Mercury alternatives

When Mercury is not a good fit

Mercury is a fintech company offering online business banking aimed at startups and scaling companies, with free checking and savings accounts, business credit cards, treasury products, and accounting tools including its own Mercury Books software. Core banking has no monthly fee, and accounts can be opened online in about 10 minutes without visiting a branch. Banking services are provided through partner banks rather than Mercury itself, as Mercury is a fintech company, not a chartered bank.

It is a weaker choice for:

• Businesses that specifically need a traditional bank charter relationship rather than a fintech operating through partner banks
• Companies needing extensive in-person branch banking services
• Businesses outside the markets Mercury supports

Tool	Pricing	Free plan	Paid from	Open source	GitHub stars
Mercury	Freemium	Yes: checking and savings accounts have no monthly fee and no minimum balance	Not listed	No	None
Stripe	Pay as you go	No: pay per successful transaction, no monthly fee on the standard plan	2.9% + 30 cents per successful US card transaction	No	4.5k
Stripe Billing	Pay as you go	No dedicated free plan; the pay-as-you-go option has no monthly fee, only a percentage of billing volume	0.7% of billing volume on the pay-as-you-go option, or from $620 a month on fixed subscription plans	No	4.5k
Polar	Freemium	Yes: the Starter plan has no monthly fee, only per-transaction fees	$20 a month for the Pro plan	No	10.3k
Lago	Freemium	Yes: the open source edition is free to self-host	Custom pricing (Lago Premium, contact required)	Yes, AGPL-3.0 (open source edition)	10.7k
RevenueCat	Freemium	Yes: free up to $2,500 in monthly tracked revenue	1% of monthly tracked revenue beyond the free $2,500 threshold	No	None
Square	Freemium	Yes: Square Free plan with pay-as-you-go processing rates and no monthly fee	$49 a month per location for the Plus plan	No	None
Adyen	Pay as you go	No free plan; there are no setup or monthly fees, only per-transaction charges	$0.13 per transaction plus a payment-method-specific fee (for example Visa: $0.13 + interchange + 0.60%)	No	None
Paddle	Pay as you go	No monthly fee on the standard plan; you only pay per transaction	5% + 50 cents per transaction	No	None
Braintree	Pay as you go	No free tier, but no monthly or setup fees on the standard plan	2.89% + $0.29 per transaction (standard card rate)	No	None
Lemon Squeezy	Pay as you go	Yes: no monthly fee, free to start with no credit card required	5% + 50 cents per transaction, no monthly charge	No	None
Chargebee	Freemium	Yes: Flow plan is free up to $20,000 in monthly billing volume	0.80% of billing volume above $20,000 a month on the Flow plan	No	None
Gumroad	Pay as you go	Yes, no monthly fee; you only pay per-transaction fees	5% + (3.5% + $0.30) per transaction	No	None
PayPal	Pay as you go	No monthly fee for a standard business account; fees are per transaction	3.49% + $0.49 per transaction (domestic PayPal Checkout)	No	None
PPaystack	Pay as you go	No monthly fee; fees are charged per transaction	1.5% + ₦100 per transaction (Nigeria, local cards, capped at ₦2,000)	No	None
Wise	Pay as you go	No monthly account fee for personal accounts; fees apply per transfer	0.24% per transfer or conversion	No	None

Pricing facts come from each tool's official pricing page, with the checked date on the tool's own page.