Is Stripe Invoicing actually free?
Disclosure. Stripe pays us nothing. We have no affiliate arrangement with Stripe or with Square, no link on this page earns anything, and we have not applied to Stripe. We do have an unapproved application with Square, which appears in the comparison below — and the comparison finds Stripe cheaper than Square on the route that matters most. Weigh it accordingly and check the arithmetic; all of it is shown.
No, and the wording on Stripe’s own page is careful about it: “Stripe Invoicing has no fixed fees or setup costs, but Stripe Payments pricing will apply.” No fixed fee is not free. There is a percentage, it is charged per paid invoice, and it sits on top of the card rate rather than instead of it.
The answer
No — 0.4% per paid invoice, stacked on 2.9% + 30¢. The real card rate is 3.3% + 30¢.
- ❌There is no free tier and no free allowance. The fee starts at invoice one. What there is not is a monthly fee.
- 🔗3.3% + 30¢ is exactly Square’s free-plan rate — to the cent, at every invoice size. The two are the same price on a card.
- 🏦Bank transfer is where Stripe wins: ACH is 0.8% capped at $5. A $5,000 invoice costs $25 here and $50 on Square’s free plan.
- 🌎An overseas client is expensive. +1.5% international, +1% if currency conversion is needed. Worst case: 5.8% + 30¢.
Jump to: The two fees Four ways to be paid Against Square Overseas clients Which one are you?
Two fees, published on two different pages
This is the whole reason the question gets asked. Stripe Invoicing’s pricing page shows one number. Stripe Payments’ pricing page shows another. You pay both, and neither page adds them up.
Stripe Payments, domestic card — 2.9% + 30¢
Stripe Invoicing Starter — +0.4% per paid invoice
What you actually pay: 3.3% + 30¢
Stripe is not hiding this. The invoicing page says plainly that Payments pricing applies on top. But the number people carry away from a pricing page is the large one on it, and on the invoicing page the large one is 0.4%.
| Plan | Invoicing fee | Monthly fee | With a domestic card |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 0.4% per paid invoice | $0 | 3.3% + 30¢ |
| Plus (adds quotes) | 0.5% per paid invoice | $0 | 3.4% + 30¢ |
| Custom | Quoted for large invoice amounts | ||
The absence of a monthly fee is a real advantage and worth naming: if you send two invoices in a quiet month you pay for two invoices, where a subscription tool charges you the same whether you send two or two hundred. Stripe’s model is honest about volume. It is just not free.
The same invoice, four ways to be paid
Every figure below is Stripe Payments plus the 0.4% Starter invoicing fee, calculated on the same invoice.
| Invoice | Domestic card | Bank (ACH) | International card | International + FX |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $100 | $3.60 | $1.20 | $5.10 | $6.10 |
| $500 | $16.80 | $6.00 | $24.30 | $29.30 |
| $1,000 | $33.30 | $9.00 | $48.30 | $58.30 |
| $5,000 | $165.30 | $25.00 | $240.30 | $290.30 |
Against Square, which turns out to be the same price
We costed Square Invoices separately, and the arithmetic lands somewhere unexpected: on a card, Stripe and Square’s free plan cost exactly the same.
Stripe: 2.9% + 30¢ + 0.4% = 3.3% + 30¢
Square, free plan: 3.3% + 30¢
On $1,000 both charge $33.30. On $5,000 both charge $165.30. On $10,000 both charge $330.30. Not close — identical.
Bank transfer is where they separate, and it is not a small gap.
| Paid by bank transfer | Stripe | Square, free plan | Stripe saves |
|---|---|---|---|
| $1,000 | $9.00 | $10.00 | $1.00 |
| $5,000 | $25.00 | $50.00 | $25.00 |
| $10,000 | $45.00 | $100.00 | $55.00 |
The reason is the cap. Stripe caps the ACH portion at $5 however large the invoice; Square’s free plan charges an uncapped 1%. Square does cap ACH at $10 — but only on its $49-a-month plan.
Is Square’s paid plan worth it against Stripe? On a $5,000 bank-paid invoice, Square Plus costs $10 against Stripe’s $25 — a saving of $15 per invoice. Square Plus costs $588 a year.
$588 ÷ $15 = 39 such invoices a year before the subscription breaks even. Below that, Stripe is cheaper.
