Razorpay vs Stripe vs PayU vs Cashfree 2026: Real MDR Math

All four gateways charge about the same on domestic cards: Razorpay 2%, PayU 2%, Stripe 2%, Cashfree 1.95% on its current offer, plus 18% GST on the fee. The real differences in October 2026 are elsewhere. Stripe is invite-only in India and accepts cards only, with no UPI, net banking or wallets for India-based accounts. Cashfree settles T+1 while Razorpay and PayU document T+2 as standard. And from 15 October 2026, UPI merchant payments above Rs 2,000 carry a 0.4% MDR capped at Rs 300, which changes the maths for every high-ticket business.

I'm Ashish Sharma, founder of Codingclave in Lucknow. We have shipped 200+ projects since 2017 and most of the ecommerce and SaaS builds among them carried at least one of these four gateways. Every fee below is from the gateway's own pricing page or documentation, read in the first week of October 2026.

Which payment gateway should you pick? The short answer

Your business	Pick	Why, in one line
D2C ecommerce, Indian customers	Razorpay or Cashfree	Same 2% band; Cashfree is cheaper by 0.05% and settles a day earlier, Razorpay has more plugins
SaaS billing Indian customers in rupees	Razorpay	UPI Autopay, card mandates and Subscriptions in one API
SaaS billing customers abroad in USD or EUR	Stripe	135+ presentment currencies, Billing, Tax, Connect
Marketplace with vendor payouts	Cashfree	Easy Split plus a payouts stack; Razorpay Route at 0.1% plus platform fees is the alternative
High-ticket D2C where EMI lifts conversion	PayU or Cashfree	PayU prices EMI at 3%, Cashfree at 2.2% for credit card EMI
Tier-2 and tier-3 consumers paying by UPI	PhonePe PG or Razorpay	PhonePe lists 1.99% flat and owns the app most of your buyers already use
Government, university, exam fees	CCAvenue or BillDesk	Built for audit-heavy collections

If you only read one more section, read the fee table below and then the UPI MDR section. Together they decide roughly 95% of the choice.

What do Razorpay, Stripe, PayU and Cashfree charge in October 2026?

Every figure here is from the gateway's own pricing page or documentation, fetched in the first week of October 2026. "Rack rate" means what you get without negotiating. Razorpay's pricing page says custom pricing is available above Rs 5 lakh a month; PayU and Cashfree say the same without naming a threshold.

Fee line	Razorpay	Stripe (India account)	PayU	Cashfree
Domestic Visa and Mastercard credit	2%	2%	2%	1.95% (offer)
Domestic debit cards	2%	0.4%, capped at Rs 200	2%	1.95% (offer)
Amex and Diners (domestic)	2%	Amex supported with restrictions; Diners not listed	3%	Excluded from offer; quoted
Corporate or business cards	2.15%	2%	2%	1.95% (offer)
UPI	"Zero MDR, 2% platform fee applies"	Not available to India-based accounts	"Pricing varies by business type and volume"	"As per applicable law"
Net banking	2%	Not available	2%	1.95% (offer)
Wallets	2%	Not available	2%	1.95% (offer)
Pay Later / BNPL	2%	Not available	2%	2.20% to 2.50%
Credit card EMI	2%	Not supported	3%	2.2%
Debit card EMI	2%	Not supported	3%	1.5%
Cardless EMI	2%	Not supported	3%	+1.90%
International Visa and Mastercard	Up to 3%	3% (3.5% Amex; 4.3% when presented in non-INR)	3%	2.99% (Amex 2.95%)
Currency conversion	Not listed	+2%	Not listed	Not listed
International bank transfer	1%	Not offered	Not listed	Not listed
Setup fee and AMC	Rs 0	Rs 0	Rs 0	Rs 0
Refund processing	Rs 0; instant refund Rs 7.99 to Rs 14.99	Fee not returned on refund	Not listed	Not listed
Dispute or chargeback	Not published	Rs 1,000 per dispute received and per dispute countered	Not published	Not published
GST on fees	18%	18%	18%	18%

Sources: Razorpay pricing page and Razorpay Docs (settlements, instant settlements, Route, cardless EMI, international payments); Stripe India pricing page, Stripe Docs (payouts, accepting international payments from India) and the Stripe support article on supported payment methods, currencies and businesses for Stripe accounts in India; PayU pricing page; Cashfree payment gateway charges and instant settlements pages. All read on 2 to 5 October 2026.

