Onlink vs Stan Store: pricing, fees and where the money goes

Stan Store pricing is two plans and no free tier: Creator at $29 a month or $300 a year, and Creator Pro at $99 a month or $948 a year, per Stan's own plan page read on 4 September 2026, and its home page prints "0% Transaction Fees, Always." Onlink starts at $0 with a 10% fee on each sale, and its paid plans lower that fee to 7% and 0%. This guide puts the two side by side on price, on what a sale costs, on where the money sits after a sale, and on what each page holds, with every Stan number from Stan's pages and every Onlink number from the Onlink pricing page.

The short version: on Stan you pay a subscription before your first sale and keep 100% of each one after Stripe's or PayPal's processing fee; on Onlink you pay nothing before your first sale and 10% of it after, or 0% on Premium at $30 a month billed annually. The other difference is where the money goes: Onlink pays each sale into your own Stripe account, and Stan holds it in an Income tab you cash out from.

How did we compare Onlink and Stan Store?

We read Stan's plan page, pricing article, home page and the help articles linked where each fact appears, in a browser on 4 September 2026 and again on 6 September 2026, when none had changed, put the five questions below to both, and read each side's refund, cancellation and safety pages besides. Every Stan line is that page's own words or numbers, and every Onlink number comes from the constants the product charges on, which the Onlink pricing page prints.

• Price: each plan, monthly and billed annually, and whether there is a free plan.
• Selling: what a sale costs on each plan, and where the two subscriptions meet.
• The money: which account receives a sale, where it sits, and how it reaches your bank.
• The page: what it holds and what you can sell on the entry plan.
• Design: what the page is, and what you can change on it.

How much does Stan Store cost?

Stan Store costs $29 a month on Creator, or $300 a year, and $99 a month on Creator Pro, or $948 a year, per Stan's plan page read on 4 September 2026. There is no plan below $29 and no free plan; Stan's home page prints "Try Stan for 14 Days Free".

Onlink's three plans, from the Onlink pricing page: Free at $0, Pro at $12.50 a month or $10 a month billed annually ($120 a year), and Premium at $37.50 a month or $30 a month billed annually ($360 a year). The table lays the two out.

Sources, each read on 4 September 2026 and again on 6 September 2026, when none had changed: Onlink pricing, Stan's plan page, Stan's pricing article, Stan's home page and the Stan help articles linked where each fact appears. The 0% on Stan is a transaction fee, not the processing fee: Stan's pricing article says "you'll only pay the standard Stripe or PayPal processing fee". Onlink's 10%, 7% and 0% are platform fees, and Stripe's processing fee is charged by Stripe on top, on every plan, as the pricing page states.

Is Stan Store free?

No. Stan's plan page, read on 4 September 2026, answers "Does Stan offer a free plan?" with "Not at the moment!", and adds that "many people mistake our affiliate-only accounts for a free store", an account type that "doesn't include Stan Store features".

What Stan offers instead is a 14-day trial, and Stan's trial page confirms you can sell during it once Stripe or PayPal is connected. Onlink's free plan is not a trial: no card, no time limit, and the page holds unlimited links, photos and videos, Spotify and YouTube cards, an Instagram card that shows your posts or reels, notes and a map, plus digital products, courses, paid calls (bookings), donations and tips, and 10 GB of media (the auto-updating YouTube channel card is on Pro and Premium). The only charge is 10% when a sale happens, plus Stripe's processing fee.

We built Onlink's free plan that way on purpose. The part of the product a creator needs to get paid should not sit behind a subscription, so on Onlink the page, every card type and every kind of selling are on Free, and a creator who sells nothing pays nothing. The subscription is for a lower fee and more tools, not for permission to sell.

What does a sale cost on Onlink and on Stan Store?

On Stan a sale costs 0% plus the processor's fee, and the subscription costs $29 or $99 a month whether you sell or not. On Onlink a sale costs 10% on Free, 7% on Pro and 0% on Premium, plus Stripe's processing fee, and the subscription is $0 on Free.

Which costs less depends on how much you sell in a month. Stan Creator at $29 a month costs the same as Onlink's 10% fee on $290 of sales; billed annually, a twelfth of Stan's $300 equals the fee on $250. Below those figures Onlink Free costs less, because the fee is smaller than Stan's subscription; above them Stan's flat price costs less than the fee, and that is where Onlink Premium comes in: $30 a month billed annually for 0%, which is $5 a month more than Stan Creator on the same billing, with the fee at zero on both.

• You sell nothing this month: Onlink Free costs $0; Stan Creator costs $29 (or a twelfth of $300 on annual billing).
• You sell $100: Onlink Free costs $10; Stan Creator costs $29.
• You sell $290: Onlink Free and Stan Creator monthly both cost $29.
• You sell $1,000: Onlink Free costs $100, Onlink Pro costs $12.50 plus $70, Onlink Premium costs $37.50 ($30 on annual billing); Stan Creator costs $29.

Stripe's processing fee is left out of every line because it is charged by Stripe on both. Nothing on Onlink is charged until a sale happens, so the arithmetic says to start on Free and move to Premium once your monthly sales pass the figure above; on Stan the trial is 14 days and the plans start at $29.

