Chargeback insurance and its alternatives side by side
| Stripe Chargeback Protection | Fraud guarantee services | Flat dispute plan (NoChargeback) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it does | Repays covered fraud disputes on Stripe Checkout payments | Approves or declines orders and repays fraud chargebacks on approved ones | Monitors your rate, triages warnings, submits evidence on every dispute |
| Price model | 0.4 percent of covered sales | Usually a percentage of each reviewed or approved order, set by contract | Flat from 49 USD a month |
| Disputes covered | Fraud disputes on covered Checkout payments | Fraud chargebacks on orders the service approved | Every reason code, fraud and non fraud |
| Friendly fraud and canceled subscription claims | Not the target | Usually excluded | Answered with evidence |
| Who loses the sale on a declined order | Nobody, it screens nothing | You may lose good customers the service declines | Nothing is declined, you decide |
| Best for | Checkout sellers with mostly stolen card fraud | High ticket stores that want to outsource fraud screening | Stripe stores with steady disputes of mixed reasons |
Terms vary by contract, so ask any insurer or guarantee vendor which reason codes, order types and countries are excluded.
Which disputes insurance leaves open
Insurance repays money when a stolen card order slips through. It does not argue your case, and it does not touch the disputes that come from real customers who forgot a charge, did not like the product, or canceled and were billed anyway. For a software or membership company that is most of the volume.
Those disputes are winnable when the evidence is right. A subscription sale needs the signup record, the terms accepted, login history and the cancellation timeline. A physical sale needs tracking and the delivery address match. The reply has to reach the processor before the due date or the money is gone. Missing the due date is the most common reason a winnable dispute is lost.
What insurance and a flat plan cost on 100,000 USD of sales
This is list price math with hypothetical numbers. Assume 100,000 USD of monthly card sales, 30 disputes a month and an average order of 100 USD.
| Approach | Monthly cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe Chargeback Protection at 0.4 percent | 400 USD | Covered fraud disputes repaid, no evidence work |
| A guarantee at 1 percent of reviewed sales (illustrative) | 1,000 USD | Fraud screening plus repaid fraud chargebacks, some orders declined |
| NoChargeback Growth billed yearly | 149 USD | Every dispute answered, ratio watched, nothing declined |
The 1 percent guarantee row is an illustration, not a vendor price, because guarantee services quote by contract. The point is the shape. Insurance cost rises with sales whether or not disputes arrive. A flat plan stays the same as sales double. The two can run together, since a flat plan does not repay losses and insurance does not file evidence.
How the alternative works on Stripe
NoChargeback connects to Stripe with a restricted key that reads charges, subscriptions, invoices and 3D Secure results and writes only to disputes. When a dispute opens, it builds the evidence pack for that reason code, drafts the rebuttal, and submits it 48 hours before the due date on Growth and higher. Early fraud warnings from Radar are triaged, so you see whether a refund costs less than the dispute that usually follows.
The ratio monitor tracks your dispute activity against Visa VAMP and Mastercard ECM levels and warns at levels you choose. It does not repay lost disputes, it is not insurance and it works with Stripe only. See Stripe dispute automation for the submission flow and Stripe dispute rate monitoring for the thresholds.
NoChargeback plans
| Plan | Monthly | Billed yearly, per month | Stripe accounts | Alerts a month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | 49 USD | 24 USD | 1 | 100 |
| Growth | 299 USD | 149 USD | 5 | 1,000 |
| Scale | 799 USD | 399 USD | 20 | 5,000 |
| Enterprise | 1,999 USD | 999 USD | 100 | 20,000 |
Full limits are on the pricing page.
What is a good alternative to chargeback insurance?
A flat priced dispute plan is the usual alternative. It answers every dispute with evidence before the due date and watches your dispute rate, for a fixed monthly fee instead of a percentage of sales. Insurance repays some fraud losses, so merchants often pair the two.
Does chargeback insurance cover friendly fraud?
Usually not. Most insurance and guarantee products repay stolen card fraud on covered or approved orders. Friendly fraud, "item not received" and canceled subscription claims are commonly excluded, so they need an evidence response. Read the exclusions in the contract before relying on a policy.
How much does chargeback insurance cost?
Stripe lists Chargeback Protection at 0.4 percent of covered Checkout sales. Guarantee services quote by contract, usually as a percentage of reviewed or approved orders. A flat dispute plan such as NoChargeback starts at 49 USD a month and does not change with sales volume.
Is chargeback protection the same as chargeback insurance?
Not always. Chargeback protection can mean insurance that repays fraud losses, alert services that stop disputes before they post, or software that answers disputes. Check what a vendor means by the term and whether it repays money, prevents disputes or fights them.
Can I use chargeback insurance and a dispute tool together?
Yes. Insurance covers fraud losses it accepts and a dispute tool answers the rest. Make sure only one party submits evidence on a given dispute, since Stripe accepts one submission per dispute and a second one could overwrite the first.