Stripe vs Paddle fees: the plan price decides who is cheaper

In our fee model, a $25 monthly plan sold through Paddle’s flat 5% + 50¢ came out cheaper than Stripe plus its tax-filing plan at $2,000, $10,000 and $50,000 of monthly revenue. On a $100 plan, Stripe with Tax Complete was cheaper at $10,000 and $50,000. The price of one sale decides who is cheaper, more than total revenue does, because the fixed fees and Stripe’s tax tiers both count sales.

That matters if you sell software and must choose who handles sales tax and VAT. You can do it yourself, or pay a merchant of record: a reseller that sells to your customers, then collects and files the tax. We read the pricing pages of Stripe, Paddle and Lemon Squeezy on October 30, 2026, and ran each fee table through one script.

Four ways to get paid, four fee stacks

Stripe sells three routes. Plain Stripe makes you the seller; Stripe Tax can calculate the tax, and its Tax Complete plan also registers and files. Managed Payments is Stripe’s own merchant of record. Paddle and Lemon Squeezy are merchants of record by design, and Lemon Squeezy has been part of Stripe since 2024, per its 2026 update.

Route	Who files the tax	Fee per sale (US seller)	Extras
Stripe + Tax Basic	You	2.9% + 30¢; +1.5% cross-border cards; +0.7% Billing; +0.5% Tax (no-code)	$15 per dispute
Stripe + Tax Complete	You, with Stripe filing in the US, Canada and the EU (non-Union OSS)	Same card and Billing fees	$90, $430, $1,000 or $1,500 a month, 1-year contract
Stripe Managed Payments	Stripe (as Link)	Card and Billing fees + 3.5%	Dispute received fee applies
Paddle	Paddle	5% + 50¢	Contact Paddle under $10
Lemon Squeezy	Lemon Squeezy	5% + 50¢; +1.5% outside the US; +0.5% subscriptions; +1.5% PayPal	$15 per dispute

The Stripe rows come from its pricing page: cards cost “2.9% + 30¢”, cross-border cards an extra 1.5%, and Billing 0.7% of volume on pay-as-you-go. Paddle’s pricing page lists “5% + 50¢” and says it has “No monthly fees, migration fees, or hidden extras.” Lemon Squeezy’s add-ons are on its fees page, and its $15 dispute fee is on its refunds and chargebacks page.

Managed Payments stacks rather than replaces. Stripe’s pricing FAQ says the 3.5% “is in addition to the standard Stripe payment processing fees,” and that “billing fees apply separately” for subscriptions.

Every merchant of record takes its cut from the tax too

Guess what the fee is charged on when a UK customer pays $24 for a $20 plan, $4 of it VAT. It is the $24. Lemon Squeezy’s own worked example takes 5% of the $24 total, and its page says the fee “is calculated on the total order value.”

Paddle does the same. Its earnings example takes a $120 order with $20 of UK VAT and says “From the total ($120) we calculate our fee,” which comes to $6.50. Stripe says its 3.5% Managed Payments fee “is calculated on the full transaction amount, including any indirect taxes.”

So VAT raises your effective rate. The UK’s standard rate is 20%, and on a sale with 20% added, 5% of the total is 6% of your price.

The same plan priced at three revenue levels

A hypothetical US-based company sells one monthly plan, with 40% of customers paying with cards from outside the US and no tax added. We ran the fee tables above for a $25 plan and a $100 plan. For Tax Complete we took the smallest tier whose monthly transaction allowance covers the sales count. For Tax Basic we charged the 0.5% on every sale, the most it can cost.

