Best Stripe Alternatives in 2026: Payment Processors, Merchant of Record and Open-Source Billing

The best Stripe alternatives depend on which part of Stripe you are replacing. Adyen and Checkout.com are full payment platforms for larger, multi-market businesses, Paddle and Polar take over tax and compliance for software sellers as merchant of record, and Lago and Hyperswitch are open-source layers for billing and payment routing that you can self-host.

This guide sorts ten options into three kinds of tool: payment processors, merchant-of-record platforms, and billing or routing layers that sit on top of processors. It does not quote fees, country availability or approval rules. Those change and depend on your business, so each provider's pricing page and terms are the place to check.

Why people look for Stripe alternatives

Stripe is a payments platform for developers: it accepts payments online and in person, runs subscription and usage-based billing, and extends into business banking, card issuing, embedded payments for platforms and crypto payouts. The reasons to compare are usually specific:

• One platform, many products. A team that only wants one piece, such as billing logic or in-store payments, may prefer a focused tool to a broad platform.
• Who sells to the customer. Software and digital-product sellers who do not want to handle sales tax and VAT themselves look at merchant-of-record platforms, which sell on the seller's behalf.
• Pricing that varies. Stripe's listing describes usage-based pricing that varies by product and region, so a fair comparison means reading its pricing page next to each alternative's for your own payment mix.
• Closed source, hosted only. Stripe's code is proprietary and there is no self-hosted version. Teams that want to run or audit their billing code look at open-source options.
• Relying on one processor. Routing layers such as Hyperswitch let a business connect several processors, including Stripe and Adyen, instead of depending on one.
• Fit for in-person or enterprise use. Square is built around point-of-sale hardware for small sellers, while Adyen and Checkout.com target larger businesses and a different sales model.

How we picked

Enlisted checks that each tool does one of the jobs Stripe covers: processing payments, acting as merchant of record, or managing subscriptions and invoicing. For open-source projects it also looks at the licence, whether you can self-host, and whether the GitHub repository is still being worked on. Pricing models come from the vendors' published pages. Nothing here comes from running the products: facts are drawn from catalogue data, vendor documentation and pricing pages, and how Enlisted ranks tools explains the method.

Payment processor, merchant of record or billing layer?

These three categories get mixed up, so it helps to settle which one you need before comparing products.

• Payment processors and gateways take the customer's card, wallet or bank payment and move the money to you. Adyen, Checkout.com, Square, PayPal and BTCPay Server belong here, and so does Stripe's core payments product.
• Merchant-of-record platforms sell to your customers on your behalf and, according to their listings, handle tax collection and related compliance. Paddle, Polar, Lemon Squeezy and FastSpring are in this group. You give up some control over the checkout relationship in exchange for less tax paperwork.
• Billing layers run the commercial logic: subscription plans, usage metering, invoices, retries for failed payments. They work with payment providers rather than replacing them. Chargebee, Lago, Kill Bill and Meteroid sit here, and Hyperswitch is a routing layer that decides which processor handles each payment.

Many businesses combine two of these, for example a billing layer plus a processor.

1. Adyen: best for large businesses selling across channels and countries

Adyen is a commercial payment platform for large and global businesses that puts online, mobile and in-person payments behind one API. Where Stripe is built primarily for developers, Adyen's listing leans enterprise, and its pitch centres on conversion, fraud reduction, global payouts and automated settlement.

For software platforms and marketplaces it also offers embedded finance, letting customers launch payments, accounts and card issuing under their own brand. Pricing is per transaction with a payment-method component that varies by method and region, so use the Adyen pricing page rather than a summary.

• Best for: enterprises, marketplaces and platforms that need one provider across several channels and markets.
• Watch out for: it is positioned for larger businesses, so a small team should confirm that its onboarding and minimums fit before investing in an integration.

2. Checkout.com: best for one API across cards and local payment methods

Checkout.com is a payment processing platform that accepts cards, bank transfers and alternative payment methods in many markets through a single integration. Its product list reads like Stripe's payments side: a unified payments API, a hosted payment page, payment links, a mobile SDK and Flow, a set of customizable checkout components.

Beyond acceptance it covers fraud detection, disputes, card issuing, payouts, network tokens and a dashboard with treasury and FX tools. Its listing shows no published pricing and a contact-sales model, which suits businesses already at scale. See the Checkout.com alternatives page for a wider shortlist of its competitors.

