The best Stripe alternatives, compared honestly
Stripe is still the most complete payments platform a developer can integrate in an afternoon, and its US card rate of 2.9% + 30¢ is genuinely competitive. The problem is that the rate is the first line of the invoice, not the last one. On the same pricing page, an international card adds 1.5%, currency conversion adds 1%, Billing takes 0.7% of the volume it bills, Tax Basic takes 0.5% per transaction, a paid Radar tier starts at $0.05 per screened transaction and every dispute costs $15.00. This page compares seven alternatives on the only column that matters: the base rate plus what a normal SaaS setup actually adds, with every fee taken from the vendor's own pricing page on 31 August 2026.
The best Stripe alternative depends on which part of the stack is costing you:
- You want the total before you sign → Braintree: 2.89% + $0.29 in the US, with a published +1% for non-USD and +1% for a non-US card, so the whole bill is arithmetic.
- You process enough for interchange to matter → Adyen: $0.13 + 0.80% + interchange++, the cheapest structure at volume, but the interchange and the minimum invoice are not published.
- Tax filing is the real problem → Paddle: 5% + 50¢ as merchant of record, higher because it is a different product, not a worse rate.
- You are staying on Stripe → budget the stack, not the headline: Billing 0.7%, Tax Basic 0.5%, international cards +1.5%, $15.00 per dispute.
Why teams look elsewhere
What pushes teams off Stripe
Stripe did not get worse at moving money; the card rate has not gone up. What changes is the shape of the bill as a product matures, because almost every capability a subscription business needs is a separate percentage on top of the card rate. Six patterns recur, and all six are on Stripe's own published US rate card rather than in anyone's opinion.
The rate you modelled is not the rate you pay
A US SaaS on Billing, Tax and a paid Radar tier pays 0.7% + 0.5% + $0.05 per transaction on top of 2.9% + 30¢. Worked out below on $100,000 a month, that is a 5.22% effective rate against a 3.50% headline: the additions cost almost half as much again as the card processing itself.
International cards are the biggest single line
+1.5% for a card issued outside your country and +1% if the charge needs currency conversion, so up to 2.5 extra points on the share of volume a global SaaS cares about most. Braintree's two equivalent surcharges are +1% and +1%.
Stripe Tax calculates; it does not file
Tax Basic is 0.5% per transaction where you are registered, or $0.50 per API transaction, and it buys calculation and collection only. Registrations, filings and remittance are Tax Complete, from $90.00 per month on a one-year contract. Teams who read the 0.5% as "tax handled" are the ones who end up pricing a merchant of record.
Billing has no middle tier
Either 0.7% of Billing volume pay as you go, or $620.00 per month on a one-year contract. Nothing in between. The contract only starts paying for itself above roughly $88,600 per month of billed volume, so a growing company pays the percentage for years.
Refunds and disputes keep their fees
Stripe's FAQ is explicit: refunds are free, but "the payment processing, Connect and currency conversion fees from the original transaction are not returned". A dispute costs $15.00 on receipt, plus $15.00 to counter (returned only if you win) or 30% of the disputed amount for each dispute Smart Disputes wins for you.
The rate card changes with your address
stripe.com/pricing is served by geography. Read from the United States it shows 2.9% + 30¢ for domestic cards; read from Poland the same URL shows 1.5% + 1.00zł for EEA standard cards and 1.9% + 1.00zł for EEA premium cards. Any advice that does not name its region is wrong somewhere.
The shortlist
7 Stripe alternatives worth evaluating
Payments splits into three genuinely different products, and mixing them up is what makes most comparisons useless. A payment service provider sells you a flat card rate and you remain the seller. An acquirer on interchange-plus passes the card networks' costs through and charges its own margin on top, which is cheaper at volume and unquotable in advance. A merchant of record becomes the legal seller, so it charges several points more and takes the tax filings and the chargebacks with it. This ranking optimises for one thing: can you compute your real all-in rate from published numbers before you commit, and what does that number come to. Every pick lists one honest strength and one real weakness.
