Stripe leads on payment methods (4.0 vs 0.7), checkout and SCA (2.0 vs 0.0), recurring billing (5.0 vs 0.0), settlement and reconciliation (2.5 vs 0.2) and pricing transparency (7.0 vs 2.2), with 6 judges leaning Stripe on each. PayPal leads licence and account terms (4.3 vs 2.0) and sovereignty (3.0 vs 0.2) — 6 judges lean PayPal on each. Weighted totals split by judge: level at 2.3 vs 2.3 for the compliance officer; finance, ecommerce, engineer and skeptic totals favor Stripe. Stripe prints card rates by origin (1,5 % + 0,25 € for standard EWR cards); PayPal names three fee structures but publishes no base rate. PayPal's legal entity jurisdiction is LU; Stripe's is US — the captured legal notice names Stripe, Inc. of Delaware, while the provenance, not the captured pages, notes Stripe Payments Europe Ltd, Dublin, for EEA merchants. Ownership, data residency and subprocessor exposure are unknown for both.
Choose PayPal if
You need your payment provider's contracting entity inside the EU: PayPal's legal entity jurisdiction is LU versus US for Stripe, and sovereignty runs 3.0 to 0.2 with 6 judges leaning PayPal.
Your onboarding requires a published imprint naming the regulated entity, its commercial register number and VAT ID: PayPal's captured pages carry them — PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. et Cie, S.C.A., register B 118 349, VAT ID LU22046007.
Your compliance team weighs bank supervision: the bench records PayPal as carried as a bank EU-wide under CSSF supervision.
You rank account and licence documentation above checkout documentation: licence and account terms is PayPal's lead, 4.3 to 2.0, with 6 judges leaning PayPal.
Choose Stripe if
You need card rates published before committing: Stripe prints them by origin (1,5 % + 0,25 € for standard EWR cards, 3,15 % + 0,25 € for foreign cards), and pricing transparency runs 7.0 to 2.2 with 6 judges leaning Stripe.
You bill on subscriptions: recurring billing runs 5.0 to 0.0 with 6 judges leaning Stripe, and the bench records subscriptions evidenced at scale, with billing priced at 0,7 % of billing volume.
Your finance team needs settlement and reconciliation information in public pages: means run 2.5 to 0.2, with 6 judges leaning Stripe.
You take SEPA Direct Debit and want a published price: Stripe lists SEPA Direct Debit at 0,35 € and disputes at 20,00 € each.
You need breadth of payment methods documented: payment methods runs 4.0 to 0.7 with 6 judges leaning Stripe.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Payments Engineer
Integrates the provider and gets paged when webhooks stop arriving. Wants a versioned API with idempotency keys, a test mode that behaves like production, the PCI scope of each integration stated, and a status page that admits incidents rather than a green dot.
PayPal
Stripe
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Payment methods & local coverage
PayPal
The only methods visible anywhere are cards and PayPal itself, via the card pricing models and a note that business transaction fees also apply to PayPal Plus; we found no public information on SEPA Direct Debit, iDEAL, Bancontact or any other local method, nor on which countries and currencies each method covers beyond a fee rule treating EWR transactions in EUR and SEK as domestic.
Stripe
Over a hundred payment methods and 135+ supported currencies are claimed, SEPA Direct Debit is priced at 0,35 €, Klarna from 2,99 % + 0,35 €, and Girocard support is shown for the German terminal reader — but the captured pages never say which countries and currencies each method serves, and we found no public information on wallets or on refund and recurring support per method. That is a count, not a coverage matrix a merchant can plan against.
Checkout, SCA & fraud
PayPal
Nothing on the checkout path is evidenced: we found no public information on hosted or embedded checkout options, 3-D Secure or SCA exemption handling, fraud screening, or the PCI scope of any integration type. The homepage claim that PayPal Open combines all business solutions carries none of that engineering detail.
