Payments · August 31, 2026 · by Gaurav Singh Karki
Stripe vs Razorpay vs Adyen for SaaS Billing: A Developer's Honest Comparison
Which payment gateway should your SaaS use in 2026? Stripe, Razorpay, and Adyen compared on subscriptions, global coverage, webhooks, and developer experience — by someone who has integrated all three.
I've integrated Stripe, Razorpay, Adyen, and PayPal across client projects — and built two platforms where payments were the product: Zettable, a multi-gateway billing platform with recurring rebills, invoicing, refunds, and chargeback handling, and ExRouter, a routing engine that distributes checkouts across gateways to balance approval rates. This comparison comes from that work, not from pricing pages.
Stripe: the default for global SaaS
- Best-in-class API, docs, and testing tools — fastest to integrate correctly
- Stripe Billing handles subscriptions, proration, trials, and dunning out of the box
- Strong in the US, UK, EU, Australia, and most of the markets freelance SaaS founders sell into
- Weaknesses: cost at scale, account risk for high-risk niches, and limited coverage in some regions (notably India requires extra setup)
Razorpay: the right answer for India-first products
- UPI, netbanking, wallets, and EMI — the payment methods Indian customers actually use
- Subscriptions and payment links are solid; settlement and KYC flows are built for Indian businesses
- Weaknesses: international card acceptance and multi-currency are not its strength — pair it with Stripe if you sell globally
Adyen: enterprise-grade, single contract, global
- One integration covering cards, local payment methods, and POS across markets
- Interchange++ pricing is often cheaper than Stripe at real volume
- Powerful risk tooling (RevenueProtect) and fine-grained control over authorization
- Weaknesses: onboarding is slow, minimum invoice requirements, and the developer experience assumes a team, not a solo founder
The pattern nobody tells you about: don't marry one gateway
On ExRouter I route each checkout by country, currency, and product to whichever gateway approves that traffic best — approval rates differ several percentage points between gateways for identical cards. You don't need a routing engine on day one, but you should write your billing code behind your own interface so gateway #2 is an adapter, not a rewrite. That abstraction is exactly how Zettable supports Stripe, Adyen, and SolidGate behind one API.
Quick recommendation
- Global SaaS, small team: Stripe
- Indian customers, INR pricing: Razorpay (add Stripe for international)
- High volume, multiple markets, negotiating rates: Adyen
- High-risk or approval-sensitive: multiple gateways behind a routing layer
Need billing built or fixed?
Subscriptions, webhooks, dunning, migrations between gateways, or a full billing platform — this is my specialty. Tell me what you're building.
Building something like this?
I take on freelance projects worldwide — usually replying within a day.
Get in touchMore articles
How Much Does It Cost to Build a RAG Chatbot in 2026?
Real cost ranges for RAG chatbot development in 2026 — what drives the price, typical freelance rates, monthly running costs, and how to keep the budget under control.
Next.js + FastAPI RAG Architecture: What Actually Works in Production
A production-tested architecture for RAG chatbots using Next.js and FastAPI — ingestion, hybrid retrieval, streaming, evaluation, and deployment, from projects that shipped.
Multi-Tenant SaaS with Next.js and Prisma: Architecture Lessons from Production
How to structure a multi-tenant SaaS with Next.js and Prisma — tenancy models, data isolation, per-tenant branding, encrypted credentials, and the mistakes to avoid, from a shipped compliance platform.