US cards and third-party wallets at 2.89% + $0.29, with every surcharge published as a table: +1% for a non-USD currency, +1% for a card issued outside the United States, $15.00 per chargeback, Amex pass-through $0.15, ACH at 0.75% capped at $5.00. Both international surcharges are thinner than Stripe's, and Fraud Protection Lite is $0.05 per inquiry with Chargeback Protection from 0.4% if you want it. Weakness: there is no subscription billing, invoicing or tax calculation product at all, so the capabilities Stripe charges 0.7% and 0.5% for are yours to build or buy, and the custom flat and interchange-plus rates are reserved for "established businesses".
A fixed $0.13 processing fee plus a payment method fee: Visa and Mastercard are $0.13 + 0.80% + Interchange++, Amex is $0.13 + 0.80% + 3.95%. No monthly, setup, integration or closure fees. Because interchange is passed straight through, improving your card mix or authorisation rates shows up in your own bill instead of being kept as someone's margin. Weakness: the largest component of the fee, interchange itself, is by design not on the pricing page, and the FAQ confirms "a minimum invoice depending on industry or business model" without publishing the amount, which is what rules out smaller merchants.
5% + 50¢ per Checkout transaction, pay as you go, with no monthly or migration fees. As merchant of record Paddle is the legal seller, so tax registration, filing and remittance, fraud, chargebacks, billing and buyer support are inside that one number. Compare like for like: Stripe's own merchant of record product, Managed Payments, is 3.5% on top of Payments fees, so 6.4% + 30¢ on a domestic US card. Weakness: 5% + 50¢ is a real premium once you are large enough to run tax yourself, the customer relationship and the invoice belong to Paddle, and anything under $10 or needing invoicing is off the published rate and into a sales conversation.
Three structures on offer: a fully flat rate, interchange++, or free processing for registered charities, with no setup fees and no account maintenance fees, plus domestic acquiring across dozens of markets and transaction-level scheme cost data. Weakness: the pricing page publishes no rate whatsoever. It says your business deserves tailored pricing and asks you to get in touch, and it states plainly that the flat rate is priced on "your business profile and risk category". That is a legitimate enterprise model and a hard stop for anyone trying to compare on paper.
In-person tap, dip and swipe at 2.6% + 15¢, falling to 2.5% + 15¢ and 2.4% + 15¢ on paid plans; Online API at 2.9% + 30¢; ACH via API at 1% with a $5 cap; POS software and hardware from the same vendor. No international-card surcharge and no currency-conversion surcharge appear on the US fee page. Weakness: manual entry or card on file is 3.5% + 15¢, the highest percentage in this set, the online rate depends on which Square plan you pay for, and no dispute fee is published while the payment terms reserve the right to charge one.
Priced per card type rather than as one blended average: 1.80% + €0.25 for EEA consumer cards, 2.90% + €0.25 for EEA commercial cards, 3.25% + €0.25 for non-EEA cards, €0.35 for SEPA Direct Debit, €0 per month and no lock-in, with IC++ available above €100,000 per month. There is no per-product percentage stack to bolt on. Weakness: Mollie only serves companies based in the EEA, Switzerland or the United Kingdom and needs an IBAN or UK bank account, so it is not an option for a US merchant, and at 1.80% its EEA consumer rate is above Stripe's 1.5% EEA standard-card rate.
5% + 50¢ per transaction and $0 per month, as merchant of record, with a hosted store, licence keys and email marketing included. Weakness, and it is two. First, it runs exactly the surcharge stack this page is about: +1.5% international, +1.5% PayPal, +0.5% subscription per its own fee docs, so a subscription paid on a non-US card is 7% + 50¢ before payout fees of 1%, a flat $0.50 or 3% capped at $30. Second, Stripe acquired Lemon Squeezy in July 2024 and the site now banners "Lemon Squeezy + Stripe Managed Payments", so it is not an exit from Stripe.
Nothing was dropped for a dead pricing page: all seven pages returned HTTP 200 on 31 August 2026. Checkout.com's page loads and simply carries no rate, which is a finding rather than a reason to exclude it. Stripe's own merchant of record product, Managed Payments, is quoted here as a price comparison rather than ranked, because it is Stripe.
