Stripe publishes one headline rate — 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction for a domestic card — but that headline is a starting point, not a ceiling. Depending on how the card was entered, where it was issued, and which payment method carried the sale, Stripe adds a surcharge on top of it, or, for ACH and Klarna, swaps in a different rate altogether. The table below runs Stripe's own published rates through the arithmetic for six payment methods, at four sale sizes, so the dollar cost is visible instead of buried behind a plus sign.
A separate section further down covers what Stripe charges outside that table entirely: what a dispute costs, and what it costs to move money out faster than Stripe's standard payout schedule.
What Stripe keeps, by sale size and payment method
What Stripe keeps, by sale size and payment method
Six rows, four columns: each row is one Stripe payment method and each column is one sale size, and every cell above was computed the same way so you can read straight across or straight down. The online card row starts from Stripe's plain published rate. The three rows under it keep that same starting rate and layer surcharges on top of it: one for a manually keyed card, one for a card issued abroad, and two at once for a foreign card whose sale also needs currency conversion. The Klarna pay-over-time row runs on its own published rate rather than a surcharge on the card rate. ACH Direct Debit breaks the 'every cell is arithmetic' pattern in one place: Stripe publishes a flat dollar cap on that fee, and once the computed percentage would cross it, the cell shows the cap itself instead of a calculation — that is why the two largest sale sizes in the ACH row read the same figure while the two smallest do not.
Why the headline rate isn't the whole story
2.9% + 30¢ is Stripe's rate for the simplest case: a domestic card, entered online, settled without currency conversion. Move away from any one of those conditions and Stripe layers a surcharge on top, and the surcharges are cumulative — a card that is both foreign-issued and needs currency conversion carries both surcharges at once, not just the larger of the two. None of the three surcharge rows in the table above change the 30-cent fixed fee; only the percentage moves.
Paying with an international card
Two rows above cover what changes when a card was not issued in the United States. Stripe's answer to a foreign card alone is a flat 1.5% on top of its domestic rate; its answer to a foreign card that also needs currency conversion is that same 1.5%, plus another 1% for the conversion itself, both stacked onto the domestic rate at once rather than the larger of the two replacing it. The second row exists for the sale where the money itself has to change currency, not merely for a card that came from another country.
Why ACH favors large payments
ACH Direct Debit runs on a lower headline percentage than any card row in the table above, and it carries no fixed fee at all — but the reason it favors large payments specifically is the cap. Below the amount where 0.8% of the sale would cross Stripe's published dollar cap, the ACH row is ordinary arithmetic, exactly like every other row on this page. Above that amount, the fee stops growing altogether: the cap becomes the entire cost, no matter how much larger the sale gets from there. The two largest sale sizes in the ACH row read the same dollar figure for exactly that reason, and a business moving a large recurring payment through ACH instead of a card pays that capped figure while every card row above keeps growing with the sale.
Other Stripe fees
The fees below fall outside the payment-method table above because they are not priced per sale — they apply to disputes and to payout timing instead.
Stripe charges a dispute received fee of $15.00 for each dispute a business receives, and a separate dispute countered fee of $15.00 for each dispute the business responds to manually. Moving money out of a Stripe balance faster than the standard payout schedule costs 1.5% of the Instant Payouts volume moved, with a minimum fee of 50¢ per payout.
What this page can't tell you
What Stripe keeps from a sale is not what a business keeps from a sale. Refunds, chargebacks that never escalate into a formal dispute, whatever cut a marketplace or platform takes before the money reaches a Stripe account, and the cost of finding the customer in the first place all come out before any of the numbers on this page ever apply — and none of that shows up on a processor's fee schedule, because a fee schedule is the processor's number, not the seller's.
We built a free tool for that other side of the math: The Hidden Margin Teardown Kit. It walks through the kind of information any outsider can already see — a pricing page like the one cited here, a storefront, a review count — and turns it into a rough estimate of where a company's money actually goes. Fill it in once against a business that has never told you what it earns and you end up with a number anyway.
