Which Is Better for E-Commerce and In-Person Sellers?
If you don’t have a developer and you need to take payments this week, this comparison is straightforward: Square.
The £19 reader and the free POS app need no developer and no API documentation.
If you’re building an online product or a subscription service, Stripe is the clearer choice. Billing, Connect and Radar all sit behind the same integration, and standard UK cards cost 1.5% + 20p online.
The harder case is the business that sells both ways, with a physical shop and an online store. Here the deciding question is which of the two brings in most of your money, because each provider is at its best on one channel and merely adequate on the other.
A Bristol independent retailer doing 70% of sales in-store will find Square tidier: one app, one dashboard, and stock levels that stay in step between the till and the website. A Nottingham craft brand doing 80% through WooCommerce belongs on Stripe.
Where Square runs short for a business selling both ways is in what you can build on top of it. If you grow into subscription boxes, Square’s free Subscriptions tool handles simple recurring plans; once you need failed-payment retries, proration or payouts to other sellers, you’ll be adding third-party tools or moving that side of the business to Stripe.
Visit Square Visit StripeStripe vs Square Fees and Charges
Card Transaction Fees
Online, the two UK-card rates meet at a £50 order. We verified both providers’ pricing pages in October 2026: Square charges 1.4% + 25p; Stripe charges 1.5% + 20p.
Both come to 95p there. Below £50 Stripe costs less (50p against Square’s 53p on a £20 order), and above it Square does (£1.65 against £1.70 on £100). At 200 orders a month of £100, Square saves you £10.
In person, the comparison turns on what each provider publishes. Square charges a flat 1.75% on UK cards. Stripe’s Terminal page lists 1.4% + 10p for EEA-issued cards and 2.9% + 10p for the rest, but no separate rate for UK cards, so there is no published Stripe figure to set against Square’s for a UK customer tapping a UK card.
On a card issued elsewhere in Europe the picture reverses, because Square counts it as a non-UK card. A £50 sale on that card costs about £1.63 with Square against 80p on Stripe Terminal.
International cards are where you need to read the small print. Square’s effective non-UK rate in-person is 3.25% (1.75% + 1.5% surcharge). Stripe Terminal charges 2.9% + 10p for non-EEA cards.
If you run a gift shop in a tourist area with a third of card transactions coming from international visitors, your effective Square rate is far above the headline 1.75%. Check your card mix before you commit.
| Transaction type | Stripe | Square |
|---|---|---|
| UK card online | 1.5% + 20p | 1.4% + 25p |
| EEA card online | 2.5% + 20p | 2.5% + 25p |
| Non-UK/non-EEA card online | 3.15% + 20p | 2.5% + 25p |
| In-person UK card | Not listed on Terminal page | 1.75% |
| In-person EEA card | 1.4% + 10p (Terminal) | 3.25% (1.75% + 1.5%) |
| In-person non-EEA card | 2.9% + 10p (Terminal) | 3.25% (1.75% + 1.5%) |
| Manual card entry | No separate rate published | 2.5% |
| BNPL | Klarna/Afterpay rates apply | 6% + 30p (Clearpay) |
| Monthly fee | None | None (standard plan) |
| Fees verified October 2026. Stripe Terminal domestic UK card rate not separately confirmed on Terminal page, see methodology. Square monthly fees for Restaurants Plus and Appointments Plus are quoted exclusive of VAT on the pricing pages. | ||
Monthly, Setup and Contract Costs
Neither Stripe nor Square charges a monthly fee on their standard plans. Both are pay-as-you-go with no setup cost or minimum term.
Square’s restaurant and appointments software costs extra if you want it: £69/month for Restaurants Plus or £29/month for Appointments Plus, both exclusive of VAT.
Stripe Billing for subscriptions costs 0.7% of billing volume pay-as-you-go. Annual contract tiers start at £450/month covering up to £70k/month.
Other Fees to Watch
Stripe Instant Payouts cost 1% (min £0.40, max £9,999 per payout, within 30 minutes, 24/7). Square Instant Transfer costs 1.95% (within minutes, up to £3,500 per 24-hour period, £750 daily cap for new sellers).
Square’s standard payout can reach you as soon as the next day at no cost, against Stripe’s default of three business days. If you’re a new business paying suppliers out of this week’s takings, those extra days decide whether the bill is paid from sales or from savings.
