October 5, 2026 · Disputed Team
Every chargeback vendor conversation gets to pricing eventually.
We rarely have to introduce the competing models, because most people who get to that stage already know all of them.
However, we haven't seen a public comparison of each of the common pricing models with the math worked out. Vendors publish their own pricing page and leave it there, so buyers end up comparing proposals built on different units of measurement.
The price ranges below come from proposals our team has seen in sales conversations, not from a published survey, so treat them as directional.
You pay nothing on losses. When the vendor wins a dispute, they take a cut of the recovered amount.
In proposals we've seen: 15% to 30% of recovered dollars. Stripe's Smart Disputes charges 30% of the disputed amount for each dispute won.
Where the incentives sit: On the surface this looks like the most aligned model, since the vendor only earns when you get money back, but there are two wrinkles that complicate it.
First, a success fee pays the same percentage on a $15 dispute and a $500 one, so low-dollar disputes earn the vendor almost nothing. A recovered $15 chargeback pays them $2.25 to $4.50 across the typical range, which may not cover the cost of building a response. The fee tracks dollar value, while your ratio counts every dispute the same.
Second, the success fee scales with the size of what you recover rather than the work involved. On a high-value dispute, the top of that range costs more than a flat per-chargeback fee would have.
The questions to ask: Is the percentage calculated on gross recovery or net, and is there a cap? Then ask what counts as a win, because a success fee only rewards the outcome you care about if the vendor defines a win the way you do. Check whether the reported win rate covers every dispute you received or only the ones the vendor chose to fight, and whether a win is counted when the response goes in or after the final decision. A dispute won at the first response can still be lost if the issuer takes it to pre-arbitration.
You pay a fixed dollar amount for every chargeback the vendor handles. The trigger might be submission, defense, or simply landing in the platform, and it is worth pinning down before signing.
In proposals we've seen: $15 to $50 per chargeback, depending on what "handled" means in the contract.
Where the incentives sit: The vendor gets paid whether they win or lose. Buyers do ask about that, and someone asked us outright: "If you only get paid a flat fee per dispute, what is your incentive to win, so to speak?"
It is a fair question. A per-chargeback fee pays the same on a win and a loss, so the fee itself doesn't reward winning, and the vendor's revenue rises with your chargeback volume. The vendor still has reasons to win, because a client who keeps losing is unlikely to renew. What you get in exchange is a predictable cost your finance team can plan around.
The question to ask: "Do we pay for the chargebacks you didn't defend?" which will vary by vendor.
You pay based on your total transaction volume rather than your chargeback count. The vendor sets tiers and the rate steps down as volume climbs.
In proposals we've seen: $0.01 to $0.04 per transaction, usually stepping down as volume climbs.
Where the incentives sit: This model detaches what you pay from how many chargebacks you have. If your chargeback ratio drops, which is the goal, your cost stays flat.
The vendor is paid the same whether a dispute is won or lost, so the fee itself doesn't reward winning. But, even in this pricing model the vendor still has reasons to win. A client who loses too often will likely leave when their contract is up for renewal, and a weak record is hard to sell. Those pressures work on the whole account, not on each case.
For merchants with a low chargeback-to-transaction ratio, the cost per actual dispute handled gets steep. Process 2M transactions a month with 1,000 chargebacks and you are paying across all 2M for work that touches 1,000.
The question to ask: Is this priced on chargeback volume or total transaction volume?
A fixed monthly or annual fee, the same regardless of how many transactions you process or chargebacks you receive.
In proposals we've seen: $3,000 to $10,000 a month at mid-market dispute volumes, with custom pricing above that. Platform fees swing with scope more than with volume, so two quotes at the same dispute count can sit far apart depending on what each bundles.
Where the incentives sit: Like the transaction-volume model, a flat fee does not tie the vendor's revenue to your outcomes. Inside a contract term, your cost does not move with your chargeback count.
The risk is that a flat fee can obscure what you are getting... and they can be pretty expensive. Plus, benchmarking gets harder without a per-unit metric.
The question to ask: Is the platform fee the whole price, or a floor with per-chargeback or success fees stacked on top?
The four models are not always separate. A vendor might charge a per-transaction fee plus a lower per-chargeback fee, add usage fees on top of a platform minimum, or negotiate different rates by volume and scope. That makes the headline unit price a poor guide to what you will pay. The useful comparison is total expected cost at your own transaction volume, dispute volume, average order value and expected recovery rate.
Whatever you pay a vendor, your payment processor or acquirer can charge separate fees for receiving and responding to disputes. Stripe publishes its own: a $15 dispute received fee for each dispute, and another $15 for each dispute you counter manually, which Stripe refunds if you win. Stripe also notes that the dispute received fee still applies when its Smart Disputes service handles the case. A complete cost comparison adds these fees to whatever the vendor charges.
These are category-level examples rather than any specific vendor's price.
All four examples use a merchant processing $500M a year. The variable is average order value. A merchant with a $25 average order value generates forty times as many transactions as one with a $1,000 average order value, even though both process the same dollar volume.
Each model uses one unit price in every example below, so the only thing that changes is average order value. Real vendors discount at volume, so a high-volume merchant would likely negotiate a lower unit price than shown.
Assumptions:
Under those assumptions, each merchant receives $125,000 in chargebacks per month. The difference is how many individual disputes make up that amount.