Side by side
Stripe alternatives compared
Rates as read from each vendor's own pricing page on 31 August 2026, in the currency and region each vendor publishes. The column that decides most migrations is the third one: what a normal SaaS setup adds on top of the base rate, because that is where a 2.9% quote becomes a 5.2% invoice. The fourth column records whether the all-in rate can be computed from published numbers at all, which for two of these vendors it cannot. Stripe's own row is the baseline.
| Processor | Type | Published base card rate | What a SaaS setup adds | All-in rate computable? | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stripe | PSP, full product suite | 2.9% + 30¢ (US, online domestic cards) | +1.5% international card, +1% conversion, +0.5% keyed; Billing 0.7%; Tax Basic 0.5%; Radar from $0.05 per screen; $15.00 per dispute | ✓ yes, every line published | One vendor for payments, billing, tax and fraud |
| Braintree (PayPal) | PSP | 2.89% + $0.29 (US, cards and wallets) | +1% non-USD currency, +1% non-US card, $15.00 chargeback; Fraud Protection Lite $0.05 per inquiry; no billing or tax product to add | ✓ yes, full US fee table | Knowing the total to the cent before signing |
| Adyen | Acquirer, interchange++ | $0.13 + 0.80% + Interchange++ (Visa, Mastercard) | Amex 0.80% + 3.95%; an unpublished minimum invoice by industry; no monthly, setup or closure fees | ✗ no, interchange and minimum unpublished | Volume, and control over card mix |
| Paddle | Merchant of record | 5% + 50¢ per Checkout transaction | Nothing: tax filing, fraud, chargebacks and buyer support are inside the 5%. Products under $10 or invoicing are quoted separately | ✓ yes, one published rate | B2B SaaS that wants tax off the books |
| Checkout.com | Acquirer, flat or IC++ | ✗ no published rate | Unknown by design: priced on business profile and risk category, quoted on request | ✗ no, nothing published | Enterprise volume with a sales cycle |
| Square | PSP plus POS | 2.6% + 15¢ in person; 2.9% + 30¢ Online API (US) | Manual entry or card on file 3.5% + 15¢; online rate varies by plan; dispute fee not published but reserved in the terms | ✓ mostly; plan prices render client-side | Shops, and mixed in-person plus online |
| Mollie | PSP, EEA only | 1.80% + €0.25 (EEA consumer cards) | EEA commercial cards 2.90%, non-EEA cards 3.25%, Amex 2.90%; €0 per month; no percentage add-ons | ✓ yes, published per card type | EEA, UK or Swiss merchants wanting flat pricing |
| Lemon Squeezy | Merchant of record (owned by Stripe) | 5% + 50¢ per transaction | +1.5% international, +1.5% PayPal, +0.5% subscription; payout fee 1%, flat $0.50, or 3% capped at $30 | ✓ yes, published in the fee docs | Digital products, licence keys, solo sellers |
Numbers that do not fit in cells. Stripe in person is 2.7% + 5¢ for domestic cards, +1.5% international, +$0.10 per Tap to Pay authorisation; ACH Direct Debit is 0.8% capped at $5.00; standard payouts are free on a US T+2 schedule and Instant Payouts cost 1.5% with a 50¢ minimum; Connect is included when Stripe sets your users' pricing, or $2.00 per monthly active account plus 0.25% + 25¢ per payout when you set it. Braintree's Venmo rate is 3.49% + $0.49 (US only). Square waives its 1.8% + 5¢ EBT rate through autumn 2026 and charges 0% on in-person bitcoin until 2027. Rates are regional and change often; check each vendor for current terms. Compiled August 2026.
