Stripe vs Chargebee: Cost and Fees Calculator
Enter your volumes to compare estimated monthly costs and fees for Stripe and Chargebee across the selling types both offer, using published US pricing.
Selling online (eCommerce)
Estimates combine processing fees and monthly subscriptions on the plans noted above. One-time hardware, setup, and add-ons are excluded. Rates are published or typical US pricing as of mid-2026 and may have changed.
How the Stripe vs Chargebee calculator works, and how the two compare
Stripe is a developer-focused online payments infrastructure company that also sells Terminal card readers for in-person sales. Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30 for online card payments and 2.7% + $0.05 in person via Stripe Terminal (Reader M2 $59), with no monthly fee and volume discounts on request. Chargebee is a subscription billing and revenue management layer that sits on top of gateways like Stripe or Braintree. Chargebee's Starter plan is free up to a billing threshold then 0.75% of billing; paid plans start at $599 per month, and in every case your gateway's processing fees (for example Stripe's 2.9% + $0.30) are charged on top.
How they are similar: Where they overlap: both Stripe and Chargebee cover selling online, which is what this calculator compares. Neither requires a monthly subscription on the plans compared here, so your cost scales purely with sales. In both cases the bill is driven by a percentage of each sale plus any fixed per-transaction fee, which is why your average transaction size changes the effective rate as much as the headline percentage does.
How they differ: Only Stripe offers in-person card readers, so that side of the business is not part of this comparison. Stripe operates as flat-rate card processing with published per-transaction fees, while Chargebee operates as a billing layer that manages subscriptions on top of an underlying payment gateway. Stripe is built API-first: it has no storefront or POS software of its own, but offers unmatched flexibility, 135+ currencies, and dozens of payment methods for businesses that build their own checkout. Chargebee does not move money itself: it manages plans, trials, dunning, and revenue recognition while a gateway underneath processes the cards, so its fees stack on top of processing rather than replacing it.
Assumptions used in this calculator
- Stripe is modeled on: 2.9% + $0.30 per online card payment, no monthly fee.
- Chargebee is modeled on: Billing layer: 0.75% of billing on Starter (paid plans from $599 per month); gateway processing fees extra.
- Rates are published or typical US pricing as of mid-2026 and change often; quote-based providers are modeled at representative rates. Always confirm current pricing with the provider.
- One-time hardware, setup, add-on apps, keyed-in transactions, international cards, and chargeback fees are excluded from the monthly figures.