If your client is in another country
This is the part of Stripe’s pricing that catches people who invoice internationally, which is a large share of anyone reading a page like this.
| Situation | Added | Rate with invoicing |
|---|---|---|
| Domestic card | — | 3.3% + 30¢ |
| Manually entered card | +0.5% | 3.8% + 30¢ |
| International card | +1.5% | 4.8% + 30¢ |
| Currency conversion required | +1% | 5.8% + 30¢ |
A $2,000 invoice, three clients:
Domestic card — $66.30
Overseas card — $96.30 (+$30.00)
Overseas card, different currency — $116.30 (+$50.00)
Same work. The client’s passport costs you $50.
Bank transfer sidesteps most of this for domestic clients but ACH is a United States rail — it does not help with an overseas payer. If a meaningful share of your invoices come from abroad, the fee that matters is not 2.9% and not 0.4%; it is the 2.5 points on top of both.
Which one are you?
Which one are you?
🏦 My clients are US-based and could pay by bank transfer
Stripe is the cheapest route on this site for large invoices. The $5 ACH cap means a $10,000 invoice costs $45 all in — against $100 on Square’s free plan and $290 on a card. Ask for bank details before you send the payment link.
💳 My clients always pay by card
Then Stripe and Square cost exactly the same and you should choose on the software, not the rate. Square gives you a fuller invoicing interface at $0; Stripe gives you a developer platform. The fee is not the deciding factor — it is identical.
🌎 Most of my clients are overseas
Budget 4.8% to 5.8%, not 2.9%. On $2,000 that is $50 more than a domestic card, per invoice. This is the number to check against any alternative before you commit — it dwarfs every subscription on this site.
🧾 I send a handful of small invoices a month
The no-monthly-fee model suits you: two invoices costs you two invoices. But the 30¢ is what hurts at small sizes — a $100 invoice is 3.6%, not 3.3%. Compare against Zoho Invoice, which is genuinely $0 and lets you use any processor.
📋 I want the invoicing software to be free, full stop
Then this is the wrong page. Zoho Invoice and Invoice Ninja charge nothing for the software and let you connect Stripe yourself — which removes the 0.4% and leaves only the 2.9% + 30¢. That combination is cheaper than Stripe Invoicing on every card payment.
What we could not verify
Country. Stripe redirected us to its Japanese pricing page first, where the domestic card rate is a different number entirely. Every figure here is from the United States pages. Open Stripe’s pricing in your own country before using any of it — this is the single most common way a comparison like this goes wrong.
Free allowance. We found no mention of a number of free invoices per month on either page. If one exists we did not see it, and the pricing page reads as though 0.4% applies from the first paid invoice.
Whether 0.4% applies to non-card payments. We have assumed the invoicing fee applies to any paid invoice including ACH, which is what “per paid invoice” states. If Stripe treats bank transfers differently the ACH figures here are an overestimate, which would make Stripe cheaper still rather than dearer.
Questions people actually ask
So is there a monthly fee or not?
There is not, and that is a genuine and unusual advantage. It means a quiet month costs almost nothing and a busy month costs proportionally more — which is the right shape for most one-person businesses. The article’s answer is “not free” rather than “expensive”; those are different criticisms.
Can I avoid the 0.4% and still use Stripe?
Yes, and it is the most useful thing on this page. Use free invoicing software that connects to your own Stripe account — Zoho Invoice and Invoice Ninja both do — and you pay Stripe’s 2.9% + 30¢ without the invoicing surcharge. On a $5,000 card payment that is $20 saved per invoice.
Why is Stripe the same price as Square?
Coincidence of arithmetic rather than collusion: 2.9 + 0.4 happens to equal 3.3. It is a reminder that headline rates are not comparable until you have added every line, which is the entire method of this site.
The thing that actually decides it
Not whether Stripe Invoicing is free. It is not, it never claimed to be, and the sentence on its pricing page is accurate.
What decides it is the same question that decided the Square page and the Wave page, and it will decide the next one too: how is the money going to arrive? A $5,000 invoice costs $25 by bank transfer, $165.30 by domestic card, and $290.30 from an overseas card in another currency. That is a spread of $265 on identical work, and no invoicing tool on this site can change it by a fraction as much.
Pick the route first. Then the tool.
Related: Is Square Invoices actually free? — identical card rate, different bank rate. Is Wave actually free? and Best invoicing software for a business of one.