Official pages: Stripe · Braintree · Adyen · Paddle · Checkout.com · Square · Mollie · Lemon Squeezy · Stripe Radar · Stripe Connect
One worked example
$100,000 a month, priced five ways
Percentages argue; totals settle it. Below is a single, deliberately ordinary US SaaS, priced on the published rates above. Assumptions, stated so you can disagree with them: a US merchant charging in USD, $100,000 per month of online card volume, an average transaction of $50 so 2,000 transactions, 20% of cards issued outside the United States ($20,000) and all of them charged in USD so no currency conversion applies, subscription billing switched on, tax calculation switched on, fraud screening upgraded off Stripe's included Radar Lite tier onto pay as you go, a 0.4% dispute rate so 8 disputes a month, and the free standard payout schedule. Adyen and Checkout.com are absent because their rates cannot be computed from published data, and Mollie is absent because it does not serve US merchants.
| Monthly line | Stripe | Braintree | Paddle | Square (Online API) | Lemon Squeezy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base card rate | 2.9% + 30¢: $3,500 | 2.89% + $0.29: $3,470 | 5% + 50¢: $6,000 | 2.9% + 30¢: $3,500 | 5% + 50¢: $6,000 |
| International cards (on $20,000) | +1.5%: $300 | +1%: $200 | included | none published | +1.5%: $300 |
| Subscription billing | 0.7%: $700 | no such product | included | no such product | +0.5%: $500 |
| Tax calculation | 0.5%: $500 | no such product | included, and filed | no such product | included, and filed |
| Fraud screening | $0.05 × 2,000: $100 | $0.05 × 2,000: $100 | included | included | included |
| Disputes (8) | $15.00 × 8: $120 | $15.00 × 8: $120 | included | none published | included |
| Monthly total | $5,220 | $3,890 | $6,000 | $3,500 | $6,800 |
| Effective rate | 5.22% | 3.89% | 6.00% | 3.50% | 6.80% |
Three things about that table are more important than the winner. First, Square and Braintree are cheaper partly because they sell less: neither has a subscription-billing product or a tax-calculation product, so those two rows are zero at the processor and non-zero somewhere else, in your engineers' time or in a third-party billing and tax vendor. Second, Paddle and Lemon Squeezy are not overpriced processors; they are the merchant of record, which is a different product with different liability, and the fair benchmark is Stripe's own version of it: Managed Payments at 3.5% on top of Payments fees works out to 6.4% + 30¢ on a domestic US card, more than either of them. Third, Stripe's 5.22% still does not include a single tax filing, because Tax Basic calculates and Tax Complete files, and Tax Complete starts at $90.00 per month on a one-year contract.
The direction reverses in two places worth knowing. On small in-person tickets Stripe is the cheaper answer: Terminal at 2.7% + 5¢ costs $1.40 on a $50 sale where Square's 2.6% + 15¢ costs $1.45. And on keyed transactions Square's lower fixed fee wins below roughly $150 a charge, because 3.5% + 15¢ beats Stripe's 3.4% + 30¢ until the percentage catches up. Neither is a rounding error at scale, and neither is visible if you only compare the percentages.
A fair call
When Stripe is still the right choice
Switching processor is not a config change. Card credentials are portable, but subscription state, dunning history, invoice numbering, webhook consumers, saved payment method identifiers, dispute evidence and fraud rules are not, and the safe migration runs two processors in parallel for months. That cost is real, and for a large number of teams the surcharge stack is still the right trade.
Stripe is still right if…
- Your volume is domestic and you use no add-ons. 2.9% + 30¢ with Radar Lite included, no monthly fee, no minimum invoice and no sales call is a genuinely good deal, and it is exactly what Adyen and Checkout.com cannot offer at the small end.
- You would otherwise build billing yourself. 0.7% of billed volume buys dunning, proration, usage metering and invoice delivery that Braintree and Square do not sell at any price, which is precisely why their totals in the table look lower than the real comparison.
- Your payments are card present and the tickets are small. Terminal's 2.7% + 5¢ costs less than Square's 2.6% + 15¢ on every sale under $100, so Stripe's higher percentage is the cheaper invoice.
- You need coverage more than you need a rate. Per-country rate cards across dozens of markets and 100+ payment methods, against, for example, Mollie's EEA, UK and Switzerland footprint.
- You want one API for payments, billing, tax, fraud, payouts and marketplaces. No one else in this list sells all six, and the integration cost of assembling them yourself is not zero.
Look elsewhere if…
- Most of your cards are issued abroad: Braintree charges +1% where Stripe charges +1.5%, on published terms you can total yourself.
