Payments Software Pricing (2026)
What 12 payments tools actually charge, taken from their own pricing pages and re-checked as they change. Cheapest first.
Pricing verified Sep 29, 2026
Prices here change. You'll hear about it.
Outmano watches pricing, features, roadmaps and reviews across your market, then sends one weekly brief: what changed, and what it means for you.
Payments pricing at a glance
| Product | Entry price | Plans | Free plan | Free trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Square | $49/mo | 3 | Yes | Yes |
| Superwall | $49/mo | 4 | Yes | No |
| Chargebee | $160/mo | 2 | No | Yes |
| Recurly | $249/mo | 5 | No | Yes |
| Adapty | Custom | 2 | Yes | No |
| Braintree | Custom | 2 | No | No |
| GoCardless | Custom | 4 | No | No |
| Mollie | Custom | 2 | Yes | No |
| Paddle | Custom | 2 | No | No |
| Qonversion | Custom | 2 | Yes | No |
| RevenueCat | Custom | 2 | Yes | No |
| Stripe | Custom | 2 | No | No |
Every payments tool we track, cheapest first
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Square
Payments and POS for every business.
Square sits in the middle of the POS pack — pricier than bare-bones processors like Stripe for pure payments, but cheaper and more self-serve than enterprise retail systems like Lightspeed or Shopify POS Plus. They're chasing brick-and-mortar and hybrid retailers who want hardware, software, and payments bundled without a sales call.
Plans: Square Free $0/mo · Square Plus $49/mo · Square Premium $149/mo
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Superwall
Paywall experimentation for apps.
Free-to-start with usage fees baked in puts them in the middle of the mobile monetization tooling space — cheaper to trial than enterprise-only competitors like Braze, but pricier at scale than a flat-fee tool once that 1% revenue share kicks in. They're clearly hunting mobile-first startups who want to skip building paywall infra in-house and are willing to trade a revenue cut for speed.
Plans: Indie $0/mo · Startup $49/mo · Scale $199/mo · Enterprise Contact Sales
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Chargebee
Subscription management and billing.
Chargebee sits mid-to-premium in the subscription billing space — pricier than bare-bones invoicing tools like Stripe Billing, but positioned as the specialist for companies whose entire business model is recurring revenue. They're chasing mid-market and growth-stage SaaS companies who've outgrown a generic payment processor's billing bolt-on.
Plans: Flow $160/mo · Enterprise Contact Sales
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Recurly
Subscription management platform.
This sits mid-to-premium in the subscription billing space — cheaper to start than enterprise players like Zuora, but the revenue-share model plus custom enterprise pricing on All-Access signals they're chasing mid-market and up, not scrappy startups. They're not competing on sticker price; they're betting that companies with real billing complexity will pay for reliability over cost.
Plans: Starter $249/mo · RevRec $850/mo · Engage $1600/mo · All-Access Contact Sales · All-Access for Shopify Contact Sales
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Adapty
Grow mobile subscription revenue.
Adapty undercuts flat-fee subscription tools like RevenueCat by staying free for early-stage apps and only charging once you're making real money — making it the low-risk pick for indie devs and small teams testing monetization. It's not trying to be premium; it's positioned as the tool you can adopt on day one without a pricing conversation.
Plans: Pro $0/mo · Enterprise Contact Sales
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Braintree
Payments platform from PayPal.
Braintree targets mid-market to enterprise merchants who've outgrown Stripe's standard rates and want negotiated pricing without moving to a full acquiring bank relationship. They're not the cheapest, but the custom rate structure means high-volume businesses can potentially undercut what they'd pay on Stripe's published rates.
Plans: Standard Contact Sales · Charity Contact Sales
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GoCardless
Bank payment collection at scale.
GoCardless sits mid-pack against Stripe and Adyen — not fighting on subscription price since there isn't one, but competing on transaction fees for bank-to-bank payments specifically, which undercuts card-based processors for recurring billing use cases. They're chasing subscription businesses and B2B billing teams tired of card decline rates and interchange fees.
Plans: Standard Contact Sales · Advanced Contact Sales · Pro Contact Sales · Custom Contact Sales
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Paddle
Revenue platform for SaaS.
Sitting in the merchant-of-record space next to Stripe and Lemon Squeezy, Paddle isn't the cheapest per-transaction but bundles in tax/compliance handling, so it's positioned as the 'pay more, worry less' option. They're chasing SaaS teams who'd rather outsource global sales tax headaches than DIY it with a cheaper processor.
Plans: Pay-as-you-go Contact Sales · Custom pricing Contact Sales
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Qonversion
Mobile subscription analytics.
Qonversion undercuts flat-fee competitors like RevenueCat by staying free for smaller apps and only charging once you're generating real revenue, making it the cheaper option for anyone under that $7K MTR line. They're clearly courting indie developers and small teams who resent paying fixed SaaS fees before they've proven product-market fit, while still leaving a path to bigger accounts via Enterprise.
Plans: Pro $0/mo · Enterprise Contact Sales
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Stripe
Payment infrastructure for the internet.
Stripe sits at the premium end of payment processors on a per-transaction basis, but wins on developer experience and breadth of tooling rather than being the cheapest swipe fee around. They're chasing technical teams and scaling startups who'll pay a bit more for reliable APIs and fewer integration headaches than legacy processors like Braintree or Authorize.net.
Plans: Standard Contact Sales · Custom Contact Sales
Payments Software Pricing FAQ
- How much does payments software cost?
- Entry prices run from $49/mo (Square) to $249/mo (Recurly), with a median entry price of $104/mo across the 4 priced products we track.
- What is the cheapest payments software?
- Square has the lowest entry price of the payments software we track, at $49/mo. Superwall ($49/mo) and Chargebee ($160/mo) are next. Square and Superwall are free to start on.
- Is there free payments software?
- Yes — Square, Superwall, Adapty and 3 more offer a free plan.
- How is payments software usually priced?
- 9 of the 12 payments tools we track use usage based pricing, against 2 on hybrid and 1 on flat rate.