has its own cost and its own minimum: $1 for a ZEC coin, $30 for a stock coin. That cost is the swap's, not ours, and it is shown before you sign. On a SHARDS coin, the NEAR buys SHARDS on SHARDS's own pool first, at that trade's own tax and pool fee. Paying in the pair itself skips this step. Pairs has how each one is paid for.

On a RHEA coin, the NEAR is swapped to RHEA on Rhea's exchange first, which pays Rhea's 0.3% pool fee on top of the coin's own tax. Paying in RHEA itself skips the swap and its fee.

A Quantus coin is paid in QTC only. Buying QTC with NEAR on the Swap page is its own trade, at that trade's own cost.

The one that is not a fee

A token you have never held asks for a one-off 0.005 NEAR deposit before your first receipt of it. It is not ours and it is not a charge: it is what the chain costs to keep a record of your balance, staked on that token's own contract for as long as the record exists. Close the record and it comes back to you. On a NEAR coin, your very first buy on Shards can add one more like it, about 0.00125 NEAR, kept by NEAR's own token contract for the same reason.