The success-fee rows show the maximum possible charge at 20% if every disputed dollar is recovered. They are ceilings, not expected results.
At roughly 1.67M transactions a month, a 0.3% chargeback rate produces 5,000 chargebacks.
| Model | Unit price | Monthly cost | Annual cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Percentage of recovery | 20% of recovered dollars | Maximum: $25,000 | Maximum: $300,000 |
| Per-chargeback flat fee | $20/chargeback | $100,000 | $1,200,000 |
| Transaction-volume tier | $0.02/txn on 1.67M txns | About $33,333 | About $400,000 |
| Flat platform fee | Custom at this volume | Custom | Custom |
This is where per-chargeback pricing gets expensive. The merchant receives 5,000 disputes a month even though the total dollars at risk are the same as in the higher-AOV examples below. At $20 a dispute, the fees come to $100,000 a month against $125,000 in disputed dollars, so the merchant pays 80 cents in fees for every dollar it could possibly win back.
The success-fee model has the opposite problem. A recovered $25 dispute pays the vendor $5. That gives the vendor less room to investigate each case, even though every dispute still counts against the merchant's chargeback ratio.
At roughly 416,667 transactions a month, the same chargeback rate produces 1,250 chargebacks.
| Model | Unit price | Monthly cost | Annual cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Percentage of recovery | 20% of recovered dollars | Maximum: $25,000 | Maximum: $300,000 |
| Per-chargeback flat fee | $20/chargeback | $25,000 | $300,000 |
| Transaction-volume tier | $0.02/txn on 416,667 txns | About $8,333 | About $100,000 |
| Flat platform fee | $6,000/mo | $6,000 | $72,000 |
At a $100 average order value, the same $500M merchant has one-fourth as many transactions and chargebacks as the $25 merchant. Per-chargeback pricing falls by $900,000 a year. Transaction-volume pricing falls by about $300,000.
The maximum success fee does not change because the total dollars disputed do not change. The actual fee depends on how much the vendor recovers. At this order value, a $20 fee is 20% of each disputed amount, so the per-chargeback bill matches the success-fee ceiling. The difference is that the per-chargeback fee is owed on every case, won or lost.
At roughly 83,333 transactions a month, the same chargeback rate produces 250 chargebacks.
| Model | Unit price | Monthly cost | Annual cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Percentage of recovery | 20% of recovered dollars | Maximum: $25,000 | Maximum: $300,000 |
| Per-chargeback flat fee | $20/chargeback | $5,000 | $60,000 |
| Transaction-volume tier | $0.02/txn on 83,333 txns | About $1,667 | About $20,000 |
| Flat platform fee | $6,000/mo | $6,000 | $72,000 |
At a $500 average order value, transaction-volume pricing is lower than the per-chargeback and platform fees in this example. The success fee could land below or above any of them depending on how much the vendor recovers. It does not fall with the number of cases because each successful dispute carries more value instead.
At roughly 41,667 transactions a month, the same chargeback rate produces 125 chargebacks.
| Model | Unit price | Monthly cost | Annual cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Percentage of recovery | 20% of recovered dollars | Maximum: $25,000 | Maximum: $300,000 |
| Per-chargeback flat fee | $20/chargeback | $2,500 | $30,000 |
| Transaction-volume tier | $0.02/txn on 41,667 txns | About $833 | About $10,000 |
| Flat platform fee | $6,000/mo | $6,000 | $72,000 |
At a $1,000 average order value, transaction-volume pricing is again the lowest fixed cost in this example. The success fee still has the same ceiling, but a recovered dispute now pays the vendor $200.
| Pricing model | $25 AOV | $100 AOV | $500 AOV | $1,000 AOV |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Percentage of recovery (20%) | Maximum: $300,000 | Maximum: $300,000 | Maximum: $300,000 | Maximum: $300,000 |
| Per-chargeback flat fee | $1,200,000 | $300,000 | $60,000 | $30,000 |
| Transaction-volume tier | About $400,000 | About $100,000 | About $20,000 | About $10,000 |
| Flat platform fee | Custom | $72,000 | $72,000 | $72,000 |
The per-chargeback model moves the most across the four merchants, from $1.2M a year at a $25 AOV to $30,000 at a $1,000 AOV. The transaction-volume model follows the same direction, from about $400,000 to about $10,000. The platform fee stays at $72,000 wherever it applies, and the success-fee ceiling stays at $300,000 because each merchant has the same $125,000 in disputed dollars per month.
If predictability is the priority, a flat platform fee fixes the bill for the contract term, while a per-chargeback fee fixes the unit price so finance can forecast from a chargeback projection. The success-fee model tracks outcomes, so the bill moves with results.
If cost is the priority, your AOV can change the answer. Per-chargeback pricing gets expensive when a fixed amount of revenue is spread across millions of low-dollar transactions. A success fee stays tied to recovered dollars, so it does not fall just because there are fewer cases. Transaction-volume pricing moves in the opposite direction: fewer high-value transactions can produce a lower bill even when annual payment volume stays fixed.
A per-chargeback vendor that invests in evidence quality and reason-code-specific strategy can recover more than a success-fee vendor whose economics thin out on your smallest disputes.
The thing you cannot read off a pricing page is whether the vendor understands why you are losing.
If you want to talk through what the numbers look like for your volume and mix, we're happy to do that. Request a demo with our team.