How Much Does Stripe Cost? (2026 Fee Breakdown)

If you're asking how much does Stripe cost, the short answer is 2.9% + $0.30 per successful online card payment in the US, with no monthly fee and no setup fee. International cards add 1.5%, currency conversion adds another 1%, and add-on products like Stripe Billing (0.7%) and Stripe Tax (about 0.5%) cost extra on top of the base rate. Those numbers move, so treat this page as a snapshot and confirm current rates on stripe.com/pricing before you budget against them.

Stripe is a payment processor: it moves money from a customer's card to your bank account and takes a cut for doing it. Unlike a merchant of record such as Lemon Squeezy or Paddle, it does not become the legal seller of your product, so tax registration and filing stay your responsibility.

Note: Payment processor pricing shifts without much warning. The rates below are current as of July 2026, sourced from Stripe's published pricing page and independent fee trackers. Confirm anything you're building a financial model on directly at stripe.com/pricing.

Stripe fee breakdown table (2026)

Businesses processing roughly $5 million or more a year can typically negotiate custom Enterprise rates directly with Stripe. Everyone else pays the published rates in this table.

How much does Stripe cost per transaction?

The headline number is 2.9% + $0.30 per successful card charge, and that's genuinely what most US-based online businesses pay on a typical domestic sale. The standard plan carries no setup fee and no monthly fee. You pay only when a payment succeeds, and PCI compliance tooling is included at no extra cost.

Run the math on a $100 sale and the fee comes to $3.20 (2.9% of $100, plus $0.30), leaving you with $96.80. On a $10 sale the percentage only accounts for $0.29 of the fee, but the fixed $0.30 stays flat, so the total fee ($0.59) eats a noticeably bigger share of the sale.

Pro tip: If you sell a low-priced product or a cheap add-on, model the fixed $0.30 against your price point before you finalize pricing. It hurts a $5 sale far more than a $500 one.

That asymmetry is the first thing worth planning for. The second is everything layered on top of the base rate.

Extra Stripe fees: international cards, currency conversion, and disputes

Three costs show up most often once you sell beyond your home market or run into a dispute.

International cards add 1.5% on top of the base rate. Any card issued outside the US triggers this, regardless of where the cardholder happens to be at the time of purchase.

Currency conversion adds another 1% if you charge in a currency different from the one your Stripe payouts settle in. A non-US card paying in a foreign currency can trigger both surcharges at once, pushing the effective rate toward 5.4% + $0.30 in the highest-friction case.

Disputes and chargebacks cost a flat $15 each. That fee isn't refunded even if you win the dispute, so a high dispute rate is a direct hit to margin, not just a revenue risk.

Remember: The $15 dispute fee is non-refundable regardless of outcome. Winning a dispute gets your revenue back; it does not get the $15 back.

Stripe's add-on products: Billing, Tax, and Radar

Card processing is the floor, not the ceiling, for most SaaS businesses. Three optional products cover the gaps.

Stripe Billing handles subscription logic, proration, and recurring invoices for 0.7% of recurring revenue processed. Stripe consolidated what used to be a two-tier Billing price, a "Starter" and "Scale" split, into this single 0.7% rate in 2024, so treat older posts citing 0.5% or 0.8% as outdated.

Stripe Tax calculates and helps you remit sales tax and VAT for roughly 0.5% per transaction where it applies. It automates the calculation; you still register and file in each jurisdiction yourself, which is the main thing separating it from a merchant-of-record platform.

Stripe Radar for basic fraud screening is included at no extra cost on the standard plan. The advanced tier, with custom rules and manual review queues, adds a small per-transaction charge for teams that need it.

Stack Billing and Tax on top of standard processing for a subscription SaaS product and your effective rate lands closer to 4% than the 2.9% headline number, before geography adds anything.

Stripe vs. Lemon Squeezy vs. Paddle vs. Polar: total cost compared

Note: Competitor pricing below reflects public sources as of July 2026. Merchant-of-record pricing has moved more than once this year already (Polar raised its base rate in May 2026), so treat this table as directional and verify current numbers on each vendor's own pricing page. We refresh this comparison quarterly.

The pattern across merchant-of-record platforms is consistent: roughly double Stripe's headline rate, in exchange for handing off tax registration, VAT filing, and, on most of them, chargeback liability. Whether that trade pays off depends on how much your own time on tax compliance is worth, and how international your customer base is.

For a deeper side-by-side, see our full comparison of Stripe vs. Lemon Squeezy vs. Polar and Stripe vs. Paddle. If you're weighing the full field, Stripe alternatives covers more options than fit in this table.

How this maps to FastStaq

FastStaq ships Stripe as the default payment provider, wired up for checkout, the customer portal, subscriptions, and one-time or lifetime purchases, with idempotent webhook handling backed by an event ledger so a retried webhook doesn't double-charge or double-fulfill an order. None of that changes what Stripe charges per transaction. Stripe's fees go to Stripe, not to us.

If you'd rather run a merchant-of-record model instead, FastStaq includes a PAYMENT_PROVIDER toggle that switches the billing layer to Lemon Squeezy without a rewrite. That's a tradeoff between Stripe's lower per-transaction rate and Lemon Squeezy's bundled tax compliance, not a FastStaq pricing decision either way.

FastStaq itself costs $299 one time for lifetime access to the full source, separate from whatever your customers' cards cost you to process. The source also includes a credits and usage-metering module, useful if you're pricing on consumption rather than a flat subscription.

FAQ

Does Stripe charge a monthly fee? No. The standard plan is pay-as-you-go with no setup, monthly, or PCI fee. You pay only the 2.9% + $0.30 rate, plus any add-ons, when a payment actually succeeds.

Does Stripe charge extra for international customers? Yes. A card issued outside the US adds 1.5%, and charging in a currency different from your payout currency adds another 1%. Both can apply to the same transaction.

Is Stripe cheaper than Lemon Squeezy or Paddle? Per transaction, yes. Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30 is roughly half the 5% + $0.50 that Lemon Squeezy and Paddle charge as merchants of record. The gap narrows once you add Stripe Tax and Stripe Billing on top of standard processing, and it can flip if the time you'd spend on tax registration and filing is worth more than the fee difference.

Does FastStaq mark up Stripe's processing fees? No. FastStaq's $299 one-time price covers the source code license. Stripe's per-transaction fees are billed directly to your own Stripe account and go straight to Stripe.

Where to go next

Stripe's headline rate of 2.9% + $0.30 is the floor, not the average, once international cards, currency conversion, disputes, and add-on products like Billing and Tax enter the picture. Merchant-of-record platforms like Lemon Squeezy, Paddle, and Polar charge close to double that in exchange for owning tax compliance for you. Before you wire up billing, model your own effective rate against your actual customer geography and average order size rather than the headline number alone.

For the full setup, read our SaaS billing guide, which covers how FastStaq wires up Stripe, and the Lemon Squeezy toggle, end to end.