• Best for: growing and large online businesses that want to take local payment methods in several markets without many integrations.
• Watch out for: pricing is arranged through sales, so you cannot compare costs from a public page the way you can with some rivals.

3. Square: best for small businesses that sell in person

Square is a payments and business-management platform for small and mid-sized sellers that combines card acceptance with point-of-sale software and hardware. The difference from Stripe is where it starts: Square is organized around business types such as food and beverage, retail, beauty and professional services, with terminals, registers and kiosks alongside online selling.

It covers orders, inventory, appointments, staff scheduling and payroll, and cash-flow tools, so a shop can run day-to-day work from one system. There is a plan with no monthly fee and paid plans per location, and card processing fees apply on every plan.

• Best for: cafes, retailers and service businesses that need hardware and point-of-sale tools with payments.
• Watch out for: it is built for small sellers rather than for custom API-led payment flows, so a software product with complex billing should look at the billing tools further down.

4. PayPal: best as a familiar checkout option for merchants and invoicing

PayPal is an online payments service used by individuals and businesses, which merchants add as a checkout option and use to send invoices and receive payments. Its consumer side includes pay-later installments and a rewards debit card, and it states that payments are encrypted and that full financial details are not shared with merchants.

It covers payments and invoicing, but its listing does not describe the subscription and billing depth of the specialised tools further down this list.

• Best for: small online shops and freelancers who want payment and invoicing without building an integration.
• Watch out for: its public pages emphasize consumer features such as pay-later options, so check the merchant documentation for the checkout, invoicing and integration options you need. See also PayPal alternatives.

5. Paddle: best merchant of record for SaaS and app companies

Paddle is a hosted billing and payments platform for SaaS, mobile apps, software and digital products that acts as the merchant of record. That means Paddle sells to the end customer on the seller's behalf and takes on sales tax, VAT and related compliance work rather than leaving it with the software company.

The product set includes localized checkout, multi-product subscriptions, recurring B2B invoicing, fraud protection, revenue analytics and automated recovery of failed payments and cancellations. The trade-off from a processor like Stripe is structural: the customer buys through Paddle, so you hand over part of the checkout relationship.

• Best for: SaaS and app businesses selling worldwide that want to outsource tax compliance.
• Watch out for: it is a closed-source hosted service aimed at software and digital goods, so it is not a general-purpose processor for physical retail. Pricing is per transaction on its pricing page.

6. Polar: best open-source merchant of record for software and AI billing

Polar is an open-source billing platform for software and AI businesses that acts as merchant of record and charges for subscriptions, seats, credits and usage. According to its site, Polar is responsible for payments, sales tax, fraud, refunds and chargebacks in the markets it serves, so the seller does not manage that paperwork.

It meters events such as tokens, API calls, agent runs, GPU seconds and storage, and supports Python and TypeScript SDK integrations. The code is Apache-2.0 licensed on GitHub, which makes it unusual among merchant-of-record options. Enlisted lists it as self-hostable, but the merchant-of-record role is a service Polar provides, so confirm in its docs what a self-hosted install does and does not cover.

• Best for: AI startups and developers who want usage billing, checkout and tax handling in one hosted service with open code.
• Watch out for: it is focused on software and AI products rather than general e-commerce, and pricing combines a per-transaction rate with plan tiers, so read the pricing page.

7. Chargebee: best hosted subscription billing on top of your payment gateways

Chargebee is a hosted billing platform for recurring-revenue businesses that manages the subscriber lifecycle, billing cycles and invoices on top of the gateways you already use. It supports subscription, usage-based and hybrid models, and lets teams change pricing and packaging without a code release.

Payments tooling connects to many gateways and payment methods, with retries that use machine learning to recover failed payments, and adjacent products cover quoting, revenue recognition and receivables. Alongside a processor, it is the kind of tool you add when payment processing works but the billing logic has outgrown it. The vendor lists paid plans with a free trial and startup offers.

• Best for: SaaS and subscription companies that want a hosted billing system without building their own.
• Watch out for: it adds another vendor and another bill to the stack, and it manages billing, not the payment processing itself.

