Stripe
Stripe is a payments platform for taking money online: card and wallet payments, a hosted Checkout page, payment links, Billing for subscriptions and Stripe Tax, each priced as a cut of the sale.
It suits founders who want to be the seller themselves and build payments into their own product, in code or with an AI agent.
There is no monthly fee: a US card payment is 2.9% + 30¢, Billing adds 0.7% and Stripe Tax 0.5% where you are registered, as checked on 30 October 2026.
Reviewed by the IndieHacked team
- What it does
- Take card and wallet payments through a hosted Checkout page or a payment link, then add subscriptions, sales tax and invoices from the same account.
- Our take
- Founders who want to be the seller and keep the card fee low. Start with a payment link or Checkout, add Billing when the first subscription arrives and Stripe Tax once you register, and let Claude Code, Cursor or Codex build the integration through Stripe's MCP server.
- Pricing
- PaidNo setup or monthly fee. A domestic card or wallet payment is 2.9% + 30¢, plus 1.5% for an international card and 1% more when the currency is converted; ACH Direct Debit is 0.8%, capped at $5, and each dispute received costs $15, as checked on 30 October 2026 on Stripe's US pricing. Checkout and payment links cost nothing beyond the payment fee, and a custom domain for them is $10 a month. Billing, for subscriptions, takes 0.7% of billing volume, or a plan from $620 a month on a 1-year contract. Stripe Tax Basic takes 0.5% of each transaction where you are registered to collect tax; Tax Complete, which adds registrations and filing, starts at $90 a month on a 1-year contract. Managed Payments, with Stripe as the merchant of record, adds 3.5% to each transaction, with Billing charged on top. A $20 monthly subscription paid by US card costs $1.02 in card and Billing fees, or $1.72 through Managed Payments.
The IndieHacked breakdown
What it does
Stripe takes card, wallet and bank payments, with more than 125 local payment methods, on a page it hosts or a form embedded in your site. Checkout is the prebuilt page for one-time and subscription payments, and a payment link sells a product or subscription with no code at all. Billing runs the subscription itself: trials and renewals, Smart Retries for failed payments, a customer portal, and flat, per-seat, tiered or usage-based prices.
Stripe Tax calculates and collects sales tax, VAT and GST in more than 100 countries, and on Tax Complete registers and files in more than 90. Managed Payments goes further for digital products: Stripe becomes the merchant of record and handles tax in more than 80 countries, fraud, disputes and buyer support. Stripe's MCP server and agent plugin connect Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT and Codex to your account and its docs.
Who it suits
Founders who want to be the seller of record and keep the card fee low. A US card payment is 2.9% + 30¢, and each product joins when you need it: Billing with the first subscription, Tax once you register somewhere, Managed Payments if you would rather hand Stripe the seller's role for a digital product.
It fits a founder building with code or an agent. Checkout handles the payment page, webhooks keep your app in step, and the Stripe CLI's agent setup installs the MCP server and Stripe's skills in the agents it finds on your machine. Several tools reviewed here take payments through Stripe, Lovable and Bolt among them.
Not the right fit for
Founders who want one company to be the seller and one fee for everything. On standard Stripe your business is the merchant, so tax registrations and filings stay yours unless you pay for Tax Complete. Managed Payments takes them over for 3.5% on top of the card and Billing fees; Paddle, reviewed here, does the same job for 5% + 50¢ a transaction.
Founders selling downloads or desktop software who want licence keys and file delivery handled for them. Stripe takes the payment and leaves fulfilling the order to your own code; Lemon Squeezy, reviewed here, issues licence keys and signed download links with each sale.
Also on the shortlist
- PaddlePaymentsPaddle is the seller for software at one fee, 5% + 50¢, with tax filing, fraud and buyers' billing questions included.5% + 50¢ a transaction, no monthly fee, as checked on 30 October 2026
- Lemon SqueezyPaymentsThe seller for downloads as well as software, with licence keys, file delivery and a storefront, from 5% + 50¢; part of Stripe since 2024.5% + 50¢ a transaction, no monthly fee, as checked on 30 October 2026
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