Stripe’s FX conversion adds 2% on top of the base rate. Square’s non-UK card surcharge of 1.5% is separate from the base transaction rate. Both are on the pricing pages, but neither appears in the headline rate, so it’s easy to budget on the wrong number.
Fee Verdict: Who Costs Less
Online: on UK cards Square costs less on orders above £50 (1.4% + 25p against Stripe’s 1.5% + 20p), and Stripe costs less below it.
In person on UK cards, Square’s 1.75% is the only published rate of the two, because Stripe’s Terminal page lists no UK-card figure. On cards from elsewhere in Europe, Stripe Terminal costs less (1.4% + 10p against Square’s 3.25%).
If you’re selling in person to UK customers, Square’s flat rate is the right answer. Don’t overthink it.
Stripe vs Square Payment Methods and Checkout Options
Cards, Wallets and Alternative Payment Methods
If your online customers want to pay by something other than a card or a phone wallet, Stripe is far better equipped. We compared both providers’ published payment method listings in October 2026, and the gap is wide.
Stripe’s Payment Element supports over 100 methods by territory: cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, BACS Direct Debit, Klarna, Afterpay, and local payment methods across European and international markets.
You get all of this through one API integration, with methods shown based on the buyer’s location and browser. Square supports cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Clearpay at 6% + 30p.
If your customers never ask to pay by Klarna or Bacs Direct Debit, you won’t miss anything Square leaves out. If they do, Stripe is the one that can take the payment.
Checkout Experience
Stripe’s Payment Element is fully embeddable via API: you control every pixel of the checkout UI if your developer wants to. Square provides a hosted checkout page and developer tools you can drop into your own app.
Both let customers pay without being sent to another website first. The difference is how much of that payment form you can change, and with Stripe the answer is all of it.
If you’re using Square’s hosted checkout, your brand experience ends where Square’s template begins. For most small shops that’s a fair trade, and it only becomes a real cost if you’ve invested in making your site look and feel distinctive.
Methods Verdict
Stripe wins on payment method breadth and checkout flexibility. Of these two, only Stripe takes Klarna, Bacs Direct Debit and local European payment methods.
Square covers cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Clearpay without your touching an API, which is enough for a business whose customers pay by card or phone.
Stripe vs Square Hardware, POS and In-Person Payments
Card Readers and Terminals
Square sells the card reader you can set up yourself. We checked the Square Reader (2nd gen) at £19 + VAT on the Square UK hardware page, and it runs with Square’s free Point of Sale app: no developer, no API calls.
The Square Terminal (£149 + VAT) is a standalone countertop device. The Square Register 2nd gen (£699 + VAT) is a full-screen POS setup. All hardware is bought outright, no leasing contract.
Stripe Terminal is aimed at a different buyer: a business with a developer building its own till. The BBPOS WisePad 3 costs £49 exc. VAT; the Reader S700 and S710 are £229 exc. VAT.
Before any Stripe Terminal reader takes its first payment, your developer has to write code that connects it to your Stripe account, registers it and creates each payment. Without a developer you can’t set it up yourself, which is why the two readers aren’t really competing for the same customer.
POS Software and Hardware Add-ons
For cafés, restaurants and shops, Square’s till software settles it, because Stripe has nothing to set against it. We read Square’s listing for Restaurants Plus at £69/month: table management, coursing, floor plan layouts and staff permissions, with no developer required.
Square Appointments Free covers booking pages, deposit collection, and client reminders for service businesses at no monthly fee beyond the 1.75% transaction rate.
Stripe has no till app of its own, so if you want Stripe behind the counter, your developer builds one. That’s a consequence of what Stripe was designed to do, and it settles the question: if you need a ready-made till, Square is the one of these two that gives you one.
In-Person Verdict
Square wins for in-person.
For any business that wants to take card payments without writing code, Square is the quicker start and the more complete package: a cheaper reader, a free till app and next-day payouts. Stripe Terminal can cost less per transaction on larger baskets, but only once a developer has built the till around it.
Stripe Terminal is the right choice only if you’re building a custom POS on Stripe’s infrastructure with a developer who can maintain it.
