{"head":{"title":"Payments Pricing Compared: Stripe and Paddle Fees | OceanLab","description":"Card payment fees from Stripe and Paddle, percent plus fixed fee per transaction, read off each vendor's own pricing page. Price your monthly volume.","canonical":"https://oceanlab.in/pricing/categories/payments"},"asOf":"2026-10-25","category":"payments","vendors":[{"id":"stripe","name":"Stripe","product":"Stripe payments","categories":["payments","kyc-identity"],"source":"https://stripe.com/pricing","checkedAt":"2026-10-25","assumptions":"Stripe's US pricing page, USD, standard pay-as-you-go rates. Custom and interchange-plus pricing are not covered.","plans":[{"id":"standard","name":"Standard","monthly":0,"summary":"Pay-as-you-go. No setup fees, monthly fees, or hidden fees.","source":"https://stripe.com/pricing"},{"id":"custom","name":"Custom","monthly":null,"summary":"Custom package for large volume or unique business models.","source":"https://stripe.com/pricing"},{"id":"billing-annual","name":"Billing (annual subscription)","monthly":620,"summary":"Billing plan on a 1-year contract, volume-tiered. Starting price.","source":"https://stripe.com/pricing"},{"id":"tax-complete","name":"Tax Complete","monthly":90,"summary":"Threshold monitoring, registrations, calculations and filings. Starting price, 1-year contract.","source":"https://stripe.com/pricing"}],"meters":[{"id":"card-domestic","kind":"card-payment","label":"Domestic card payment","unit":"transaction","per":1,"price":0.3,"percent":2.9,"included":0,"plan":null,"source":"https://stripe.com/pricing"},{"id":"card-international","kind":"other","label":"International card surcharge","unit":"transaction","per":1,"price":0,"percent":1.5,"included":0,"plan":null,"note":"Added on top of the domestic rate.","source":"https://stripe.com/pricing"},{"id":"currency-conversion","kind":"other","label":"Currency conversion surcharge","unit":"transaction","per":1,"price":0,"percent":1,"included":0,"plan":null,"note":"Added when currency conversion is required.","source":"https://stripe.com/pricing"},{"id":"manual-card","kind":"other","label":"Manually entered card surcharge","unit":"transaction","per":1,"price":0,"percent":0.5,"included":0,"plan":null,"source":"https://stripe.com/pricing"},{"id":"ach","kind":"other","label":"ACH Direct Debit","unit":"transaction","per":1,"price":0,"percent":0.8,"included":0,"plan":null,"note":"Capped at $5.00 per transaction.","source":"https://stripe.com/pricing"},{"id":"billing-payg","kind":"other","label":"Stripe Billing, pay as you go","unit":"transaction","per":1,"price":0,"percent":0.7,"included":0,"plan":null,"note":"Percent of Billing volume, on and off Stripe. Excludes one-off invoices.","source":"https://stripe.com/pricing"},{"id":"tax-basic-nocode","kind":"other","label":"Stripe Tax Basic, no-code integration","unit":"transaction","per":1,"price":0,"percent":0.5,"included":0,"plan":null,"note":"Only where you are registered to collect taxes.","source":"https://stripe.com/pricing"},{"id":"tax-basic-api","kind":"other","label":"Stripe Tax Basic, API integration","unit":"transaction","per":1,"price":0.5,"included":0,"plan":null,"note":"Only where you are registered to collect taxes.","source":"https://stripe.com/pricing"},{"id":"dispute","kind":"other","label":"Dispute received fee","unit":"dispute","per":1,"price":15,"included":0,"plan":null,"source":"https://stripe.com/pricing"},{"id":"identity-doc","kind":"id-verification","label":"Identity: ID document and selfie verification","unit":"verification","per":1,"price":1.5,"included":0,"plan":null,"note":"First 50 verifications free (one-time, not monthly). Charged when a user completes verification.","source":"https://stripe.com/identity"},{"id":"identity-ssn","kind":"other","label":"Identity: ID number lookup (US SSN only)","unit":"lookup","per":1,"price":0.5,"included":0,"plan":null,"source":"https://stripe.com/identity"}],"notes":[{"title":"No monthly fee","detail":"Standard pricing is pay-as-you-go with no setup or monthly fees."},{"title":"Surcharges stack","detail":"International cards add 1.5%, and currency conversion adds another 1%, on top of 2.9% + 30¢."},{"title":"Identity free start","detail":"Your first 50 Stripe Identity verifications are free. After that each completed verification is $1.50."},{"title":"Disputes","detail":"Each dispute costs $15.00, plus $15.00 more if you counter it manually (refunded if you win)."}],"unverified":["Whether Stripe Identity's first 50 free verifications are a one-time or monthly allowance."]