Three things in that table decide more than the headline percentages.

First, Stripe's India column has "not available" against UPI, net banking and wallets. That is not a flow limitation, it is the product. Stripe's own support page says local payment methods are unavailable to India-based accounts, Google Pay and Apple Pay are unavailable to merchants and customers in India on Checkout and Elements, and EMI is not supported. Stripe's docs also say Stripe is invite-only in India with "a focus on international expansion". If 60% of your revenue arrives by UPI, Stripe cannot be your Indian gateway, however much you like the API.

Second, Cashfree's 1.95% is labelled as a festive offer running to 31 March 2027 for merchants up to Rs 20 lakh in sales, with Amex and Diners excluded. Treat it as the rate you will get while you are small, not a permanent list price.

Third, UPI pricing is deliberately vague at every Indian gateway because of what happens on 15 October 2026.

How does the 0.4% UPI MDR change the maths from 15 October 2026?

UPI was free for merchants from January 2020. That ends this month, and it matters because UPI carried 24.07 billion transactions worth Rs 29.37 lakh crore in September 2026 alone, per NPCI data reported by The New Indian Express on 1 October 2026 and Outlook Money on 2 October 2026.

The sequence, with the source for each step:

• August 2026: the Lok Sabha passed an amendment to the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007 authorising the government to permit charges on UPI (Moneycontrol, 6 August 2026); the amended Act received the President's assent (The Hindu, 18 August 2026).
• 14 September 2026: the government notified that banks and payment system providers may not impose charges on UPI transactions up to Rs 2,000 or on RuPay debit card payments (Live Law, 14 September 2026; The Hindu, 15 September 2026).
• 15 September 2026: NPCI set a 0.4% MDR on person-to-merchant UPI above Rs 2,000, capped at Rs 300, so the cap bites at Rs 75,000 and above (The Times of India and Business Today, 15 September 2026). Railway, fuel, insurance, telecom and utility payments above Rs 2,000 pay a flat Rs 5 instead (India Today and News18, 15 September 2026). NDTV Profit reported on 16 September that the government ruled out a review.
• 25 September 2026: the Finance Minister said the MDR is not a tax, cess or surcharge, will not be passed to consumers, and will be shared between banks, payment gateways and payment apps (Business Standard and The Economic Times, 25 September 2026).
• 28 September 2026: the Supreme Court refused to stay the levy and issued notice to the Centre, RBI and NPCI asking them to explain the decision (The Indian Express, The Hindu and Live Law, 28 September 2026).
• 15 October 2026: effective date.

What it costs per order, before GST and before any gateway margin:

UPI order value	Category	MDR
Rs 1,999	Any merchant	Rs 0
Rs 2,500	Retail, services, SaaS	Rs 10
Rs 5,000	Retail, services, SaaS	Rs 20
Rs 20,000	Retail, services, SaaS	Rs 80
Rs 75,000	Retail, services, SaaS	Rs 300 (cap reached)
Rs 2,00,000	B2B invoice	Rs 300
Rs 3,000	Fuel, rail, insurance, telecom, utility	Rs 5

Two consequences for anyone choosing a gateway this month.

UPI is still the cheapest rail by a wide margin. At 0.4% it is one fifth the cost of a 2% card transaction, and under Rs 2,000 it is still free. The old rule "push customers to UPI" holds; the new rule is "watch your average order value".

Nobody has published the pass-through yet. As of 5 October 2026, Razorpay's pricing page still reads "Zero MDR, 2% platform fee applies" for UPI, PayU says UPI pricing "varies by business type and volume", and Cashfree says UPI is charged "as per applicable law". Payment firms are lobbying for a bigger share of the 0.4% ahead of the rollout (India Business Trade, 2 October 2026), and ET BFSI published a breakdown of how the fee is expected to flow between banks and fintechs on 5 October 2026. Expect a pricing addendum email from your gateway in the next few weeks, and expect the 0.4% to arrive as a separate line item rather than being absorbed into the platform fee. Build your reconciliation so fees are reported per payment method from day one; otherwise you will not see this change land.

