PayPal vs Stripe Fees (2026) — Which Costs Less on Your Payment Size

The headline answer, and why it is boring

PayPal charges 3.49% + $0.49 on a standard goods-and-services payment. Stripe charges 2.90% + $0.30 on a standard online card payment. Stripe is lower on the percentage and lower on the fixed fee.

Two schedules of that shape cross at most once, where the amount equals the difference in fixed fees divided by the difference in rates. Here both differences point the same way, so there is no positive solution: Stripe is cheaper at one dollar and cheaper at fifty thousand. There is no volume, no transaction size and no business model that reverses it on these two products.

That is the whole of the question people usually ask, and it is answerable in a sentence. The interesting question is the one underneath it: neither of those is the cheapest thing either company sells, and which schedule you should be on depends entirely on the size of payment you actually take.

A worked example with real numbers

Every schedule at every amount

This is the table that makes the point. Read down a column and you are watching one fee structure; read across a row and you are choosing between them at one payment size.

The last column deliberately excludes ACH. Bank transfer is cheaper than every card rate from the first dollar upward, so a plain "cheapest" column would read Stripe ACH on every row and tell you nothing — and ACH is not a substitute for card checkout anyway. Among the three card schedules the winner does change, exactly once, and the ACH column is there so you can see what all three are costing you against the alternative.

Crossover one: micropayments, at about $10

PayPal micropayments trades a much higher percentage for a much lower fixed fee. Below a certain amount the fixed fee is most of the bill and micropayments wins; above it the percentage takes over and it loses badly. Setting the two schedules equal and solving:

The important caveat is that micropayments is not a per-payment choice. It is an account-wide setting you have to request from PayPal, and once it is on it applies to everything. It pays off only if the bulk of your payments sit below the crossover — selling $3 downloads, taking small tips, running a per-item digital shop. If your average is $40, it is costing you money on nearly every transaction. The PayPal fee calculator flags this in both directions.

Crossover two: the ACH cap, at $—

Stripe's ACH is 0.8% capped at $5.00, and the cap is what makes it a different kind of thing rather than a cheaper version of the same thing. A percentage grows without limit. A capped percentage stops.

ACH settles in days rather than instantly and only works from US bank accounts, so it cannot replace card checkout for retail. For B2B invoicing, where the client is a company with a bank account and a net-30 expectation anyway, the slower settlement usually costs nothing at all.

So which should you use?

Framed as "PayPal or Stripe" the answer is Stripe, and it is not close. Framed as "which schedule fits my payments" — which is the question that actually saves money — the answer is:

• Under $10 a payment: PayPal micropayments, if enough of your volume sits there to justify an account-wide switch.
• Ordinary card payments: Stripe, by $0.78 on a $100.00 sale.
• Invoices above a few hundred dollars, US clients: Stripe ACH, by a margin that makes the card-rate comparison irrelevant.
• Any checkout where a buyer might abandon: offer PayPal as well and pay the higher fee on the orders that choose it. A completed sale at 3.98% beats an abandoned one at 3.20%.

What this does not account for

• Conversion rate. The largest factor and the one no fee table can measure. Offering a wallet buyers already trust wins checkouts.
• Chargebacks and disputes. Both charge a dispute fee and the processes differ substantially. Not modelled here.
• Payout timing. Instant payout carries its own surcharge on both platforms.
• Negotiated pricing. Both discount at volume. These are the published rates.
• Everything that is not the fee — developer effort, subscription billing, fraud tooling, reporting. Stripe and PayPal are not the same product and this page only prices one dimension of them.

Who this is for

Anyone taking payments on their own site and choosing a processor, and freelancers deciding how to invoice. If you need to know what to charge so that a specific amount lands in your account after the fee, the charge-to-receive calculator solves that directly — the markup is always larger than the fee rate, which catches people out.