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Stripe vs PayPal: Which Should You Use to Take Payments?

Stripe vs PayPal compared: fees for US and UAE businesses, checkout, subscriptions, developer tools and buyer trust as of September 2026, and when to use both.

Mythex Team · 2026-09-29 · 5 min read

Choose Stripe if you're building a website or app and want a clean checkout, strong subscription tools and developer-friendly APIs. It's usually cheaper for card payments too. Choose PayPal if your customers expect a PayPal button, you sell to buyers who don't want to type a card number, or you want Venmo and Pay Later in the US. For many online stores, the practical answer is both: Stripe for cards and wallets, plus a PayPal button.

Stripe vs PayPal at a glance

Fees vary by country. Check Stripe pricing and PayPal merchant fees for your country before you choose.

How we compared

We compared the publicly stated fees and features on Stripe's and PayPal's own websites, fee pages and documentation as of September 2026. We did not process test or live payments, and we left out anything we couldn't confirm on the vendors' pages. Payment fees depend on the country your business is based in, so we only quote a fee where we verified it for a named country: the United States for both, and the United Arab Emirates for Stripe. Everywhere else, check the vendor's page for your country.

Fees compared

Stripe, United States (as of September 2026, from Stripe's own support site):

• Online card payments and Payment Links: 2.9% + $0.30 per successful transaction
• Manually entered cards: 3.4% + $0.30

Stripe, United Arab Emirates (as of September 2026, from Stripe's UAE pricing page):

• Domestic cards: 2.9% + AED 1.00 per successful transaction
• International cards: an extra 1%
• Currency conversion: an extra 1% when needed
• Disputes: AED 60 for each dispute received
• No setup or monthly fees on standard pricing

PayPal, United States (as of September 2026, from PayPal's US fee page, updated 1 September 2026):

• PayPal Checkout and Venmo: 3.49% + $0.49
• Card payments: 2.99% + $0.49
• Pay Later: 4.99% + $0.49
• International transactions: an extra 1.50% when buyer and seller are in different markets
• Chargebacks: $20 each

What it means: on a $50 sale in the US, the card fee is about $1.75 on Stripe, $1.99 for a card through PayPal, and $2.24 when the buyer pays through PayPal Checkout. The gap grows with volume. But if offering PayPal wins you sales you'd otherwise lose, the higher fee on those sales can still be worth it.

We couldn't confidently read PayPal's UAE rates from its fee page, which uses a global table with many market-specific rows, so we haven't quoted them. If you're based in the UAE or elsewhere, compare both pages for your own country.

Checkout and customer experience

Stripe gives you a hosted Checkout page, Payment Links you can share without code, and embeddable components for your own checkout. It supports cards, digital wallets and, according to its pricing page, access to 100+ payment methods globally.

PayPal lets buyers pay through PayPal Checkout, with Venmo and Pay Later also available to US merchants. Its big advantage is familiarity: PayPal says merchants get access to a network of up to 400 million active accounts. Some buyers trust a PayPal button more than a card form on a site they've never used.

Subscriptions and invoicing

• Stripe Billing handles recurring payments, and Stripe lists automatic payment retries and card updates to reduce failed payments. On pay-as-you-go pricing it charges a percentage of billing volume on top of payment fees; check the Billing pricing for your country. Our guide on how to add subscriptions with Stripe walks through a setup.
• PayPal Subscriptions lets you create subscription plans for regular billing. PayPal Invoicing in the US charges the same rate as checkout for PayPal and Venmo payments, and 1% capped at $10 for bank (ACH) payments.

If you're still deciding on a pricing model, see how to price a SaaS product.

Developer tools

Stripe is built around its API. It has detailed public documentation, test mode with test cards, webhooks that tell your app when events like a successful payment happen, and a command-line tool (the Stripe CLI). If webhooks are new to you, see what a webhook is.

PayPal also has developer APIs and SDKs for checkout and subscriptions. Both work for a custom app; Stripe's documentation is especially detailed, which helps if you or an AI agent are writing the integration.

Tax and merchant of record

With standard Stripe or PayPal, you are the seller of record. You're responsible for charging and filing sales tax, VAT or GST where it applies. Stripe offers Stripe Tax to help manage tax compliance.

Stripe also offers Managed Payments, where Stripe acts as merchant of record for eligible digital products such as software, SaaS, digital media and online courses, and handles tax compliance in 80+ countries, fraud, disputes and transaction-level customer support. As of September 2026 it adds 3.5% per successful transaction on top of standard processing fees. It's only for businesses based in supported countries (including the US, Canada, the UK, much of Europe, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore; the UAE isn't on the list) and doesn't cover physical goods or professional services. For a full comparison of merchant-of-record options, see Stripe vs Paddle vs Lemon Squeezy.

This isn't tax advice. Check local rules or ask an adviser about your obligations.

Who each one suits

Choose Stripe if:

• You're building a website, app or SaaS and want a smooth, embedded checkout
• You sell subscriptions
• You want lower card fees (in the US, as of September 2026)
• You or your developer want good APIs, test mode and webhooks

Choose PayPal if:

• Your buyers expect PayPal, for example on marketplaces or for international consumer sales
• You want Venmo and Pay Later options in the US
• You mostly send invoices or payment links and don't need a custom checkout

Use both if you run an online store and want to capture buyers who prefer either.

Adding payments to an app you build with Mythex

Mythex doesn't include a built-in payment system; you bring your own provider. With Stripe, you create your account, add your keys as project secrets, and ask the AI agent to add Stripe Checkout. You test in Preview with Stripe's test cards, then publish. The Stripe recipe in our docs shows the exact steps, and the same approach works for PayPal's APIs. Our guide on how to add payments to your app covers checkout, webhooks and test mode in plain terms.

Verdict

• Stripe is the better default for most websites, apps and SaaS products: lower card fees in the US, strong subscriptions, and developer tools that make custom checkouts straightforward.
• PayPal earns its place when your buyers trust and expect it, and a PayPal button lifts conversions enough to cover the higher fee.

If you can, offer both and see what your customers actually choose.