Stripe vs Square Online Payments and Integrations
Hosted Checkout, Payment Links and APIs
If you’re building a subscription product, marketplace, or any checkout requiring custom logic, Stripe is the platform to choose, and on the two providers’ published features we don’t regard it as a close call.
Stripe Billing handles subscriptions: trials, proration, dunning, metered billing, and invoice generation, at 0.7% of billing volume pay-as-you-go.
Stripe Connect handles marketplace payments where a portion goes to a third-party seller. Stripe Radar applies machine-learning fraud detection with customisable rules. Square can’t replicate any of these natively.
Stripe also offers hosted Payment Links and a no-code checkout option if you don’t want to build a custom flow. They work, but they do little that Square’s online checkout can’t; Stripe’s advantage shows once you build on its API.
Platform Integrations
For accounting, Square has a native Sage Accounting connection (Sage hosts a dedicated Square integration page), an official Xero integration, and QuickBooks connectivity via Amaka or Link My Books.
If your accountant uses Sage and you’re switching to Stripe, you’re relying on a third-party connector rather than a native one, which is an extra reconciliation step every month if you run management accounts.
For e-commerce, Stripe integrates natively with WooCommerce and expanded its BigCommerce integration globally in January 2026. Square is confirmed for WooCommerce and Wix via the 2026 partner ecosystem.
Online Verdict
Stripe is the right call for online-first and developer-led payment flows. Square covers online sales adequately if you don’t need subscriptions, marketplace payouts, or custom checkout logic.
The gap we found widens as a business grows, because each tool Square lacks, from subscriptions to marketplace payouts, is one more third-party service to add. If you’re planning to scale beyond a single store, pick the platform you won’t outgrow in 18 months.
Stripe vs Square Payouts, Contract Terms and Account Risk
Settlement Speed and Payout Schedule
How quickly your card takings reach the bank can matter as much as the rate, because it decides whether this week’s bills are paid from this week’s sales.
Square’s standard settlement is next business day at no cost, automatic and predictable. If you’re a Cardiff florist doing 30 transactions a day and paying your flower supplier every Friday, next-day payouts mean Thursday’s takings can be in the bank in time to pay that supplier.
Stripe’s default is three business days, with your first payout taking 7 calendar days after your first charge. If you’re new to Stripe and expecting funds quickly, that initial week can catch you off guard.
Stripe Instant Payouts are available at 1% (within 30 minutes, 24/7). Square Instant Transfer costs 1.95% (within minutes, up to £3,500 per 24-hour period). New Square sellers start at a £750 daily limit before it increases.
Contract Length and Exit Terms
Both Stripe and Square are pay-as-you-go with no contract and no minimum term. You can cancel either at any time with no exit fee.
There’s nothing to choose between them here: you can walk away from either whenever you like.
Reserves, Holds and Account Stability
Both providers can hold funds or close accounts if their automated risk systems flag your business. We reviewed Trustpilot complaints for both: sudden account closures and frozen funds during KYC or anti-fraud reviews appear in both profiles.
There is also a cost difference when a dispute does land. Stripe charges £20 for each dispute it receives, and another £20 if you answer one manually. You get the second fee back if you win and keep paying it if you lose, so a dispute you win costs £20 and one you lose costs £40. Square charges no dispute fee at all. For a business that sees regular chargebacks that gap adds up, and it belongs alongside the headline rates.
If your business has irregular transaction patterns, high refund rates, or operates in a category payment processors treat as elevated risk, you’re exposed to this on either platform.
We recommend keeping a separate business bank account so a payment hold doesn’t freeze your entire operation. That isn’t a reason to avoid either provider. It’s basic insurance when your takings pass through an automated system that can pause them without warning.
Stripe vs Square Customer Reviews and Reputation
Trustpilot and Independent Review Themes
We checked both providers’ Trustpilot pages in October 2026.
Stripe’s global score is 1.6/5 from around 17,500 reviews, with 52% one-star ratings. The dominant complaint themes: sudden account closures without explanation, payouts held back during risk reviews with slow resolution, and poor support responsiveness.
Square’s UK score is 3.9/5 from around 3,700 UK reviews. Main complaints: abrupt account terminations with vague justifications, slow replies from customer service, and the 1.75% in-person rate feeling expensive against specialist alternatives.
