ComparisonJune 3, 2025·12 min read

Stripe vs PayPal 2025: The Complete Comparison for Businesses

The two biggest names in payments compared across fees, developer experience, global coverage, and which one is actually right for your business in 2025.

Stripe and PayPal are the two most recognised names in online payments. Between them they process trillions of dollars a year. But they are fundamentally different products built for different customers — and choosing the wrong one can cost you significant money in fees, development time, and lost conversions.

Quick verdict

Choose Stripe if: you are a developer or technical business that wants a flexible, customisable payments stack and the best API in the industry.

Choose PayPal if: you sell to consumers, especially in the US, and want the trust signal and one-click checkout that comes with 430 million active accounts.

Use both if: you want to maximise checkout conversion — many successful e-commerce businesses offer PayPal on top of a Stripe-powered primary checkout.

Fees comparison

This is where most businesses start — and where the two platforms diverge most clearly.

Stripe fees

Online (EU cards)1.5% + 25p

Online (non-EU cards)2.9% + 25p

In-person1.7%

Currency conversion+2%

Dispute fee£15 (refundable)

PayPal fees

Standard checkout2.9% + £0.30

PayPal Checkout1.8% + 30p

International+1.5% cross-border

Currency conversion3–4%

Dispute fee£14 (non-refundable)

On a £100 transaction with a UK card, Stripe costs £1.75 and PayPal costs £3.20. On £100,000 monthly volume, that gap is £17,400 per year. However, PayPal's higher rate comes with a trust signal that can increase conversion rates by 6–8% for consumer businesses — which may more than offset the fee difference.

Developer experience

This is Stripe's strongest suit. By almost universal consensus among developers, Stripe has the best payments API ever built. The documentation is exceptional, the test mode is fully featured, and Stripe Elements makes embedding a payment form a 30-minute job.

PayPal's developer experience is noticeably worse. The documentation is fragmented across PayPal Checkout, Braintree (PayPal's developer-focused product), and the REST API. Integration time is typically 2–3x longer than Stripe for equivalent functionality. Braintree is a significant improvement — if you want PayPal's network with better developer experience, Braintree is worth evaluating.

International coverage

Stripe is available in 46+ countries, accepts payments from 195 countries, and supports 135+ currencies. It is particularly strong in the US, UK, Europe, Canada, and Australia.

PayPal is available in 200+ countries and supports 25+ currencies. Its consumer brand recognition is unmatched globally — PayPal is often the only payment method consumers in certain markets trust for cross-border purchases.

Side-by-side comparison

Use caseBest choice

SaaS and subscriptionsStripe Billing

Marketplaces and platformsStripe Connect

Consumer e-commercePayPal or both

B2B paymentsStripe

Mobile-first checkoutPayPal

International consumer salesPayPal

Developer API projectsStripe

Maximum checkout conversionBoth

The bottom line

Stripe is the better infrastructure choice for almost every technical use case. Its API, documentation, product suite, and reliability are best in class.

PayPal is a conversion tool as much as it is a payment processor. For consumer-facing businesses, especially in the US, the trust signal and one-click checkout that comes with PayPal's 430 million user base is worth paying more for.

The best strategy for most e-commerce businesses in 2025 is to use Stripe as your primary payment processor and offer PayPal as an additional checkout option. The incremental conversion lift from PayPal typically pays for the integration cost within weeks.

Read the full reviews:Full Stripe review →Full PayPal review →