---
title: "Stripe is winning the SaaS infrastructure war."
date: 2025-09-10
url: https://remiam.co.uk/notes/stripe-is-winning-saas-infra
tags: [Stripe, Payments, SaaS]
read_time_minutes: 10
description: "Why Stripe is winning the SaaS payments / billing / tax stack in 2025 — comparisons with Paddle, LemonSqueezy, GoCardless and PayPal, with code and a decision matrix."
---

# Stripe is winning the SaaS infrastructure war.

*Published 2025-09-10 · 10 min read · by Liam (Remiam)*

We've shipped on every payment provider that matters. Stripe keeps quietly taking territory. Here is what they got right, the full comparison matrix, where Paddle / LemonSqueezy / GoCardless still earn their keep, and the decision tree we use on every new SaaS.

We've shipped Stripe, PayPal, Adyen, Braintree, GoCardless, Mollie, Paddle, and LemonSqueezy across client and own-built projects. The honest takeaway in 2025 is that Stripe has become the default for almost every SaaS we ship — and the alternatives are increasingly chosen for one specific reason at a time, not as full replacements.

## The payment-provider landscape, side by side

| Provider | Best for | Pricing | Notable weakness |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Stripe | Modern SaaS, marketplaces, anything dev-led | 1.5% + 20p (UK) | Less competitive on very high volumes |
| Paddle | Solo / small teams selling globally | ~5% all-in (MoR) | Higher fees in exchange for tax compliance |
| LemonSqueezy | Indie digital products, one-developer teams | 5% + 50¢ | Smaller feature set, niche |
| GoCardless | Direct debit / recurring B2B in EU + UK | 1% + 20p (UK) | No card support, slower settlements |
| Adyen | Enterprise, omni-channel commerce | Custom, volume-tiered | Heavy onboarding, not for small teams |
| Mollie | European SMBs, regional payment methods | ~1.8% + 25¢ (EU) | Smaller dev ecosystem |
| PayPal | Consumer commerce, established audiences | ~2.9% + 30p | Poor developer experience, brand drag |

*Payment provider comparison, mid-2025.*

## What Stripe got right

- Developer experience that nobody else has matched in a decade.
- Stripe Checkout — a hosted checkout that the team rarely needs to customise.
- Stripe Billing — subscription logic that handles every edge case we used to write ourselves.
- Stripe Tax — saved every SaaS we ship from a tax-compliance project of its own.
- Connect for marketplaces. Almost no real competitor for split payments at scale.
- Webhook design that's actually sensible — idempotency keys, retry policies, signature verification.
- Test mode that mirrors production exactly. We've shipped flows from local dev to live without integration surprises.

## A typical Stripe Checkout integration

What 'wire up a SaaS subscription' looks like in 2025. Three files. The Stripe-side magic is in the Price object you've set up in their dashboard.

```typescript server/api/checkout.post.ts
import Stripe from 'stripe'

const stripe = new Stripe(process.env.STRIPE_SECRET_KEY!)

export default defineEventHandler(async (event) => {
  const { priceId, customerEmail } = await readBody(event)

  const session = await stripe.checkout.sessions.create({
    mode: 'subscription',
    line_items: [{ price: priceId, quantity: 1 }],
    customer_email: customerEmail,
    success_url: `${process.env.SITE_URL}/success?session_id={CHECKOUT_SESSION_ID}`,
    cancel_url: `${process.env.SITE_URL}/pricing`,
    automatic_tax: { enabled: true },           // Stripe Tax does the rest
    billing_address_collection: 'required'
  })

  return { url: session.url }
})
```

## Where Paddle still wins

- Merchant-of-record model. They handle VAT, sales tax, the whole compliance surface.
- Best for small teams who want to ship a global SaaS and not think about cross-border tax.
- Pricing model is simpler at small volumes.
- Localised checkout copy and currency handled by default.

## Where LemonSqueezy still wins

- Indie hackers shipping digital products with one developer and zero finance team.
- Faster onboarding than Stripe for very small accounts.
- Built-in affiliate tooling that you'd otherwise wire up yourself.
- MoR-style — fees are higher, but the compliance burden is much smaller.

## Where GoCardless still wins

- B2B recurring billing in the UK and EU. Direct Debit is dramatically cheaper than card.
- Subscription products with large monthly recurring values — the per-card-charge fee on Stripe stops being acceptable above £200 / month.
- Industries (utilities, gym memberships, education) where Direct Debit is the cultural default.

> Stripe is winning because they got the boring parts right ten years before anyone else cared. Tax, invoices, webhooks, refunds, dispute handling — none of it is glamorous. All of it is load-bearing. Most competitors still treat one or two of these as 'phase two'.

## What we do

- Default to Stripe + Stripe Tax for any SaaS with a real team behind it.
- Paddle for solo founders shipping internationally without a finance setup.
- LemonSqueezy for one-off digital products or very small subscription products.
- GoCardless for B2B subscriptions with monthly values where card fees materially hurt margins.
- Avoid PayPal as a primary checkout. Offer it as a secondary if the audience demands it.

Stripe will keep winning. The interesting question for the next three years is whether anyone can build a true challenger that doesn't lose to Stripe's developer experience the moment a team has more than one engineer.

## References

1. [Stripe — official site](https://stripe.com)
2. [Paddle — official site](https://www.paddle.com)
3. [LemonSqueezy — official site](https://www.lemonsqueezy.com)
4. [GoCardless — official site](https://gocardless.com)