The early casualties are high-ticket, low-margin B2B sellers. Pneucons, an industrial marketplace, told Livemint on 4 October 2026 that it is disabling UPI on orders from 10 October; its co-founder said the MDR would eat 94% of its margin. If your average order is Rs 50,000 and your margin is 3%, a Rs 200 UPI fee is real money, and net banking or virtual account collections (Razorpay Smart Collect at 1% or Rs 10, whichever is lower; Cashfree virtual accounts at Rs 20 flat) suddenly look better than UPI for invoices.

What does Rs 10 lakh a month actually cost on each gateway?

Take a D2C brand doing Rs 10 lakh a month at a Rs 2,500 average order, so 400 orders, with a payment mix we see often on Indian storefronts: 60% UPI, 30% cards, 10% net banking and wallets. Rack rates, 18% GST included, UPI MDR shown separately because the gateways have not published their pass-through.

Gateway	Platform fee on Rs 10L	GST at 18%	Total before UPI MDR	UPI MDR at cost (0.4% on Rs 6L, all orders above Rs 2,000)
Cashfree at 1.95%	Rs 19,500	Rs 3,510	Rs 23,010	+ Rs 2,400
PhonePe PG at 1.99%	Rs 19,900	Rs 3,582	Rs 23,482	+ Rs 2,400
Razorpay at 2%	Rs 20,000	Rs 3,600	Rs 23,600	+ Rs 2,400
PayU at 2%	Rs 20,000	Rs 3,600	Rs 23,600	+ Rs 2,400
Stripe at 2% on cards only	Rs 6,000 on the Rs 3L of card volume	Rs 1,080	Rs 7,080, but Rs 7L of UPI, net banking and wallet orders cannot be accepted at all	n/a

The spread between the three Indian gateways at rack rate is Rs 590 a month on Rs 10 lakh. That is not a reason to choose. Settlement speed, EMI pricing, payout tooling and the quality of the webhook stream are, and I cover each below. At Rs 50 lakh a month every one of them will negotiate, so get three quotes and let them compete. Drop the average order to Rs 800 and the UPI MDR column goes to zero at every gateway, because nothing crosses Rs 2,000. The MDR punishes ticket size, not volume.

Razorpay: the default, and where it is not

Razorpay's pricing page in October 2026 is the simplest of the four: 2% on every domestic method, 2.15% on corporate cards, up to 3% on international cards, 1% on international bank transfers, no setup fee, no AMC, no refund fee, custom pricing above Rs 5 lakh a month. Standard Checkout is available in India, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States according to its integration docs, and it has maintained plugins for WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento and WordPress.

Where it earns its reputation:

• The widest documentation and plugin coverage of the four, which is why most agencies, including us, reach for it first on a new ecommerce build. Scope and prices are on our Razorpay integration page.
• Subscriptions with UPI Autopay, card mandates and e-mandates behind one API. If you are building recurring billing for Indian customers, read our UPI Autopay build guide before you pick the mandate type.
• Route for marketplaces, listed at 0.1% plus platform fees on the pricing page while the Route docs still say 0.25% per transfer, so confirm the rate in your agreement. Unlimited linked accounts, refunds to linked accounts and on-hold or scheduled vendor settlement.
• Smart Collect virtual accounts for B2B at 1% or Rs 10 per transaction, whichever is lower, which after 15 October is a cheaper way to collect a Rs 50,000 invoice than UPI.
• Cardless EMI through ICICI, HDFC, IDFC First, Kotak, axio, Fibe, ZestMoney, ShopSe and Snapmint, with minimum tickets from Rs 900 (axio) to Rs 7,000 (ICICI), per Razorpay Docs.