$25 plan, 40% of customers outside the US: monthly fees and share of revenue

Monthly revenue	Sales	Stripe + Basic	Stripe + Complete	Stripe Managed Payments	Paddle	Lemon Squeezy
$2,000	80	$118 (5.9%)	$198 (9.9%)	$178 (8.9%)	$140 (7.0%)	$162 (8.1%)
$10,000	400	$590 (5.9%)	$970 (9.7%)	$890 (8.9%)	$700 (7.0%)	$810 (8.1%)
$50,000	2,000	$2,950 (5.9%)	$3,700 (7.4%)	$4,450 (8.9%)	$3,500 (7.0%)	$4,050 (8.1%)

$100 plan, same mix

Monthly revenue	Sales	Stripe + Basic	Stripe + Complete	Stripe Managed Payments	Paddle	Lemon Squeezy
$2,000	20	$100 (5.0%)	$180 (9.0%)	$160 (8.0%)	$110 (5.5%)	$132 (6.6%)
$10,000	100	$500 (5.0%)	$540 (5.4%)	$800 (8.0%)	$550 (5.5%)	$660 (6.6%)
$50,000	500	$2,500 (5.0%)	$2,680 (5.4%)	$4,000 (8.0%)	$2,750 (5.5%)	$3,300 (6.6%)

Stripe + Basic is cheapest in every row, but it is not a like-for-like option. Tax Basic calculates and collects; it does not register you or file returns. That work, and the liability, stays with you.

Among the routes that file for you, Paddle was cheapest in every row of both tables. Stripe’s own merchant of record came out dearest, at 8.9% on the $25 plan, because its 3.5% sits on top of card, cross-border and Billing fees. Adding 20% tax to every sale of the $25 plan raised Paddle to 8.0% and Managed Payments to 10.4% in the same run.

Stripe’s tax tiers make the break-even jump around

Comparison posts often name one revenue figure where doing tax yourself starts to pay. Our script found no single figure. Tax Complete is priced by transactions a month ($90 covers 200, $430 covers 1,000, $1,000 covers 2,500 and $1,500 covers 5,000), so every tier step can hand the lead back to Paddle.

Plan price	Monthly revenue where Stripe + Complete cost less than Paddle (40% outside the US)
$10	Never, up to 5,000 sales a month
$25	$93,775 to $125,000
$50	$7,550 to $10,000; $35,850 to $50,000; $83,350 to $250,000
$100	$9,100 to $20,000; $43,100 to $500,000
$200	$10,200 to $40,000; $47,800 to $1,000,000

Where customers live matters too. Stripe adds 1.5% for cross-border cards and Paddle’s page lists no such add-on, so with every customer in the US the windows open earlier. On a $25 plan, Stripe + Complete then beat Paddle from $4,100 to $5,000 a month and again from $19,550 to $25,000.

The gaps come from the tier steps. A $50 plan crosses 200 sales at $10,000 a month, the $90 tier no longer covers it, and the $430 tier puts Stripe behind again until about $35,850. Above 5,000 transactions a month Stripe publishes no price, so the script stops there.

The fee gap also ignores the limits inside each tier. The $90 tier includes “2 registrations per year” and “4 filings per year,” and Stripe says extra fees “may apply for registrations and filings outside of the US.”

That may cover a seller with one EU registration filed quarterly; it may not cover a seller with several US states. Count your registrations before you trust the cheaper cell.

What the fee tables leave out

Each route trades fees for control, and some limits rule a route out before price does.

• Who you can be. Managed Payments is open to businesses in 37 listed countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, all 27 EU members, Australia and Japan. It covers only “fully automated” digital products, per its eligibility page. Consulting and services with “human intervention” do not qualify.
• Whose name the customer sees. On Managed Payments the card statement reads LINK.COM* [Your statement descriptor], and custom checkout domains are not supported. If you do not answer a support escalation within 48 hours “Stripe might issue a refund without your approval,” per How Managed Payments works.
• Currency. Stripe’s Adaptive Pricing, on by default in Managed Payments, costs you nothing but adds a 2% to 4% conversion fee to the customer’s price, per its docs. Paddle “reserve[s] the right to add a conversion margin of up to 1.5%” if you take payouts in another currency than your balance. It charges a $15 SWIFT fee when the payout currency does not match your bank’s, per its payout fee page.
• Payouts outside the US. Lemon Squeezy pays US bank accounts through Stripe for free but charges 1% per payout to banks outside the US, and 3% (capped at $30) to PayPal accounts outside the US.
• Lemon Squeezy’s direction. In a January 28, 2026 update, the company said its team is working on Stripe’s merchant of record product and admitted “slower support responses and less frequent product updates.” Access to Managed Payments for its users was by waitlist at that point.