8. Lago: best open-source usage-based billing

Lago is open-source billing infrastructure that meters product usage and turns it into pricing, credits, invoices and revenue analytics. It is not a payment processor: its site says it integrates with payment providers, and it fills the gap between a processor and a pricing model for subscriptions, usage-based and hybrid plans.

It is built with AI products in mind, where tokens and compute need metering, but it also covers ordinary SaaS subscriptions. Integration is through a REST API and SDKs, and the AGPL-3.0 code can be self-hosted, with a managed Lago Cloud as the alternative. A paid Premium edition is quoted through the vendor, as the listing shows.

• Best for: engineering teams that want to own their billing logic and self-host it, especially for usage-based pricing.
• Watch out for: you still need a payment provider, and running billing infrastructure yourself means taking on its reliability and upgrades.

9. Hyperswitch: best open-source layer for routing payments across processors

Hyperswitch is an open-source payments platform written in Rust that sits on top of existing payment providers and routes each transaction to a suitable processor. It connects to many processors, including Stripe, Adyen, Braintree and Worldpay, so it complements rather than replaces them.

Its modules cover cost observability, revenue recovery through configurable retries, a vault for cards and tokens, and reconciliation. The Community Edition is Apache-2.0 and free to self-host, while the Enterprise Edition and Hyperswitch Cloud are quoted through sales.

• Best for: businesses that run more than one processor, or want to reduce lock-in to any single provider, and have engineers to run the stack.
• Watch out for: it does not replace a processor, so you still need accounts with the providers it routes to. Self-hosting a payments layer carries operational and security responsibilities, so read the project's documentation first.

10. BTCPay Server: best self-hosted way to accept Bitcoin

BTCPay Server is a free, self-hosted, open-source payment processor that lets merchants accept Bitcoin directly, without a third-party intermediary. It includes Lightning Network support, point-of-sale and crowdfunding use cases, a Greenfield API for integrations and a plugin system.

It sits in a different category from card processors. If your goal is to avoid relying on an intermediary and you are willing to run the server, it does that job under an MIT licence. If you need to take cards, bank payments or wallets, it complements a processor instead of replacing one.

• Best for: stores and organizations that want to accept Bitcoin on infrastructure they control.
• Watch out for: it handles Bitcoin payments only, and rules about accepting cryptocurrency differ by country, so check locally before you rely on it.

Which Stripe alternative should you choose?

If you sell software internationally, decide first whether you want a merchant of record, because that choice rules out the plain payment processors on the list. If you are happy being the seller, compare processors and then add a billing layer if your pricing outgrows the processor's own billing. See the finance category for more payment and accounting tools.

Other merchant-of-record and billing options

Also worth a look, depending on the job:

• Lemon Squeezy: a merchant-of-record checkout and storefront for digital downloads, software licences and SaaS subscriptions.
• FastSpring: a merchant-of-record platform for software, SaaS, games and digital goods, with pricing arranged through its sales team.
• Kill Bill: an open-source subscription billing and payments platform in Java for teams that want to run and extend their own billing infrastructure.
• Meteroid: open-source billing infrastructure for SaaS and AI companies, with usage metering, subscriptions, invoicing and quotes.
• Recurly: hosted subscription billing with a focus on churn and failed-payment recovery.
• Zuora: an enterprise quote-to-cash platform joining billing, payments and revenue recognition.

The full Stripe alternatives page on Enlisted goes beyond this shortlist.

What to verify before you switch payment providers

A payment provider is not a like-for-like swap, and Enlisted does not publish rates, supported countries or onboarding criteria because they vary by business and change. Before you commit:

• Fees at your volume and card mix. Use each provider's pricing page, and ask sales where pricing is not published.
• Countries and currencies. Confirm that the countries you sell in, and the one your business is registered in, are supported.
• Payment methods your customers use. Cards are not the only method in many markets.
• Onboarding and approval. Providers set their own requirements for the businesses they accept, so read the terms and acceptable-use policy.
• Saved cards and subscriptions. Ask how existing stored payment details and recurring subscriptions can be migrated, if at all.
• Tax and legal responsibilities. Who collects and files sales tax and VAT differs between processors and merchants of record. Confirm with your accountant or adviser, since this guide is not tax or legal advice.

If your payments are tied to your bookkeeping, Enlisted's guide to QuickBooks alternatives covers the accounting side, and NetSuite alternatives covers ERP suites that handle invoicing and revenue at larger scale.