# Stripe 143 Hacker News commenters recommended Stripe and 180 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 4 years (5 owners). **Verdict:** Recommended for fast signup, strong developer docs and an integrated payments API, though many warn of sudden account freezes or closures and fees that sting at scale. ## Why people recommend it - Fast, low-friction onboarding (6 comments): "Stripe has a Get started button. You click it, fill out a form, get your site approved in maybe a day, and start making money." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48420235)) "Stripe is the least amount of friction for accepting payments online until the merchant fees become painful at scale." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49811272)) "it's cool that they just let you sign up and process transactions but at some point they will look at your business" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48977384)) - Excellent developer experience and docs (5 comments): "Point me at an API better than Stripe's with lower fees and I'll be interested but so far I haven't seen anything like that." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49339941)) "Stripe came along and provided (1) a better dev experience, (2) better onboarding, and (3) simplified pricing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49632544)) "they could really learn from Stripe: when your users are engineers, clear docs aren't a nice-to-have" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47660433)) - Integrated abstraction over payment complexity (3 comments): "Stripe succeeds in offering an integrated solution, where convenience and simplicity outweigh price." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49319127)) "Stripe is in the business of providing a single abstraction over an enormous pit of complexity" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49368880)) "Stripe is offering a significantly larger product, especially to people running marketplaces." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47142835)) - Backward-compatible API versioning (2 comments): "each time they change it they add a stackable compatibility layer. So your decade old code will still work." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46239028)) "many of the warts in the API surface are there because they want to avoid changing things for fear of breaking someone else's business" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49325373)) ## What people warn about - Arbitrary account freezes and closures (6 comments): "Multiple businesses (including merchants in Hong Kong and other jurisdictions) report funds held for months or years with generic responses from support" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47122932)) "I applied to stripe recentlyish as an adult game project with excellent processing history and very low chargeback rate and got denied." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48125480)) "Just do a search on HN for complaints about Stripe and you will likely see dozens of distressed merchants who have been cut off" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47777792)) - Complex subscriptions and webhook events (4 comments): "Stripe's authorization-hold flow can help but it's clunky to explain to non-technical sellers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47272957)) "Stripe's approach, while mildly more convenient for clients, is a PITA to implement properly." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48086102)) "The subtle differences between subscriptions done through Stripe checkout and subscriptions set up yourself using Stripe elements are by turn infuriating and frustrating." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47831748)) - Disputes and fraud handling frustrate (3 comments): "no matter how much evidence I show, even emails with the user claiming they did it because of X, Y, Z" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48294144)) "The thing that gets me is that Stripe boasts about their machine learning radar rules etc etc, but somehow can't feed it actually valuable data." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48289391)) "They want to know your accounts, they will force you to link it so they can reach there and claw back money for disputes etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47028792)) - Fees and plans painful at scale (3 comments): "Stripe is the least amount of friction for accepting payments online until the merchant fees become painful at scale." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49811272)) "Stripe being slightly more expensive (but it's nearly a wash in my mix of currencies/accounts)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49319839)) "Stripe has also been criticised for forcing growing companies into enterprise plans the moment they hit certain growth numbers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48417094)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [PayPal](https://hackerapproved.com/p/paypal.md): 103 recommend - [Adyen](https://hackerapproved.com/p/adyen.md): 17 recommend - [Mollie](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mollie.md): 11 recommend - [Paddle](https://hackerapproved.com/p/paddle.md): 10 recommend - [Agree payment processor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/open-source-zero-webhooks-payment-processor.md): 8 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://stripe.com/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Stripe", https://hackerapproved.com/p/stripe/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).