Where it is weaker:

• Settlement. Razorpay's settlements documentation still lists T+2 working days as the standard cycle, while its pricing page advertises "T+1 or instant". In practice you get T+2 on activation and ask for T+1. Instant settlement is on-demand, from Rs 100 up to Rs 5 crore, for a fee the docs describe only as "small" and show at the time of settlement.
• Instant refunds are not supported on EMI, cardless EMI or Pay Later.
• RazorpayX payouts are a separate subscription at Rs 1,499, Rs 4,199 or Rs 9,799 a month plus per-payout charges, so vendor disbursal costs more to set up than on Cashfree.
• Reviews are mixed: Capterra shows Razorpay at 3.7 out of 5 from 121 reviews against Stripe at 4.6 from 3,384. The common complaints we hear from clients are onboarding holds and support turnaround, not the API.

Stripe: the global tool, not an Indian gateway

The single most important fact on this page: Stripe's documentation says Stripe is available by invite only in India, supporting "a select number of businesses, with a focus on international expansion". Stripe's support page for India-based accounts lists Visa, Mastercard and Amex only, says local payment methods are unavailable, says Google Pay and Apple Pay are unavailable to merchants and customers in India on Checkout and Elements, and says EMI is not supported. Transactions initiated from the Stripe dashboard are also not allowed for India-based accounts.

So the question is never "Razorpay or Stripe for India". It is "do I need Stripe in addition, for revenue from abroad". If yes, here is what you are signing up for, from Stripe's India pricing page and its India exports documentation:

• 2% on India-issued Visa and Mastercard, with debit cards capped at 0.4% and Rs 200.
• 3% on international Visa and Mastercard, 3.5% on international Amex, 4.3% when you present in a currency other than INR, plus 2% if conversion is needed.
• Rs 1,000 per dispute received and Rs 1,000 more if you counter it manually.
• Billing at 0.7% of volume, Connect from 0.25%.
• Payouts are automatic and daily, 2 business days after a domestic charge and 5 after an international one, always to an Indian bank account in INR.
• Compliance is on you: register as a company, LLP or sole proprietorship, opt in to exports, pick one RBI transaction purpose code per account (P0802 or P0807 cover most SaaS and services firms), provide an Importer Exporter Code if you ship goods or accept international Amex, and pass the customer's name, billing address and a service description on every international charge or it fails. 3D Secure is mandatory on international cards. Standard Chartered emails a payment advice the day each export payout lands, which your CA will want for FIRC purposes.

What Stripe does better than anything Indian: 135+ presentment currencies, Stripe Tax for foreign VAT and sales tax, Connect for paying out to vendors outside India, and a developer experience that Capterra reviewers rate 4.6 out of 5. For a SaaS company billing in USD it is still the right answer, which is why the pairing of Razorpay for India plus Stripe for the rest of the world is what we recommend most often. The trade-offs are covered in detail in our SaaS billing guide for Indian founders, and the integration scope is on our Stripe integration page.

PayU: the EMI and enterprise option

PayU's pricing page in October 2026 lists 2% on Visa, Mastercard, net banking, BNPL and wallets, 3% on Diners, Amex, EMI and international transactions, no setup or annual fees, T+2 standard settlement with same-day and priority settlement available by business category, and custom pricing for high-volume merchants. UPI merchant pricing "varies by business type and volume".

Where PayU wins:

• EMI depth. Credit card EMI, debit card EMI, cardless EMI and no-cost EMI are all first-class on the PayU checkout, and PayU's group owns LazyPay, which gives it a native Pay Later option. On a Rs 20,000 average order, EMI visibility at checkout is what moves conversion, and PayU is built around that.
• Settlement flexibility by category, which matters in travel or ticketing where same-day cash matters more than 0.05% of MDR.

Where it loses:

• EMI at 3% is the most expensive of the three Indian gateways. Cashfree lists 2.2% on credit card EMI and 1.5% on debit card EMI, Razorpay lists 2%. If EMI is 30% of your volume, that one percentage point is Rs 9,000 a month on Rs 30 lakh.
• Amex and Diners at 3% against Razorpay's 2%.
• Fewer maintained plugins and a less consistent developer experience than Razorpay or Cashfree. Expect to spend an extra day or two on webhook handling and a day on reconciliation. Scope and pricing are on our PayU integration page.

