What Stripe Charges for Subscription Payments
Stripe's page lists a card fee plus a separate Billing fee for recurring charges. Here is what each line says, and what to check before you sign up.
A subscription business does not sell once. It charges the same card every month, and every one of those charges carries a fee. If you run recurring payments through Stripe, you pay two fees. One is for taking the card. The other is for Stripe's Billing service. Here is what Stripe's pricing page says about each, read straight, with no verdicts. Published prices change, so confirm everything on Stripe's page before you sign up.
What Stripe's pricing page says it charges per transaction
Every subscription charge is first a card transaction, so the card rate applies first. Stripe's pricing page says its standard online rate is 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction for domestic cards. That is the base for a monthly charge to a customer's US card.
Two things can push that number up. Stripe's pricing page says manually entered cards add 0.5% to the online card rate. If you type a card in by hand rather than collecting it through a hosted payment page, you pay that extra. Stripe's pricing page also says international cards add 1.5%. Currency conversion adds 1%. A subscriber paying with an international card costs more to bill than one paying with a domestic card.
So a $20 monthly charge to a domestic card collected online costs the standard rate. The same charge typed in by hand costs more, and the same charge to a foreign card costs more again. The rate itself does not care that the charge repeats. It applies to each successful transaction. A subscription creates one every cycle.
What Stripe's pricing page says about Billing and subscription pricing
The card fee is not the whole bill. Recurring schedules, retries and card updating live in a product Stripe calls Billing, and Stripe's pricing page says its Billing pay-as-you-go plan charges 0.7% of Billing volume with no recurring fees.
That 0.7% is on top of the card rate, not instead of it. A $20 monthly subscription billed to a domestic card online carries the standard card fee plus 0.7% of the $20. The page says Billing volume includes Billing transactions processed on and off Stripe. So the 0.7% applies even when the payment runs through another route.
There is no monthly fee for Billing on this plan. Stripe's pricing page says its standard plan carries no setup fee, no monthly fee and no hidden fees. It also says it does not charge hidden fees like closure fees. If a subscription business pays Stripe nothing in a month with no charges, that matches what the page states.
Stripe's pricing page also says basic usage-based billing features remain available via Stripe's Meters API. They are part of Billing pricing. If you charge by usage rather than a flat monthly amount, the page puts basic usage-based billing features inside Billing pricing.
Refunds, failed payments and subscription-specific costs on Stripe's page
On refunds, Stripe's pricing page says the payment processing, Connect and currency conversion fees from the original transaction are not returned. Cancel a $20 subscription charge and refund the customer, and the card fee you paid on it stays paid. Stripe's pricing page says refunds by bank transfer may carry fees on standard pricing. For all other payment methods there are no fees for issuing refunds. Businesses on custom pricing may face fees for issuing refunds depending on their fee schedule with Stripe.
On failed payments, the page does not list a retry fee. What it does say is that selective retries powered by machine learning can increase revenue. It also says card information is updated in real time.
Optional and separately priced services Stripe's page lists
Some services around a subscription sit outside the standard rates. Stripe's pricing page says Stripe Radar for Fraud Teams and Stripe Connect with platform-controlled pricing are priced separately. If you want the heavier fraud screening or you run a platform billing other businesses, those are their own lines.
One common add-on is free on standard pricing. Stripe's pricing page says 3D Secure authentication is included at no additional charge for businesses on standard payments pricing. The page says custom pricing is available for standalone 3DS, which matters only if you are on a custom deal.
Invoicing is priced apart too. Stripe's pricing page says its Starter invoicing plan charges 0.4% per paid invoice. If you bill some subscribers by invoice rather than card charge, that is the line that applies.
How Stripe's published subscription costs sit next to other processors' published pages
Other processors publish recurring-billing prices too. Their pages lay them out differently. Stripe puts a percentage on Billing volume and nothing per month. PayPal's fee page lists monthly charges for its recurring tools, and Authorize.net's pricing page says it charges a $25 monthly fee for all plans.
PayPal's fee page says the Recurring Billing optional service costs 10.00 USD per month. It says the Recurring Payment Tool optional service costs 30.00 USD per month. PayPal's fee page says the Account Updater optional service costs 0.25 USD per update. It says the Smart Retries optional service costs 0.6% per successful recovered transaction.
Authorize.net's pricing page says it offers Automated Recurring Billing for subscriptions, retainers, or payment plans. Its Recurring Payments service accepts monthly recurring or installment payments. Its Account Updater keeps card information up to date. That helps avoid payment interruptions and lost sales. Authorize.net's pricing page says its Account Updater per-update fee is $0.25. Authorize.net's pricing page also says it charges a $25 monthly fee for all plans.
Square's pricing page says you can set up recurring invoices on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly schedule. Its card rates for those charges vary by plan. Square's pricing page says online and invoice card payments run from 3.3% + 30¢ to 2.9% + 30¢, depending on the plan. Square's pricing page says manual entry or card on file payments cost 3.5% + 15¢. The per-location monthly fee runs $0, $49 or $149, and Square Plus and Square Premium bill it by location.
Shopify's pricing page says the Basic plan is $29 a month and card rates start at 2.9% + 30¢ USD.
The shapes differ. Stripe's page puts the cost on volume with no monthly line. PayPal's and Authorize.net's pages put monthly lines on the recurring tools. Square's page ties rates to plans with monthly fees per location. None of these pages is better on its face. Which one costs less depends on your subscriber count, your ticket size and how many failed charges you recover. Run your own numbers against each page.
What to check on Stripe's page before you commit
Before you sign up, pull up Stripe's pricing page and check four things.
First, confirm the card rate for how you actually collect cards. Hosted pages, manual entry and international cards carry different numbers on the page.
Second, confirm the Billing line. The 0.7% of Billing volume figure is what the page states today, and it applies on top of the card fee.
Third, check the refund terms. The page says processing fees from the original transaction are not returned. If you refund often, read that line closely.
Fourth, ask about custom pricing if your volume is large. Stripe's pricing page says it offers custom pricing for businesses with large processing volumes. Who qualifies varies by market. Its sales team can design a custom package that includes Payments, Radar, Connect, Invoicing, Billing and more. Custom packages can include IC+ pricing, discounted flat rates, subscriptions, and buy-rates for platforms. The page says Stripe offers volume-based discounts based on volume tiers, commitments, and product usage.
Stripe's pricing page says standard pricing is pay-as-you-go. All fees for businesses on standard pricing are listed on its website. It says dashboards, tools, and APIs give you transparency into your costs. Read the page on the day you sign, not the day you read this, because published prices change.
Want to see how one charge behaves across processors? A forty dollar sale at the counter walks one ticket through four published price lists. If speed of payout matters more than the recurring tool, paying to be paid tonight covers what Stripe and Clover charge to move money fast.