Stripe
We found no public information on 3-D Secure, SCA exemption handling, hosted versus embedded checkout options, or the PCI scope of each integration — only a bare PCI-conformity label, fraud prevention via Stripe Radar, and no-code payment links. Fraud screening is named but unexplained, and nothing is evidenced on keeping legitimate payments from failing.
Subscriptions & recurring payments
PayPal
We found no public information on stored cards, merchant-initiated transactions, SEPA mandate handling, subscription plans or failed-payment handling in the captured pages. Judged as not evidenced.
Stripe
Subscription billing is evidently a real product — over 200 million active subscriptions managed via Stripe Billing, a billing fee of 0,7 % of billing volume, invoicing at 0,4 % per paid invoice, usage-based pricing examples, and SEPA Direct Debit priced. But we found no public information on dunning or smart retries, mandate pre-notification, a card account updater, merchant-initiated transaction documentation, or any process for exporting payment tokens to another provider.
Settlement, reconciliation & API
PayPal
No payout cadence, settlement currency, per-transaction fee breakdown, REST API, webhook, test mode or status page appears in the captured pages. As the one who gets paged when webhooks stop arriving, I found nothing here a finance team could build on.
Stripe
SDKs, APIs, developer documentation, a dashboard and serious throughput figures are published, yet we found no public information on payout schedule or settlement currencies, per-transaction fee itemisation, reconciliation reports that match bank lines, webhooks, a test mode, idempotency, or a status page with incident history. The 99,999 % availability figure is a marketing claim, not an incident record I could plan an on-call rotation around.
Licence, risk & account terms
PayPal
The imprint is unusually complete on identity: the Luxembourg entity is named as a bank supervised by CSSF with two register numbers and EU-wide bank status. But we found no public information on safeguarding of merchant funds, reserves, freezes, termination notice or chargeback fees — the half of this question that matters on a bad day.
Stripe
The imprint names Stripe, Inc., a Delaware corporation with a company register number, but no payments licence, supervisor or safeguarding statement appears on the captured pages, and the terms let Stripe terminate or close the account at any time with no stated reason or timeline. A 20,00 € dispute fee is published and fee increases carry 30 days' notice, which is the only daylight between this and the floor.
European sovereignty
PayPal
Merchants contract with a Luxembourg bank under CSSF, which secures the EU entity and licence. Beyond that we found no public information on where payment and cardholder data are processed, no subprocessor list with locations, and the group parent is PayPal Holdings, Inc. of San Jose, so EU processing is not evidenced beyond the contracting layer.
Stripe
The captured pages name Stripe, Inc. of South San Francisco as the service provider, and we found no public information confirming an EU contracting or licensed entity, where payment data is processed and stored, or any subprocessor list. An international data transfer section and an incorporated DPA with a Data Transfers Addendum exist, but nothing evidences EU processing of payment or cardholder data.
Pricing transparency
PayPal
The fee page says plainly that Interchange Plus, Blended Pricing and Interchange Plus Plus structures are available, quotes one exact surcharge — 1.29% for UK recipients of international transactions under separate agreement — and treats EWR transactions in EUR and SEK as domestic for fees. But no base rates per method, conversion markups, chargeback, refund or payout fees are evidenced, and micropayment and nonprofit rates exist only via application and pre-approval, so the effective fee is not computable from these pages.
Stripe
This is a genuinely public price list: EWR standard cards at 1,5 % + 0,25 € and premium at 2,8 % + 0,25 €, UK at 2,5 % + 0,25 € and foreign cards at 3,15 % + 0,25 €, a stated +2 % currency conversion, SEPA Direct Debit at 0,35 €, Klarna from 2,99 % + 0,35 €, a 20,00 € dispute fee, and no setup or monthly fees. What keeps it short of the top of the scale: we found no public information on refund or payout fees or the contract term, and interchange++ pricing appears only as a named custom-tier feature rather than a plainly stated model.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
PayPal
Stripe
Legal entity
Incorporated in LU
Incorporated in US
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
Not determined
Not determined
Subprocessors
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
Product · How it works
JavaScript SDK presents PayPal button which starts subscription process; button calls Subscriptions API to create the subscription1