What is Stripe used for?

Stripe provides payment processing and financial infrastructure APIs for online businesses, covering payments, billing, banking and card issuing. It is a good fit for SaaS subscription billing, marketplace and platform payouts, and online store checkout.

How much does Stripe cost?

Stripe is a paid product with no free plan.

Is Stripe open source?

No. Stripe is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Stripe include Lago, Polar and Kill Bill.

What are some alternatives to Stripe?

Stripe competes with PayPal, Adyen and Square. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Stripe alternatives.

Stripe: features, pricing and alternatives

About Stripe

Stripe is a financial services platform that lets businesses accept payments online and in person, run subscription and usage-based billing, and manage money movement. It is built primarily for developers, who integrate it through APIs and prebuilt components, though non-technical teams can also use its dashboard and hosted pages.

Beyond card acceptance, the product family includes billing for recurring and custom revenue models, business banking, card issuing programs, embedded payments for platforms and marketplaces, and stablecoin and crypto money movement. The vendor also promotes tooling for agentic commerce and for monetizing AI products with usage meters.

Stripe is proprietary software delivered as a hosted service. Pricing is usage-based and varies by product, so the vendor's pricing page is the place to check current rates. It serves businesses of all sizes, from first-time online sellers to large platforms.

Key features

Online and in-person payment acceptance
Subscription and usage-based billing
Business banking and money movement
Card issuing programs
Embedded payments for platforms
Stablecoin and crypto payouts
Developer APIs and hosted checkout

Good fit for

→SaaS subscription billing
→Marketplace and platform payouts
→Online store checkout

Tags: payments; billing; api; subscriptions; card-issuing; fintech; checkout

Stripe: questions and answers

What is Stripe used for?: Stripe provides payment processing and financial infrastructure APIs for online businesses, covering payments, billing, banking and card issuing. It is a good fit for SaaS subscription billing, marketplace and platform payouts, and online store checkout.
How much does Stripe cost?: Stripe is a paid product with no free plan.
Is Stripe open source?: No. Stripe is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Stripe include Lago, Polar and Kill Bill.
What are some alternatives to Stripe?: Stripe competes with PayPal, Adyen and Square. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Stripe alternatives.