GoCardless vs Stripe

Fees, tax handling, payouts and coverage side by side, plus how many verified RevMRR startups use each.

The short version

Neither is a merchant of record, so with either one you register for and remit sales tax and VAT yourself.
Pick GoCardless for: subscription, membership and instalment businesses billing established customers on a schedule, especially where individual invoices are large enough for the per-transaction cap to bite..
Pick Stripe for: online-first businesses — SaaS, ecommerce, subscriptions, marketplaces — with access to developer talent, and any company selling internationally that needs multi-currency support and rich analytics..

	GoCardless

RevMRR Score	B72	B74
Type	Bank & A2A Payments	Payment Processor
Standard fee	0.5% + $0.05	2.9% + $0.30
Monthly fee	$0	None
Merchant of record	No	No
Sales tax / VAT	You handle it	Paid add-on
Subscriptions	Not supported	Supported
Payouts	Varies by plan	First payout 7-14 days; then a rolling schedule…
Who can sign up	Founded in 2011, based in Sutton Yard, 65 Goswell Road, London EC1V 7EN, United Kingdom	Founded in 2010, based in San Francisco, CA
Payment methods	Bank Debit, ACH, Direct Debit, Open Banking	Cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Local Payment Methods
Best for	Subscription, membership and instalment businesses billing established customers on a schedule, especially where individual invoices are large enough for the per-transaction cap to bite.	Online-first businesses — SaaS, ecommerce, subscriptions, marketplaces — with access to developer talent, and any company selling internationally that needs multi-currency support and rich analytics.
Used on RevMRR	Not connectable yet	0 verified startups

GoCardless

GoCardless is the strongest published option in the US for collecting recurring payments straight from a bank account, and its capped pricing makes it dramatically cheaper than card rails on large invoices. It is not a merchant account and cannot take a card, so for most businesses it sits alongside a card processor rather than replacing one. Two things temper the recommendation: a poor public review record driven by account restrictions, and an agreed acquisition by Mollie that had not been publicly confirmed as closed when we checked.

+ Pricing is published in full — rates, caps, add-on fees and failure fees are all on the public pricing page rather than behind a quote form.
+ The per-transaction cap makes high-value invoices far cheaper to collect than on card rails.
+ One integration reaches ACH in the US and the equivalent bank debit schemes in more than 30 countries.
+ No set-up fee and no published early termination fee; you pay for transactions collected plus any optional add-ons.
+ Built specifically for recurring billing, with mandate handling and retry logic rather than card-style one-off charges bolted onto a subscription.
– No card acceptance of any kind — this is bank debit only, so most businesses will still need a separate card processor.
– A 2.3 out of 5 Trustpilot score across 2,475 reviews, with complaints concentrated on accounts being restricted during compliance review and on slow, email-only support.
– Bank debit is inherently slow to clear and to reverse compared with cards, which makes it a poor fit for anything sold to a first-time or walk-up customer.
– The higher-featured Advanced and Pro plans cost more per transaction, not less, so adding features raises your unit cost.
– Ownership is in flux: Mollie agreed to acquire GoCardless in December 2025, and the effect on US pricing and support has not been spelled out.
– Payout speed is tiered: two-day payouts are marketed as an Advanced-plan feature and GoCardless does not publish the Standard-plan settlement time, so the cheapest plan is also the slowest to pay you.

GoCardless pricing ↗

Stripe

Stripe earns its A grade: transparent flat-rate pricing with no fixed fees, an unmatched developer platform, and product breadth that covers everything from subscriptions to marketplace payouts. The honest caveats are the 7-14 day first payout, the possibility of holds while underwriting catches up with instant onboarding, and pricing that stops being a bargain at serious volume until you negotiate custom rates.

+ Best-in-class developer experience: clean APIs, SDKs, and documentation that set the industry standard
+ Transparent flat-rate pricing with no monthly, setup, PCI, or statement fees
+ Global reach with broad payment-method and multi-currency support
+ Deep feature set — subscriptions, invoicing, marketplace tools, virtual terminal — on one platform
+ No contract or early-termination fee on standard pay-as-you-go service
– First payout takes 7-14 days, and new or unusual accounts can face holds and verification friction
– Flat-rate 2.9% + $0.30 gets expensive at volume compared with negotiated interchange-plus pricing
– Complex for non-technical users — much of the value assumes you will build on the API
– Prohibits many high-risk categories and is not available in every country

Stripe pricing ↗