The two costs people mix up
A Stripe integration has two completely separate price tags, and almost every page on the internet answers the wrong one:
- Stripe's transaction fees — what Stripe charges you per payment, forever. This is set by Stripe, not by your developer.
- The build cost — what you pay a developer, once, to integrate Stripe into your site or platform properly.
If you're evaluating whether to take payments online, you need both numbers. Most cost guides only give you the first, and most agencies won't publish the second. We publish ours, so let's do both.
Stripe's fees: the ongoing cost
Stripe charges per successful transaction. At the time of writing, standard online card pricing is roughly 1.5% + 20p for UK cards and 2.9% + 30¢ for US cards, with different rates for international cards, currency conversion and products like Billing. These change and vary by country, so treat stripe.com/pricing as the source of truth.
Two things worth knowing: there's no monthly fee on the standard plan, and no developer can reduce these fees — anyone who implies their integration "saves on Stripe fees" is selling you something.
The build cost: the one nobody publishes
Published guides quote developer costs anywhere from a couple of thousand to well over $100,000 for "API integration" — ranges so wide they're useless. The spread isn't dishonesty; it's open-ended scope. "Integrate Stripe" can mean a payment link or a multi-currency marketplace with usage-based billing.
So here's how we price it, fixed and published:
| What you need | Our tier | Fixed price |
|---|---|---|
| Take a simple payment — a payment link or basic hosted checkout | Often none needed — see below | £0–£450 |
| Stripe checkout on your site — one-off payments with proper error handling, confirmations and receipts | Standard integration | £850 (~$1,050) |
| Subscriptions & recurring billing — plans, upgrades, failed-payment handling, webhooks, customer portal | Advanced integration | £1,850 (~$2,300) |
| Marketplace, usage-based or multi-system billing — Connect, metered billing, invoicing engines | Complex | From £3,500, scoped first |
These are the same numbers on our pricing page — not a teaser rate that grows after a "discovery call".
The honest bit: you might not need a developer at all
If all you need is to take a one-off payment for a fixed product, Stripe's own Payment Links require no code: you create a link in the Stripe dashboard and share it. It won't match your brand, sit inside your checkout flow, or update your systems automatically — but if you're validating an idea, start there and pay nothing.
You need a developer when payments have to talk to the rest of your business: confirming bookings, provisioning accounts, generating invoices, syncing to your CRM or accounting platform, or handling subscriptions that customers can manage themselves.
What a proper integration includes (and a cheap one skips)
The difference between a £200 freelance job and a professional integration shows up months later, usually at 2am. Ours include:
- Webhook handling with retries — Stripe tells your system about payments asynchronously; miss a webhook and an order silently vanishes.
- Failure states — declined cards, expired sessions and double-clicks handled gracefully, not with a white screen.
- No card data on your server — we use Stripe's hosted elements, keeping you out of serious PCI compliance scope.
- Test-mode verification — the full flow proven with test cards before a real card ever touches it.
- Reconciliation — payments matched to orders/bookings so your bookkeeping isn't a monthly archaeology dig.
Questions we hear a lot
Can I integrate Stripe myself?
For simple cases, yes — Stripe Payment Links need no code, and Stripe's documentation is excellent if you have development experience. The build cost pays for the parts that aren't in the quickstart: webhook reliability, failure handling, and wiring payments into your bookings, invoicing or CRM.
Is there an ongoing cost after the build?
Not from us, unless you want it. The integration is yours once delivered. If you'd like ongoing monitoring, API change management and monthly development hours, our care retainer is £495/mo — useful when payments are business-critical, optional when they're not.
How long does a Stripe integration take?
It depends on what it connects to, which is why we agree the timeline when we scope it. A Standard checkout integration is typically measured in days; subscription billing with webhooks and a customer portal takes longer. Either way the timeline is fixed alongside the price before we start.