},{"id":"paddle","name":"Paddle","product":"Paddle merchant of record","categories":["payments"],"source":"https://www.paddle.com/pricing","checkedAt":"2026-10-25","assumptions":"Standard pay-as-you-go merchant-of-record pricing, USD. Fee covers payments, billing, tax compliance and fraud.","plans":[{"id":"payg","name":"Pay-as-you-go","monthly":0,"summary":"Paddle as Merchant of Record. No monthly fees.","source":"https://www.paddle.com/pricing"},{"id":"custom","name":"Custom pricing","monthly":null,"summary":"For high-volume businesses or more complex needs.","source":"https://www.paddle.com/pricing"}],"meters":[{"id":"checkout-txn","kind":"card-payment","label":"Checkout transaction (all-inclusive MoR fee)","unit":"transaction","per":1,"price":0.5,"percent":5,"included":0,"plan":"payg","source":"https://www.paddle.com/pricing"}],"notes":[{"title":"All-in fee","detail":"One fee covers payments, checkout, billing, global tax compliance, fraud and chargebacks."},{"title":"Merchant of Record","detail":"Paddle is the seller of record, so it handles sales tax and VAT for you."},{"title":"No monthly fee","detail":"No monthly fees, migration fees, or hidden extras on pay-as-you-go."}],"unverified":["Custom plan prices are not published."]}],"vendorPages":["aws","azure","cloudflare","digitalocean","firebase","fly-io","google-cloud","mongodb-atlas","neon","netlify","planetscale","render","supabase","vercel","algolia","google-maps","mapbox","paddle","plaid","postmark","resend","sendgrid","stripe","twilio"],"leftOut":[],"siblings":[{"label":"CDN pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/cdn","detail":"Priced on 1 TB of CDN traffic and 10M requests a month."},{"label":"Cloud hosting pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/cloud-hosting","detail":"Priced on one 2 vCPU / 4 GB server running all month, with 200 GB of egress."},{"label":"Database pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/databases","detail":"Priced on the smallest paid always-on database with 20 GB of storage."},{"label":"Edge functions pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/edge-functions","detail":"Priced on 20M edge function requests a month."},{"label":"Object storage pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/object-storage","detail":"Priced on 500 GB stored, 1 TB downloaded and 1M writes a month."},{"label":"Serverless functions pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/serverless","detail":"Priced on 10M invocations and 1M GB-seconds a month."},{"label":"Product analytics pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/analytics","detail":"Priced on 5M events a month."},{"label":"Auth pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/auth","detail":"Priced on 20,000 monthly active users."},{"label":"Banking data API pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/banking-data","detail":"Priced on 500 verified bank accounts a month."},{"label":"Email API pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/email-api","detail":"Priced on 100,000 emails a month."},{"label":"Error monitoring pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/error-monitoring","detail":"Priced on 100,000 errors a month."},{"label":"KYC and identity verification pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/kyc-identity","detail":"Priced on 500 identity verifications a month."},{"label":"Maps API pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/maps","detail":"Priced on 100,000 web map loads and 50,000 geocodes a month."},{"label":"Observability pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/observability","detail":"Priced on 10 hosts and 200 GB of logs a month."},{"label":"Search API pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/search-api","detail":"Priced on 100,000 searches a month."},{"label":"SMS API pricing compared","href":"/pricing/categories/sms","detail":"Priced on 10,000 SMS to US numbers a month."}],"faqs":[{"question":"Which payments vendor is cheapest?","answer":"For 1,000 card payments of $50 a month, Stripe comes out lowest at about $1,750 a month on list prices, and Paddle highest at about $3,000, checked 2026-10-25. A different workload can change the order, so enter your own numbers in the estimator."},{"question":"How is the estimate worked out?","answer":"Each vendor is priced on its cheapest plan that lists a rate for every line of the workload: the plan fee plus each usage line, after any free or included amount. A plan's monthly minimum counts as a floor. Volume tiers are applied in order. Taxes, discounts and committed-use deals are left out."},{"question":"How current are these prices?","answer":"Every rate was read off the vendor's own pricing page on 2026-10-25 and links to it. Prices change often: check the vendor's page before you commit, and tell us if a number here is out of date."}]}