Cashfree: cheapest list price, fastest settlement, best payouts

Cashfree's payment gateway charges page in October 2026 lists 1.95% on domestic cards, net banking and wallets as a festive offer for merchants up to Rs 20 lakh in sales, with Amex and Diners excluded; 2.99% on international Visa and Mastercard and 2.95% on international Amex; 2.20% to 2.50% on Pay Later (Simpl, LazyPay); 2.2% on credit card EMI, 1.5% on debit card EMI and +1.90% on cardless EMI; Rs 20 flat on virtual bank account collections by IMPS, NEFT or RTGS; T+1 settlement by 8 PM IST as the default cycle while the offer runs; and instant settlement starting at 0.30%, available 24x7 including bank holidays, with the rate varying by settlement type and risk assessment.

Where Cashfree wins:

• Settlement. T+1 by 8 PM as the default beats the T+2 that Razorpay and PayU document, and a published starting rate of 0.30% for instant settlement is something you can at least plan around.
• Payouts and Easy Split. If you pay vendors, partners, drivers, teachers or sellers, Cashfree has the most complete stack of the four for collecting on one side and disbursing on the other, which is why it leads our multi-vendor marketplace cost guide. Cashfree does not publish payouts or Easy Split pricing; it is quoted per transfer by amount band and mode.
• EMI pricing. 2.2% on credit card EMI is the lowest list rate of the three.
• International at 2.99% is slightly under Razorpay's "up to 3%" and PayU's 3%, and it includes international Amex.

Where it loses:

• The 1.95% is an offer with a Rs 20 lakh ceiling and an end date of 31 March 2027. Ask what your rate becomes at Rs 25 lakh, and after March, before you build on it.
• Fewer ready-made plugins than Razorpay, so a WooCommerce or Shopify store will spend a little longer on setup. Custom builds do not notice.
• Brand recognition at checkout is lower than Razorpay's, which matters more than it should for first-time buyers on an unfamiliar store. Scope and pricing are on our Cashfree integration page.

How do settlement cycles compare?

Cash flow is the hidden fee. On Rs 30 lakh a month, a one-day difference in settlement is roughly Rs 1 lakh that is in the gateway's account instead of yours on any given day.

Gateway	Default cycle (published)	Faster option	Published fee for faster option
Cashfree	T+1 by 8 PM IST (default on the current offer)	Instant, 24x7 including bank holidays	From 0.30%
Razorpay	T+2 working days (docs); pricing page says "T+1 or instant"	On-demand instant, Rs 100 to Rs 5 crore	"Small fee", shown at settlement, not published
PayU	T+2	Same-day and priority settlement by business category	Nominal fee, not published
Stripe	2 business days domestic, 5 business days international, automatic daily payouts	None for India	n/a

None of the Indian gateways publish their first-settlement hold or risk-based holds; ask during onboarding, in writing, especially if you sell in travel, gaming, education or health.

Which gateway is best for international payments from India?

If foreign buyers pay your Indian store on a card, any Indian gateway handles it at roughly 3% (Cashfree 2.99%, PayU 3%, Razorpay up to 3%) and settles in rupees with most of the paperwork on their side; Razorpay's docs list 160+ foreign currencies and its pricing page a 1% international bank transfer option. If you are a software or services company invoicing customers abroad on subscription, Stripe is the only one of the four built for that: 3% on international Visa and Mastercard, 3.5% on Amex, 4.3% plus 2% conversion when you present in a foreign currency, INR payouts in 5 business days, and the compliance list above as the price.

Use-case verdicts

D2C ecommerce, Indian customers. Razorpay or Cashfree. The fee difference is Rs 500 a month per Rs 10 lakh. Choose Cashfree if same-day cash and vendor payouts matter, Razorpay if you are on Shopify or WooCommerce and want the plugin to just work. If you are starting from zero, our guide to starting an ecommerce business in India covers the gateway decision alongside the other launch costs.

SaaS, Indian customers. Razorpay. UPI Autopay mandates, card mandates and Subscriptions behind one webhook stream. Watch the Rs 2,000 line from 15 October: a Rs 1,999 monthly plan pays no UPI MDR, a Rs 2,499 plan pays Rs 10 per charge.

SaaS, customers abroad. Stripe for the foreign revenue, Razorpay for Indian revenue, one invoicing layer above both. Do not try to make Stripe your Indian gateway; it cannot take UPI.

