Braintree
Shares rank 10 of 11 payment processors by recommenders
Recommended for a better developer experience than Adyen and for being better than PayPal. Critics call it outdated, with little new development and weak support.
Recommended for a better developer experience than Adyen and for being better than PayPal. Critics call it outdated, with little new development and weak support.
15 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 10
- approval share
- 33%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Outdated, with little new development
“Braintree is antiquated. Sure it's not Chase payment tech, but it's closer to them than it is close to Adyen, Checkout and Stripe.”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “Stripe Clinches over $7B Deal to Buy AI Firm OpenRouter” “they didn't do anything with Braintree years ago and just let it rot”
Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “Stripe said to abandon $50B pursuit of PayPal” “Everything works but nothing new is being added.”
Comment from 16 Aug 2026 in “Stripe 2.9% vs. Adyen 0.6% vs. Braintree 2.59%: 2026 Fees” Errors can charge customers anyway
“the API returned a HTTP500 but charged the customer and created the recurring subscription anyway”
Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “Show HN: We built an open source, zero webhooks payment processor” “some processors will 500 while processing the payment (Braintree)”
Comment from 10 May 2026 in “Idempotency Is Easy Until the Second Request Is Different” Now part of PayPal, adding confusion
“It's why they bought Braintree and that added even more confusion.”
Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “Gov.uk goes Dutch on payments as it dumps Stripe” “Braintree is now essentially paypal, so that is off the list.”
Comment from 16 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: Stripe is asking for bank statements to check financial health” Missing features and weak support
“Braintree's catastrophically bad handling of 3D Secure (mandatory in the EU) and abysmally bad support.”
Comment from 16 Aug 2026 in “Stripe 2.9% vs. Adyen 0.6% vs. Braintree 2.59%: 2026 Fees” “it was just missing things that we were legally required to support”
Comment from 20 Apr 2026 in “Stripe's Payment APIs: the first 10 years (2020)”
Other payment processors people recommend
The four most recommended other payment processors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 11 payment processors, rankedWhat people said
20 of the 21 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“they didn't do anything with Braintree years ago and just let it rot”
“Braintree is antiquated. Sure it's not Chase payment tech, but it's closer to them than it is close to Adyen, Checkout and Stripe.”
“Everything works but nothing new is being added.”
“Braintree's catastrophically bad handling of 3D Secure (mandatory in the EU) and abysmally bad support.”
“got stuck on some old Braintree flow and ended up on what was essentially a sales call”
“Braintree was better than paypal but that wasnt saying much”
“they won't even onboard you if you don't have an established business grossing over 100k/yr”
“It's why they bought Braintree and that added even more confusion.”
“where this is very much not fine”
“some processors will 500 while processing the payment (Braintree)”
“Their Google Wallet integration is worse that Braintree's”
“it was just missing things that we were legally required to support”
“Why not just pay Stripe/Adyen/Braintree to smear the fees to 2.9% + $0.30?”
“Braintree is now essentially paypal, so that is off the list.”
“Braintree required me to do many rather bizarre things, pass additional data, and then rewrite the entire flow”
“the API returned a HTTP500 but charged the customer and created the recurring subscription anyway”
“the DX is indeed much better than e.g. Adyen, Braintree, etc.”
“Name "Braintree" is much worse than "Stripe"”
“something I would not recommend”
“I've already had multiple cases where bad-faith customers was awarded the full amount at pre-arbitration solely because of this rule.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.