Comparison

Stripe vs Paddle

Overview

Financial infrastructure for the internet

Stripe is a payment infrastructure platform for businesses to accept online payments, manage billing and subscriptions, handle marketplace payouts, and build financial products.

Paddle

The complete payments, tax, and subscriptions solution for software companies

paddle.com →

Paddle is a merchant of record payments platform for SaaS and software companies, handling global payments, subscription billing, tax compliance, and fraud so you can focus on building.

Which should you choose?

Both are usage-based with custom pricing and serve startups through enterprise. Stripe is broad financial infrastructure — 135+ currencies, marketplace payments via Connect, in-person terminal payments — built for teams that want to assemble their own billing and tax stack. Paddle is a merchant of record, meaning it handles global tax compliance (200+ countries) and remittance for you as part of the platform. Choose Stripe if you want maximum flexibility and are willing to manage tax/compliance yourself or with added tooling; choose Paddle if you want tax and compliance handled for you out of the box.

TLDR

—If you want maximum flexibility and are ready to handle global tax compliance yourself, choose Stripe.
—If you want a merchant-of-record that handles global tax and compliance for you, choose Paddle.

Features

—Payment acceptance (135+ currencies)
—Subscriptions and billing
—Connect (marketplace payments)
—Fraud detection (Radar)
—Invoicing
—Terminal (in-person payments)
—Financial connections
—Tax automation

—Merchant of record
—Payment processing
—Subscription billing
—Global tax compliance (200+ countries)
—Fraud prevention
—Analytics dashboard
—Checkout optimization
—Automated invoicing

Pricing

Stripe

usage based

Plan	Price	Notes
Standard	Contact sales	No monthly fees; 2.9% + 30¢ per successful card charge.
Custom	Contact sales	Volume discounts and custom rates for high-volume businesses.

View pricing page →

Paddle

usage based