Marketplace. Cashfree, with Easy Split for commission splits at capture and payouts for everything else. Razorpay Route at 0.1% plus platform fees is a reasonable second choice if your team already knows Razorpay. Budget and architecture are in our marketplace development cost guide.

High-ticket D2C (Rs 15,000+ orders). EMI visibility at checkout decides conversion. Compare PayU at 3% EMI against Cashfree at 2.2% and Razorpay at 2% on your actual EMI share before assuming PayU; PayU still wins when its bank coverage or no-cost EMI program fits your catalogue.

B2B invoicing. From 15 October, a Rs 50,000 UPI invoice costs Rs 200 in MDR. Razorpay Smart Collect at 1% or Rs 10, whichever is lower, costs Rs 10. Cashfree virtual accounts cost Rs 20 flat. Move invoice collection to virtual accounts and keep UPI for small tickets.

Tier-2 and tier-3 consumers. PhonePe Payment Gateway at a published 1.99% flat with no setup or annual fee is worth testing as a second gateway, because the buyer already has the app open. See our PhonePe integration page.

Should you run two gateways?

Past about Rs 10 lakh a month, yes, for failure rather than fees. UPI PSP outages, one bank's net banking down on salary day, a card BIN that one acquiring bank declines and another accepts: these cost more in a month than the fee spread does in a year. Route 80% of traffic to the primary, keep the secondary warm with real transactions, and switch methods, not whole checkouts, when a rail degrades. The pairs that work: Razorpay plus Cashfree for Indian ecommerce, Razorpay plus Stripe for SaaS with foreign customers, Cashfree plus PayU for high-ticket retail.

What we see in projects

Three patterns from the payment integrations we have shipped from Lucknow since 2017.

The gateway is rarely the problem; the integration is. Most "payment failed but money debited" tickets trace back to a webhook that was never verified, a signature check that was skipped in a hurry, or a capture that was left on manual. Every integration we ship verifies the webhook signature, stores the raw event before acting on it, and reconciles settlements against orders daily. That is the same work on all four gateways.

Subscriptions and mandates do not migrate. Card tokens and UPI mandates belong to the gateway that created them. When a client moves gateways, active subscriptions stay on the old one until renewal and are re-created on the new one, which is why our migrations run both gateways in parallel for about two weeks and start at Rs 65,000.

Reconciliation by method is about to matter more than it ever has. Until now UPI fees were a single zero, so nobody looked. From 15 October the per-method fee report is how you will see the MDR land, how you will check the gateway's pass-through against the 0.4% and Rs 300 cap, and how your accountant will treat the GST on it. If your current reporting cannot split fees by UPI, cards and net banking, fix that before the gateway's pricing email arrives.

How long does integration take and what does it cost?

Our prices are the same across Razorpay, PayU and Cashfree, and are listed on each integration page:

Scope	Timeline	Price
Standard checkout on one platform, webhooks, refunds, testing on live UPI, cards and net banking	5 to 7 working days	From Rs 4,999
Pro: custom branded checkout, subscriptions or mandates, GST invoicing, full webhook handling, 90 days of support	10 to 14 days	Rs 25,000 to Rs 50,000
Enterprise: Razorpay Route, Cashfree Easy Split and payouts, PayU EMI across banks, Smart Collect, multi-gateway routing	21 to 35 days	Quoted, typically Rs 75,000 to Rs 2.5 lakh
Gateway migration with two-week parallel run	14 to 21 days	From Rs 65,000
Stripe for international billing, with export compliance fields and Billing	7 to 21 days	From $299 (about Rs 25,000)

Gateway account activation is on the gateway's clock, usually 2 to 3 working days after KYC documents (PAN, GST, bank proof, business proof) are submitted. We help with that too.

Need help choosing?

Tell us your business model, monthly volume and rough payment mix, and we will tell you which gateway, or which two, and what the integration costs, within 24 hours. Codingclave has shipped 200+ projects since 2017, is rated 4.9 stars on Google from 76 reviews, and is a Top Rated agency on Upwork.

Get a free 30-minute consultation or WhatsApp Ashish directly.