- You process enough for interchange to dominate: Adyen at $0.13 + 0.80% + interchange++ passes the network costs through, so optimising your card mix pays you instead of your processor.
- Tax filing, not the rate, is what keeps you awake: Paddle at 5% + 50¢ registers, files and remits, which Stripe Tax Basic at 0.5% explicitly does not do.
- You take cards in a room: Square at 2.6% + 15¢ in person, with the POS software and hardware from the same vendor.
- You are an EEA, UK or Swiss company and want one flat card rate: Mollie at 1.80% + €0.25 for EEA consumer cards, with no per-product percentages bolted on.
- You have enterprise volume and a procurement team: Checkout.com will quote flat or interchange++, and a negotiated rate beats a published one once you are large enough to be worth negotiating with.
Common questions
Common questions about Stripe alternatives
What is the best Stripe alternative in 2026?
There is no single winner, because the honest number is the base rate plus the surcharges your setup triggers. Braintree ranks first here because its US fee table is fully published: 2.89% + $0.29, an extra 1% for a non-USD currency, an extra 1% for a card issued outside the United States, and $15.00 per chargeback, so you can total your real cost before signing. Adyen is cheaper at volume at $0.13 + 0.80% + interchange++, but neither the interchange nor its minimum invoice is published. Paddle at 5% + 50 cents wins when tax filing, not the rate, is the actual problem.
How much does Stripe actually cost in 2026?
Stripe's published US rate for online domestic cards is 2.9% + 30 cents per successful transaction, and that is where the invoice starts, not where it ends. On the same US pricing page: manually entered cards add 0.5%, international cards add 1.5%, currency conversion adds 1%, Billing costs 0.7% of billed volume on pay as you go, Tax Basic costs 0.5% per transaction where you are registered, a paid Radar tier starts at $0.05 per screened transaction, and a dispute costs $15.00 whether or not you contest it. A US SaaS running Billing, Tax and paid Radar on $100,000 a month pays about 5.2% all in.
Why do teams leave Stripe?
Not because card processing got worse. The recurring reason is that the number teams modelled, 2.9% + 30 cents, is not the number they pay once the per-product percentages are on: Billing at 0.7%, Tax Basic at 0.5%, international cards at 1.5% and $15.00 per dispute. Two specific gaps do most of the damage. Stripe Tax Basic calculates and collects but does not file, and registrations and filings are Tax Complete, from $90.00 per month on a one-year contract. Billing has no middle tier: it is 0.7% of volume, or $620.00 per month on a one-year contract.
Is a merchant of record like Paddle more expensive than Stripe?
It is a higher rate and a different product, so comparing the two percentages alone is misleading. Paddle charges 5% + 50 cents per Checkout transaction and is the merchant of record: it is the legal seller, it registers, files and remits the tax, and it absorbs chargebacks. Stripe sells the same arrangement as Managed Payments at 3.5% per transaction on top of Payments fees, which is 6.4% + 30 cents for a domestic US card, so Stripe's own merchant of record product costs more than Paddle's. If you already run tax and dunning yourself, the flat processors are cheaper.
Which payment processors do not publish their rates?
Checkout.com's pricing page loads normally and carries no rate at all: it offers a fully flat rate priced on your business profile and risk category, interchange++, or free processing for charities, each quoted on request. Adyen publishes its own margin, $0.13 + 0.80% for Visa and Mastercard, but passes interchange through as a variable, and its FAQ confirms a minimum invoice depending on industry and business model without stating the amount. Square publishes its card rates but no dispute fee, while its payment terms reserve the right to charge one. An empty cell here is the finding, not a gap in the research.
Can I migrate off Stripe without losing saved cards and subscriptions?
Saved cards can move. Card credentials are portable between PCI compliant processors, and both Stripe and its competitors will run a data migration on request, so customers do not have to re-enter card numbers. What does not move is everything around them: subscription schedules and trial state, proration history, invoice PDFs and numbering, webhook consumers, metadata conventions, dispute evidence and your Radar rules. Teams that do this cleanly run both processors in parallel, route new signups to the new one and let old subscriptions expire in place, rather than cutting over on a date.