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Home › Categories › Payment Processing

Online Payment Processing, Compared: Verified 2026 Pricing

Bill BelcaminoBy Bill Belcamino · Last updated July 29, 2026 · Our methodologyResearched and fact-checked by the HelpCompare team

Side-by-side pricing for Stripe and PayPal: entry price, free plan, how each vendor bills for AI, and the date we last checked each figure against the vendor’s own pricing page.

Online Payment Processing, ComparedVerified Jul 29, 2026

Quick answer

  • Free plans: none recorded in our research for Stripe, PayPal; check each vendor for trials.

Payment Processing pricing at a glance

Every row links to the comparison where the figure was verified and to the vendor’s pricing page.

ToolEntry priceFree planAI billingG2 ratingVerifiedSource
Stripe2.9% + 30¢Not published—4.2 / 5460 reviewsJuly 29, 2026in Stripe vs PayPalVendor pricing ↗
PayPal3.49% + 49¢Not published—4.4 / 52,748 reviewsJuly 29, 2026in Stripe vs PayPalVendor pricing ↗

Head-to-head comparisons

Stripe vs PayPalUpdated July 29, 2026

Switching guides

PayPal to StripeSwitching guideStripe to PayPalSwitching guide

Frequently asked questions

Which payment processing tools have a free plan?

Our research recorded no free plan for Stripe, PayPal; check each vendor for trials.

Where does this pricing data come from?

Every figure was recorded from the vendor's own pricing page during research for a HelpCompare comparison, and is dated. The most recent check in this category was July 29, 2026. Nothing is estimated: where a vendor publishes no price, we say so. The full dataset is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 at helpcompare.com/data/.

Sources

Figures come from each vendor’s pricing page, recorded on the date shown. Download the full dataset from Open Data (JSON and CSV, CC BY 4.0).

Bill Belcamino, founder of HelpCompare
About the author

Bill Belcamino

Founder and author, HelpCompare

Bill has worked in software and digital marketing for more than 20 years. He spent nine years as an engineer at HP, served as COO scaling a platform past 200,000 users, and ran Google’s $70M/year search syndication partnership at Alot.com. He has bought, trialled, integrated and cancelled more SaaS tools than he can count, and started HelpCompare because the real cost of switching tools is the part nobody covers.

“I’ve sat on both sides of the table: the agency recommending the tool and the client paying for it.”

Researched and fact-checked by the HelpCompare team. Pricing on this page was last verified on July 29, 2026. No paid sponsorships, no affiliate commissions.

Read Bill’s story How we verify pricingSpot an error? Tell Bill