The Stripe complaints we read centre on automated risk decisions: an account flagged, then payouts held while a review runs. A straightforward small business may trip those checks less often than a high-volume one, but a Trustpilot score can’t tell you how much less.
But the pattern is real: if you’re ever flagged by Stripe’s risk system, getting resolution quickly is genuinely difficult. That is a risk worth weighing before you rely on Stripe as your only payment provider.
Support Channels and Response Times
Stripe offers phone support on higher-tier plans only. On the standard plan, you reach support by email or chat.
Square provides phone support during UK business hours on the free plan, with in-app chat also available. If you need a phone line when something goes wrong, Square is the safer choice.
Reputation Verdict
Square’s higher Trustpilot score counts in its favour, but don’t lean on it too hard: abrupt account terminations are among its main complaints as well, so the risk of a sudden stop exists on both platforms.
Stripe’s low score weighs heaviest if you aren’t technical. During an account review you’ll be answering Stripe’s questions and waiting on its support queue without a developer to help, and slow resolution is exactly what its complaints describe.
Stripe vs Square for Subscription Businesses and Marketplaces
If you’re building a SaaS product or any business with recurring revenue, choose Stripe: Square’s Subscriptions tool takes simple recurring plans, but lists none of the failed-payment retries, proration or revenue recognition a subscription business relies on.
Stripe Billing handles the full subscription lifecycle: trials, proration, dunning (automatic retry when a card payment fails), metered billing, and invoice generation. At 0.7% of billing volume pay-as-you-go, it adds a cost that rises with your revenue instead of a fixed monthly bill, which suits a business that is still small.
Take a London B2B SaaS startup with 200 subscribers at £49/month: that’s £9,800 monthly recurring revenue. On Stripe Billing, that’s £68.60/month for the subscription layer. Square’s free Subscriptions tool would take those payments, but without Billing’s failed-payment retries or proration.
Square’s Subscriptions tool covers simple recurring plans, so replicating the rest of Stripe Billing there means stitching third-party tools together: one more supplier, one more fee and one more set of records to reconcile each month.
For marketplaces, Stripe Connect handles split payouts, compliance, and KYC for each connected seller account. If you’re building a platform where sellers list products and you take a cut, Connect is the standard infrastructure choice.
Square has nothing that does what Connect does. If your business takes a cut of other sellers’ sales, that rules Square out and leaves Stripe as the choice between these two.
Downsides of Stripe and Square
Downsides of Stripe
Stripe isn’t self-service for anyone without a developer, and that limit reaches more of the product than the easy sign-up suggests.
You can use Stripe’s hosted checkout, Payment Links, and the dashboard without writing code. But the moment you need Terminal integration, Billing configuration, or Connect setup, you’re in API territory. If you don’t have a developer on retainer, that’s a real blocker.
Customer support is the other genuine downside. On the standard plan you reach support by email or chat. If your account is flagged for risk review, the queue can take weeks to resolve.
Trustpilot reviews for Stripe consistently flag payouts held back during risk reviews, with limited support contact and slow resolution. That’s a real operational risk if your business can’t survive a cash freeze, so keep your float elsewhere.
Downsides of Square
Square’s flat 1.75% in-person rate is competitive at low volume and expensive at scale.
If you’re turning over £200,000 a year in-person, you’re paying £3,500 in transaction fees. At that volume, ask Square for a custom rate or look at alternatives.
Square’s subscriptions stop at simple recurring plans, and its marketplace and advanced API needs require third-party tools that Stripe handles natively. If you’re scaling beyond a single-location operation, you may run into the limits of Square’s own tools sooner than you expected.
Alternatives to Stripe and Square
SumUp
SumUp charges 1.69% flat for in-person transactions, cheaper than Square if you process domestically. The SumUp Solo Lite reader costs £25 plus VAT. No free POS ecosystem, no restaurant module, no booking system. Best for sole traders and market stallholders who need a card reader and nothing else.
GoCardless
GoCardless is built for recurring payments taken by bank pull rather than card. At 1% + 20p per payment, it’s cheaper than Stripe Billing for businesses whose customers are comfortable with direct debit mandates. If you bill B2B clients on monthly retainers, GoCardless is worth comparing directly.
