Compare payment integrations
Learn about the different integration options for accepting payments.
Stripe provides a few different ways to accept online payments. While each integration method ultimately produces the same, secure, payment processing, they each offer different levels of complexity, flexibility, feature compatibility, and customization.
Integration descriptions
Payment Links are the simplest way to accept a payment using Stripe. You enter the payment details like product description and price in the Dashboard and Stripe generates a link, QR code, or button that you can put on your website or send in an email. When your buyer clicks the link, Stripe presents our hosted payment collection form.
Hosted Checkout allows you to direct your users from your website to a pre-configured payment collection form. It requires minimal coding and supports limited customization.
Embedded Checkout allows you to present Stripe’s pre-configured payment collection form directly in your website without redirecting to Stripe and also supports limited customization.
Custom flow integrations offer the most flexibility because you can pick and choose which Stripe Elements to include in the payment collection form, fully customize the look and feel, and use in your mobile app in addition to your website. This option also requires the most development effort on your side.
Direct API integrations are open-ended, but require a large development investment, as well as permission to pass PAN data to the Stripe API. You can develop a completely custom payment collection form and all other aspects of the payment lifecycle, invoking the Stripe APIs directly as needed. We’ve omitted this method from the comparisons on this page because it supports all generally available features and products (except for Stripe hosting), provided you write the code and demonstrate PCI compliance.
Basic comparison
The following table shows a high level comparison of Stripe’s online payment integration types, and the additional sections on this page compare the integrations relative to specific business use cases.
| PAYMENT LINKS | HOSTED CHECKOUT | EMBEDDED CHECKOUT | CUSTOM FLOW | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product | Payment Links + Checkout | Checkout | Checkout | PaymentIntents + Elements |
| Integration effort | ||||
| Hosting | Stripe-hosted page (optional custom domains) | Stripe-hosted page (optional custom domains) | Embed on your site | Embed on your site |
| UI customization | Limited customization1 | Limited customization1 | Limited customization1 | Extensive customization with Appearance API |
| Mobile support | Responsive web | Responsive web | Responsive web | Responsive web and mobile native |
| PAYMENT METHODS2 | ||||
| Dynamically display 40+ payment methods | ||||
| Manage payment methods in the Stripe Dashboard without coding | ||||
| Faster checkout with Link and more wallet payment methods such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Amazon Pay | 3 | 3 | ||
| External payment methods | ||||
1Limited customization provides 20 preset fonts, 3 preset border radius options, logo and background customization, and custom button color.
2For detailed support for each payment method, see Payment Method integration options.
3Wallet payment methods require registering your domain.
Payment Scenarios
Stripe supports many different payment scenarios. See how those are supported by each integration option.
1 Not supported on Dashboard created Payment Links.
2 Only available on IC+ pricing.
Features
| PAYMENT LINKS | HOSTED CHECKOUT | EMBEDDED CHECKOUT | CUSTOM FLOW | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Email receipts | ||||
| Post-purchase behavior | Hosted or redirect | Redirect | Hosted or redirect | Custom |
| Apply discounts with Coupons and Promotion Codes | 12 | |||
| Abandoned cart recovery | ||||
| Prefill customer data and payment methods | ||||
| Subscription up-sells | ||||
| Cross-sell related products | ||||
| Collect tax IDs | 1 | |||
| Collect phone numbers | 1 | |||
| Collect billing and shipping addresses | 1 |
1 Requires additional integration.
2 Available for Subscriptions & Invoices only.
Product Support
See how the various integration options work with other Stripe products.
| PAYMENT LINKS | HOSTED CHECKOUT | EMBEDDED CHECKOUT | CUSTOM FLOW | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Collect tax with Stripe Tax | 1 | |||
| Recurring payments with Stripe Billing | 2 | |||
| In-person payments with Terminal | 3 |
1 Requires integration with Stripe Tax API.
2 Requires integration with Subscriptions API.
3 Requires integration with Terminal.