Crypto Payment Gateway Fees Compared (2026)

Crypto payment gateway fees fall into two shapes. Most processors take a percentage of every payment: NOWPayments around 0.5% for same-coin payments, Coinbase Commerce and CoinGate around 1%, BitPay 1-2% plus 25c per transaction, and Cryptomus 0.4-2%. Settlematic takes no percentage at all — a flat subscription from $20/month. Percentage pricing is cheaper at low volume; flat pricing pulls ahead once you clear roughly $2,500 to $10,000 a month, depending on the rate you would otherwise pay.

We build Settlematic, so read this as an informed but interested comparison. Every competitor figure below is sourced to that competitor's own pricing page, with links, and last verified on 7 September 2026. Pricing changes — check the source before you commit.

What do the major gateways actually charge?

Here are the published headline rates, side by side. The important column is the last one: the headline percentage almost never includes network fees, payout fees, or fiat conversion margin, and those can double the all-in cost.

Two entries need a caveat. Coinbase Commerce's 1% is real and clean, but Coinbase began winding Commerce down for many merchants after 31 March 2026, migrating eligible US and Singapore entities to Coinbase Business — so if you are choosing today, confirm availability before you build. And Cryptomus advertises fees "from 0.4%" but its own page states new users are charged 2% per transaction, with lower rates negotiated by volume; treat 0.4% as a floor for large merchants, not an entry rate.

How does percentage pricing compare to a flat fee at real volumes?

This is the calculation that actually decides your bill, and it is simple arithmetic. A percentage fee is your monthly volume multiplied by the rate. A flat fee is the same number every month regardless of volume. Below is what each model costs at a spread of monthly volumes, using each provider's typical rate and Settlematic's Gateway plan at $49/month.

Read the columns top to bottom. Every percentage column grows with your revenue; the Settlematic column does not move. At $1,000/month the flat fee is the most expensive option on the row. By $25,000/month it is the cheapest by a wide margin, and by $100,000/month it is one to two orders of magnitude cheaper. Nothing clever is happening here — it is just what two different fee shapes do.

Where is the crossover point?

The crossover is the monthly volume at which a flat $49 fee equals what you would pay in percentage. Divide $49 by the rate and you get the breakeven. Below it, pay the percentage; above it, pay the flat fee.

If you are on Settlematic's $20/month Collect plan for invoicing, shift every breakeven down proportionally: $4,000/month against 0.5%, $2,000 against 1%, $1,000 against 2%. See pricing for current plan limits and what each tier includes.

What are the hidden costs the headline rate ignores?

The advertised percentage is the beginning of your cost, not the end. Three line items routinely change the answer, and none of them appear in a headline-rate comparison.

• Network (gas) fees. Every gateway charges these separately from the service fee. NOWPayments' own fee docs describe up to three network fees on a single non-custodial payment — the customer's deposit, an internal processing transfer, and the payout — so small transactions can carry a real cost well above 0.5%. On Settlematic there is no consolidation sweep to fund: the sender pays one on-chain fee, wallet-to-wallet.
• Fiat off-ramp margin. Converting received crypto into a bank currency is where cost hides. Coinbase's own rails add roughly 0.5-1.5% on top of the 1% when you settle to fiat, pushing the all-in rate toward 2-2.5%. Any processor that hands you fiat is charging an FX spread somewhere.
• Payout and settlement fees. CoinGate charges EUR 0.50 + 0.5% per crypto payout, or EUR 0.50 + 1.5% when a conversion is involved, plus 0.5% on SWIFT withdrawals with a EUR 50 minimum — on top of the 1% processing fee, and settled weekly by default. At a small average order those fixed charges can rival the transaction fee itself.

The honest all-in numbers therefore tend to run above the headline: BitPay 1-2% plus 25c plus buyer-side Network Cost, CoinGate closer to 1.5-2.5% once the payout layer lands, Coinbase 2-2.5% for systematic fiat settlement. NOWPayments' 0.5% stays lowest when you settle in the same coin and skip conversion. Settlematic's model removes the off-ramp and payout layers entirely by settling on-chain to a wallet you already control — the trade is that converting to fiat afterward is your job, not ours.

How does Settlematic's model differ structurally?

Settlematic charges a flat subscription and no percentage of volume: Collect from $20/month for invoicing and payment links, and Gateway on the Pro plan at $49/month for embedded checkout, subscriptions, and webhooks, with a 7-day Pro trial and a free sandbox. There is no per-transaction processor fee on top of the subscription.

The reason it can price this way is architectural. Each invoice or checkout deposit address is cryptographically bound at issuance to a settlement wallet you control. Payments settle directly to that wallet; Settlematic never holds keys, never takes a ledger balance, and cannot redirect or freeze funds. Because there is no custody and no consolidation, there is no float to fund, no payout step to charge for, and no percentage take-rate to justify. We watch the chain for detection and reconciliation and fire your webhook — that is the service the subscription pays for.

Assets are USDC, USDT, EURC, ETH, and BTC across Ethereum, Polygon, BSC, Solana, Tron, and Bitcoin. You bill in USD, EUR, or GBP and the client pays crypto quoted at send-time. For a deeper look at architecture and trade-offs, see the best crypto payment gateway guide and our full pricing page.

Where is a percentage processor the better choice?

Flat pricing is not universally better, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. A percentage gateway wins in these cases:

• Low volume. Below the crossover — roughly $2,500-$10,000/month depending on the rate — a percentage fee costs less than a flat subscription. If you process a few thousand dollars a month, NOWPayments at 0.5% or Coinbase Commerce at 1% is genuinely cheaper.
• You need fiat in a bank account automatically. BitPay and CoinGate convert and deposit to your bank; Settlematic settles stablecoins to your wallet and leaves the off-ramp to you. If your finance team will not hold USDC, that operational gap outweighs the fee math.
• You need broad coin coverage. NOWPayments supports 300+ assets and BitPay ~15; if customers pay in Dogecoin or XRP, Settlematic's stablecoin-plus-Bitcoin focus will not serve them.
• You need built-in refunds and dispute handling. Custodial processors have documented refund machinery; non-custodial settlement is final, and refunds are a manual outbound payment.

We make the flat-fee case in full, including exactly who benefits and when percentage pricing genuinely wins, in the no-percentage-fee explainer.

The bottom line

If you process under a few thousand dollars a month and want fiat in your bank automatically, a low-percentage processor like NOWPayments or a fiat-settling one like CoinGate or BitPay is the pragmatic choice. If you process five figures or more and are comfortable settling stablecoins to your own wallet, a flat fee with no percentage of volume saves you real money every month it grows — and removes the custody, payout, and off-ramp layers entirely.

Run your own numbers against your real monthly volume, then test it: try the free sandbox with no card required and compare the settlement experience, or see current plans on the pricing page. Competitor figures sourced from each provider's published pricing pages, verified 7 September 2026; rates change, so confirm before you commit. Named products are trademarks of their respective owners; Settlematic is not affiliated with them.