Shopify Payments
If you’re already on Shopify and using Stripe as a third-party gateway, you’re paying Shopify’s third-party transaction fee on top of Stripe’s rates: 2% on the Basic plan, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. Shopify Payments (Stripe-powered) removes that surcharge. If your entire sales channel is Shopify, the switch is a straightforward cost reduction.
Final Verdict: Stripe or Square?
Square for in-person-first businesses that want to start selling without a developer: £19 reader, free POS app, next-day settlement, no code required. If you run a shop, restaurant, or service business, you can be live today.
Stripe for online-first or developer-led payment infrastructure. If you’re building a subscription product, marketplace, or any checkout requiring custom logic, Stripe is the correct platform. The API depth, subscription tooling, and marketplace infrastructure have no equivalent in Square.
Some businesses use both. A Bristol coffee roaster with an in-store espresso bar and a D2C subscription box might run Square in the shop and Stripe for the subscriptions. That’s a legitimate setup if the two use cases are genuinely distinct.
Running both means two dashboards, two fee structures and two sets of payouts to reconcile, which is a real cost. It’s still cheaper than forcing a subscription box through Square or building a café till on Stripe.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Stripe or Square better for small businesses?
Square, if you sell mainly in person; Stripe, if you sell mainly online. If you take payments face-to-face and want to start without technical setup, you’ll get more from Square. If you sell online and you need subscriptions, custom checkout logic, or marketplace infrastructure, Stripe is built for you. Where a business genuinely does both, we’d choose to run the two side by side rather than force one to do the other’s job.
Is Stripe cheaper than Square?
Online: on UK cards Square costs less above a £50 order (1.4% + 25p against Stripe’s 1.5% + 20p), and Stripe costs less below it. In person on UK cards, Square’s 1.75% is the only published rate of the two, because Stripe’s Terminal page lists no UK-card figure. Neither is cheap for international card volume: online, Stripe charges 2.5% + 20p for EEA cards and 3.15% + 20p for the rest of the world, against Square’s flat 2.5% + 25p for any non-UK card. In person, Stripe splits 1.4% + 10p (EEA) from 2.9% + 10p (non-EEA), while Square adds a 1.5% surcharge to its standard rate for any non-UK card, an effective 3.25%. (stripe.com/gb/pricing, squareup.com/gb/en/pricing, checked 30 October 2026.)
Can I use both Stripe and Square at the same time?
Yes, and for some businesses it’s the right answer. If you run Square in-person and Stripe for your online product, you can operate both simultaneously. You’ll manage two dashboards and two fee structures. But if each genuinely suits one part of your operation, the split is legitimate. Don’t force a single-provider answer.
Does Stripe have a card reader for in-person payments?
Yes. Stripe Terminal includes the BBPOS WisePad 3 at £49 exc. VAT and the Reader S700 and S710 at £229 exc. VAT. But it isn’t plug-and-play. You need a developer to initialise the reader via API. Without a developer, it won’t work the way the Square Reader does out of the box.
What is the Square Instant Transfer fee?
Square charges 1.95% for Instant Transfers, with funds in your bank account within minutes. The cap is £3,500 per 24-hour period. New sellers start at a £750 daily limit. If you need cash quickly and you’re new to Square, you may hit that cap before your transfer history increases it, so keep a buffer in your business account.
How we reviewed this comparison
How we compared. We compared each provider’s published pricing, terms and product documentation, then worked out settlement speed and the real cost once online and in-person fees stacked up.
Data sources. Every provider’s pricing page, terms, and product docs were checked directly against the live sites in October 2026.
FCA register cross-checked for regulatory status: Stripe FRN 900461 (per stripe.com/legal/spukl) and Squareup Europe FRN 900846. Current status confirmed on register.fca.org.uk.
Trustpilot scores reflect the live UK and global pages as at October 2026. See our editorial policy for how we weight reviewer themes against published evidence.
Affiliate disclosure. Square is an affiliate partner. If you sign up to Square through links on this page, BusinessExpert may earn a commission. Stripe is not an affiliate partner. We ranked Square first in the comparison table because it wins the in-person use case on the evidence.
Update cadence. We re-verify every provider on this page regularly. The date at the top of the page is our most recent full check.