Figures on this page were collected and cross-checked with the help of AI tools; every one links to the provider's own page and was reviewed by a person before publication.
What these providers do not publish
Limits of this page
These are things we did not verify, listed so you can judge the rest.
Search demand for this page's topic was measured in Bing Webmaster Tools only; Google search volume was not measured.
This page checks Stripe's own published rates only. It does not compare Stripe against PayPal or Square — that comparison lives on a sibling page.
Stripe's fee page states the ACH Direct Debit cap as a flat dollar amount rather than a formula, so the two largest sale sizes in the ACH row use that published cap directly instead of a computed percentage — see 'What the table shows' above for how those two cells differ from the rest of the table.
Stripe's fee page also lists rates for in-person card payments, card-verification add-ons, Adaptive Pricing and Link. This page leaves them out because none of them maps onto a single row of the table above.
Stripe changes its published rates from time to time; every figure here reflects the pricing page on the retrieval date shown next to each source.
A short list of questions for working out where a company, product or subscription actually makes its money, using only public information like the pricing pages cited on this page. It opens on the page — no email required.
On a $100 sale paid online with a domestic card, Stripe keeps $3.20 — its 2.9% rate plus the 30¢ per-transaction fee.
What does Stripe charge for an international card?
Stripe adds 1.5% to its standard rate for cards issued outside the United States. On a $100 sale paid with an international card, that brings Stripe's cut to $4.70.
Is ACH cheaper than a card on Stripe?
Yes, at every sale size on this page. Stripe charges 0.8% of the transaction for ACH Direct Debit, capped at $5.00, against 2.9% + 30¢ for an online card. On a $100 sale, ACH keeps $0.80 for Stripe versus $3.20 for an online card.
What does a dispute cost on Stripe?
Stripe charges $15.00 for each dispute a business receives, and a separate $15.00 for each dispute the business responds to manually.
What we could not verify
Search demand for this page's topic was measured in Bing Webmaster Tools only; Google search volume was not measured.
This page checks Stripe's own published rates only. It does not compare Stripe against PayPal or Square — that comparison lives on a sibling page.
Stripe's fee page states the ACH Direct Debit cap as a flat dollar amount rather than a formula, so the two largest sale sizes in the ACH row use that published cap directly instead of a computed percentage — see 'What the table shows' above for how those two cells differ from the rest of the table.
Stripe's fee page also lists rates for in-person card payments, card-verification add-ons, Adaptive Pricing and Link. This page leaves them out because none of them maps onto a single row of the table above.
Stripe changes its published rates from time to time; every figure here reflects the pricing page on the retrieval date shown next to each source.
Sources
Stripe's standard rate for a successful online transaction with a domestically issued card is 2.9%. — https://stripe.com/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Stripe charges a 30-cent fixed fee per successful online transaction for domestic cards, in addition to its percentage rate. — https://stripe.com/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Stripe adds 0.5% to its standard rate for domestic cards that are keyed in manually instead of entered by the customer online. — https://stripe.com/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Stripe adds 1.5% to its standard rate for cards issued outside the United States. — https://stripe.com/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Stripe adds a further 1% fee on top of its card rate when currency conversion is required for the sale. — https://stripe.com/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Stripe charges 0.8% of the transaction amount for ACH Direct Debit payments. — https://stripe.com/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Stripe caps its 0.8% ACH Direct Debit fee at $5.00 per transaction. — https://stripe.com/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Stripe's pay-over-time option through Klarna charges 5.99% per successful transaction. — https://stripe.com/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Stripe's pay-over-time option through Klarna charges a 30-cent fixed fee per successful transaction, in addition to its percentage rate. — https://stripe.com/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Stripe charges 1.5% of the volume moved through Instant Payouts. — https://stripe.com/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Stripe's Instant Payouts fee carries a minimum of 50 cents per payout. — https://stripe.com/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Stripe charges a $15.00 dispute received fee for each dispute a business receives. — https://stripe.com/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
Stripe charges a $15.00 dispute countered fee for each dispute a business responds to manually. — https://stripe.com/pricing (verified on: 2026-09-02, confidence: verified)