Our numbers also leave out disputes. Stripe charges $15 for each dispute received and Lemon Squeezy $15 per dispute, while Paddle lists chargebacks under what its fee covers and names no separate charge.

The script behind the tables

This is the fee model we ran on October 30, 2026, cut to the parts the tables use. Change price, intl and tax to your own numbers.

import math

def stripe_cards(n, price, intl, tax):
    gross = price * (1 + tax)
    return n * (0.029 * gross + 0.30) + n * intl * 0.015 * gross + 0.007 * n * gross

def tax_complete(n):  # smallest tier covering n transactions a month
    for limit, fee in [(200, 90), (1000, 430), (2500, 1000), (5000, 1500)]:
        if n <= limit:
            return fee
    return None  # no published price above 5,000

def routes(mrr, price, intl=0.40, tax=0.0):
    n = math.ceil(mrr / price)
    gross = price * (1 + tax)
    s = stripe_cards(n, price, intl, tax)
    tc = tax_complete(n)
    return {
        "stripe_basic": s + 0.005 * n * gross,
        "stripe_complete": s + tc if tc is not None else None,
        "stripe_managed": s + 0.035 * n * gross,
        "paddle": n * (0.05 * gross + 0.50),
        "lemon_squeezy": n * (0.055 * gross + 0.50) + n * intl * 0.015 * gross,
    }

for mrr in (2000, 10000, 50000):
    print(mrr, {k: None if v is None else round(v) for k, v in routes(mrr, 25).items()})

Two traps when you adapt it. The rates are for a US seller; sellers elsewhere get Stripe’s local price list, so check theirs. And ceil rounds sales up, so a revenue figure that is not a multiple of the price counts one extra sale.

What this means for you

The decision is less “which is cheapest” than “do you want to be the seller of record.” If you file tax yourself, the cheapest stack is plain Stripe, and the gap to Paddle pays for an accountant only when it is large. If you do not, Paddle beat the other two merchants of record in every run we did.

1. Work out your sales count. Divide monthly revenue by your average price, then find the Tax Complete tier for that count. With 40% of customers abroad, Paddle beat Stripe + Tax Complete on $10 and $25 plans until past $90,000 a month; with all customers in the US, check the windows above.
2. Count your tax registrations. If you need more than Tax Complete’s tier includes, add the extra fees Stripe mentions before comparing.
3. Add your tax rate to the fee base. If many customers pay 20% VAT on top, raise each merchant of record’s rate by about a fifth.
4. Check eligibility first. Services with human work, sellers outside Managed Payments’ 37 countries and anyone needing a custom checkout domain are ruled out of Stripe’s merchant of record before price counts.

We read vendor terms the same way in our piece on SaaS uptime credits: the line that decides the cost is rarely the headline rate.

How we made this

We read the pricing pages, fee documents and help pages of Stripe, Paddle and Lemon Squeezy listed below on October 30, 2026. We wrote the Python fee model above and ran it that day for a hypothetical US seller, with plans from $10 to $200 and 0% or 40% of customers outside the US. No real invoices or accounts were used. We did not open accounts, could not see negotiated rates, and did not price filing work done by an accountant.

Sources

• Stripe, Pricing, read October 30, 2026
• Stripe, Stripe Tax pricing, read October 30, 2026
• Stripe, Managed Payments and Managed Payments pricing FAQ
• Stripe Docs, Managed Payments eligibility and How Managed Payments works
• Stripe Docs, Adaptive Pricing
• Paddle, Pricing, How are my earnings calculated and Is there a fee taken for payouts
• Lemon Squeezy, Fees, Refunds and chargebacks and 2026 update, January 28, 2026
• GOV.UK, VAT rates
• 28creation calculation, October 30, 2026: the script above, applied to each vendor’s published fees