Stripe Fees (2026): What Stripe Charges per Transaction, and Why Small Payments Cost More

How much does Stripe charge per transaction?

As of 2026, Stripe charges 2.9% + 30¢ per successful domestic card transaction online, with no setup fee and no monthly fee. In person through Stripe Terminal, it is 2.7% + 5¢. Everything else is added on top of that base rate: 0.5% more for a card typed in by hand, 1.5% more for an international card, 1% more if currency conversion is needed, and $15 for every dispute. The headline rate is what most businesses budget. The 30¢ is what actually moves their bill.

Sourcing note: every Stripe figure on this page is from stripe.com/pricing as read September 13, 2026, except the refund rule, which is from Stripe's support center. Check the page before you budget.

Stripe fees in 2026: the full table

Standard pricing for US businesses:

Checkout and Payment Links cost nothing extra on standard pricing. Businesses with large payment volume can ask Stripe for a custom package instead.

Why do Stripe fees cost more on small transactions?

Because the 30¢ is fixed and the 2.9% is not, so the smaller the payment, the bigger the 30¢ is as a share of it. Stripe's pricing page lists the rate but never shows you what it adds up to. Here is the arithmetic on a domestic online card:

A business selling $10 add-ons pays twice the effective rate of one selling $100 services. That is why Terminal's lower fixed fee matters so much at a counter: 2.7% + 5¢ on a $10 sale is 32¢, or 3.2%, against 59¢ online. If most of your payments are under $25, bundle them, set a minimum, or take them in person.

What stacks on top of 2.9% + 30¢?

The add-ons are percentages, and they stack. A $100 payment on an international card that needs currency conversion is 2.9% + 1.5% + 1%, or 5.4% + 30¢: $5.70 instead of $3.20. Type that same card into the dashboard by hand and it is 5.9% + 30¢, or $6.20. The keyed-card surcharge is the easy one to avoid: send the customer a Payment Link and let them enter the card themselves, and the 0.5% goes away.

Does Stripe refund fees when you refund a payment?

No. Stripe keeps the original processing fee when you refund a payment. Per Stripe's support center, the payment processing, Connect, and currency conversion fees charged on the original transaction are not returned, and on standard pricing there is no separate fee for issuing a refund on card payments. So a $100 sale refunded in full still costs you $3.20. For a business with a 5% refund rate on $20,000 a month in card sales, that is about $32 a month paid on revenue you gave back.

What does a Stripe dispute cost?

$15 when the dispute arrives, plus another $15 if you respond to it manually, which comes back only if you win. Lose, and you are out the sale, the original processing fee, and $30. Stripe also sells Smart Disputes, which drafts the evidence for you, at 30% of the disputed amount for each dispute you win and nothing for a loss. On a $100 chargeback, that is $30 on a win, where a manual win costs only the $15 received fee. Clear receipts, a visible refund policy, and a charge descriptor customers recognize prevent more disputes than any evidence packet wins.

Stripe ACH vs card fees on invoices

For any invoice over about $200, ACH Direct Debit is the cheaper way to get paid by a wide margin. ACH is 0.8% and hits its $5 cap at $625. Above that, the fee stops growing:

If you send invoices through Stripe Invoicing, add 0.4% per paid invoice on the Starter plan. A service business billing ten $2,500 projects a month by card pays about $728 in card fees; the same ten by ACH pay $50. If invoices are still being chased by hand, invoice automation software is where that money actually leaks.

The add-on fees: Billing, Tax, and Instant Payouts

Three products add a percentage on top of the payment fee, and each is easy to switch on without noticing:

• Billing at 0.7% of Billing volume on pay-as-you-go. A $50 monthly subscription on a card costs $1.75 in processing plus 35¢ for Billing: $2.10, or 4.2%.
• Tax Basic at 0.5% per transaction where you are registered to collect, on no-code integrations such as Checkout and Payment Links, or 50¢ per transaction through the API.
• Instant Payouts at 1.5% of the payout with a 50¢ minimum. Standard payouts are free. Paying out $19,000 instantly every month costs $285 for speed alone.

What Stripe fees look like on a real month

A service business taking $20,000 a month online: 200 payments at a $100 average, 20 of them on international cards that need conversion, 10 keyed in by hand, and one dispute it fights and loses.

Switch on Instant Payouts for the month and add roughly $290; run the payments through Billing and add $140. The advertised 2.9% becomes nearly 6% without a single price change. Every line is arithmetic on Stripe's published rates; your mix will differ.

How do you lower your Stripe fees?

• Move large invoices to ACH. The $5 cap makes it the cheapest rail above $625.
• Stop keying cards. Send a Payment Link or collect the card at booking so the customer enters it.
• Use standard payouts. They are free; Instant Payouts are 1.5%.
• Take small payments in person. Terminal's 2.7% + 5¢ costs less than the online rate on every payment, and the gap is widest on small tickets: 32¢ against 59¢ on a $10 sale.
• Prevent disputes instead of fighting them. A lost dispute costs the sale plus $30.
• Ask for custom pricing once your volume is large; Stripe lists custom packages for that case.

If most of your revenue is taken at a counter, compare the whole bill in Stripe vs Square and read is Square worth it before you switch processors over a few tenths of a point.

The bottom line

Stripe costs 2.9% + 30¢ per online card with no monthly fee, and for payments over $100 that is close to what you will actually pay. Below $25, on international cards, on keyed cards, on refunds, and with Instant Payouts switched on, it is not. For most service businesses, though, the fee is the smallest cost in the payment path. The bigger ones are a website where customers cannot pay, and a booking that takes a request but not a deposit. A site with checkout wired to your processor is custom web design, typically $10,000 to $30,000 over three to six weeks. Online booking that takes the appointment and the deposit together is AI scheduling, typically $5,000 to $10,000.