Stripe is the default API for accepting card payments online. There's no monthly fee — you pay a percentage per transaction. Here's the cost and how to get your keys (test mode works in seconds).
| Tipo | Fee | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Standard card charge | 2.9% + $0.30 | Per successful charge, US cards |
| International cards | +1.5% | Added to standard |
| Currency conversion | +1% | When converting |
| Monthly / setup fee | $0 | Pay only per transaction |
| Refunds | gratuito | But original fee isn't returned |
On a $50 charge: 2.9% ($1.45) + $0.30 = $1.75, so you keep $48.25. On $10: $0.29 + $0.30 = $0.59 (the flat 30¢ hurts small charges most). High-volume or large-ticket businesses can request custom rates.
1. Create an account at dashboard.stripe.com.
2. Vai a Developers → API keys. You instantly get test-mode keys: a publishable key (pk_test_…) for the frontend and a secret key (sk_test_…) for the backend.
3. Build and test with the test keys — no real money, no approval needed.
4. Activate your account (add business + bank details) to flip to live keys and accept real payments.
Create a test charge object:
PayPal, Adyen, Paddle (handles sales tax for you, good for SaaS) and Lemon Squeezy are common alternatives. For most developers Stripe wins on docs and ease; Paddle/Lemon Squeezy win if you want a merchant of record that handles global tax.
Stripe rate-limits by API request rate, and the default ceiling differs between live and test mode. In live mode the platform allows on the order of 100 read operations and 100 write operations per second by default; test mode is intentionally lower (roughly a quarter of that) so it will hit limits sooner during heavy test runs. These are account-level defaults that Stripe can raise on request for high-volume businesses.
A few endpoint families have their own dedicated limits:
When you exceed a limit Stripe returns HTTP 429 with a rate_limit_error; the recommended handling is exponential backoff with retries, and using idempotency keys so retries don't double-charge. If you are researching Stripe API rate limits, design for backoff rather than the exact number, since Stripe tunes limits per account and can increase them for production workloads.
Compare Stripe with our PayPal and Adyen API guides to weigh transaction fees alongside developer rate limits.
US: 2.9% + $0.30 per successful card charge, no monthly fee. International cards +1.5%, currency conversion +1%.
Create an account, go to Developers → API keys, and you instantly get test-mode publishable and secret keys. Activate the account for live keys.
Yes — no monthly or setup fee, and test mode is completely free. You only pay the percentage when you take a real payment.
The Charge API is Stripe's older, now-legacy way to take a direct payment — new integrations should use PaymentIntents instead, which adds 3D Secure and other authentication flows the old Charge API never handled. The Price API is unrelated to taking a payment; it defines a reusable price object (amount, currency, one-time or recurring interval) attached to a Product, used by Subscriptions and Checkout. There's no separate "Pricing API" — that term usually just refers to the same Price objects.
Not affiliated with Stripe. Fees are reference estimates — always verify on the official pricing page.