Where does the money go, and how do you get paid?

On Onlink a sale is paid into your own Stripe account through Stripe Connect, and Stripe pays it out to your bank on its standard schedule for your country; there is no balance on Onlink and nothing to withdraw. On Stan a sale lands in an Income tab inside Stan, and you press Cash Out to send it to your bank, per Stan's help centre read on 4 September 2026.

The quotes in the table are from Stan's help pages on connecting Stripe, cashing out and automatic cash-outs, each read on 4 September 2026. Two more lines from Stan's pages matter here. Stan's Stripe country list names 37 countries for the managed Stripe account, and points creators elsewhere to PayPal; and Stan's help says the subscription cannot be paid from the money in the Income tab, only from a card. On Onlink the Stripe account is yours in the ordinary sense: it is a Standard Stripe account under your own Stripe login, you manage it at Stripe, and it stays yours whether or not you keep an Onlink page.

We chose the ordinary kind of Stripe account for a reason: money a creator earned should never wait inside our product. The sale settles with Stripe, Stripe pays the creator, and Onlink only ever takes its fee at the moment of payment; there is no button to press, and no minimum set by us.

What does each page hold?

Onlink's page is a bento grid of cards you place yourself: photos, videos, links, notes, a map, Spotify and YouTube cards, an Instagram card of your posts or reels, and the paid cards for digital products, courses, paid calls, donations and tips, all on the free plan. Stan's page is a storefront with a theme, colours and fonts, holding digital downloads, courses, bookings, webinars, memberships, communities and lead magnets on Creator, per Stan's pricing article.

The Stan lines in the table are from its plan page and pricing article, linked above, its Creator Pro page and its launch guide, each read on 4 September 2026. Onlink does not offer memberships, communities, email broadcasts, funnels, order bumps or payment plans; if those are on your list, Stan prints them at $29 and $99 a month. What Onlink puts on the page that Stan's pages do not describe is the media: photo, video, Spotify and Instagram cards laid out next to the paid ones, so the page reads as a site rather than a list of products. The affiliate programme runs on every plan, free included: anyone who signs up through your page becomes your referral, and the programme pays a one-time reward of $5 to $60 when that referral subscribes to a paid plan, confirmed 30 days after the sale and paid to your Stripe account.

How much of the page can you change?

On Onlink, almost all of it, on every plan: the page is a grid of cards you drag into place, laid out once for the desktop and once for the phone, with a colour, gradient or pattern background on every plan, a photo or video on Pro and Premium, and no Onlink branding badge. Stan's pages, read on 4 September 2026, describe a storefront on a theme with "11 ready-to-use link in bio templates", colours and fonts you can tweak "on any given theme", and a colour picker that takes "your brand hex codes".

The Stan lines are from its pricing article, plan page, design page and launch guide, each read on 4 September 2026. The difference a creator feels is in the editing: on Stan the choices are the template, the colours and the fonts around a storefront; on Onlink there is no theme layer, because the page is the grid itself, you drag a card anywhere and the rest settle, and the phone layout is a second grid you arrange the same way.

Is Stan Store legit?

Stan Store is a real company with a published help centre, a refund policy and a security page, all read on 4 September 2026; we compare its pages, not its reviews. What those pages say is worth knowing before the 14 days end.

• Refunds on the subscription: Stan's refund policy requires that "Your subscription must be fully canceled", that "The payment must have been within the last 30 days" and from "one billing period", and says "We are unable to offer refunds based on non-usage of the platform".
• Cancelling: you keep access "until the end of your current billing cycle", products and data stay saved, and there is no pause, per Stan's cancellation page. The same page asks you to cash out your funds and to cancel your customers' membership subscriptions by hand before you cancel.
• Security: Stan's safety page names @stanwith.me and @stan.store as its only official email domains and mentions "random account audits", and its trust and safety section lists guides for two-factor authentication.
• On Onlink the equivalent facts are shorter: there is no subscription to refund on Free, a paid plan is cancelled from the dashboard and runs to the end of its period, and your page and content remain yours.

The pages behind the list, each read on 4 September 2026: Stan's refund policy, Stan's cancellation page, Stan's safety page and its trust and safety section.

What matters more than price?

For a creator starting from zero, what matters more than the price is whether the page lets you sell before you pay anything. Of the two, the lowest risk is the plan that charges only when a sale happens, and the lowest price only matters once you know what you will sell, and how much.

On Onlink the first sale costs nothing up front and 10% of the price; on Stan it costs the $29 Creator plan first, or $300 for a year, and 0% of the price. The two meet at $290 of sales a month on monthly billing and $250 on annual billing; below those totals Onlink Free costs less, above them Stan's flat price does, until Onlink Premium's $30 a month billed annually at 0% enters at $5 a month more than Stan Creator.

• What the first sale costs you up front: Onlink $0, then 10% of the sale; Stan $29 a month first, or $300 a year, then 0%.
• What a subscription buys you, once you sell: on Onlink a lower fee (7% on Pro at $10 a month billed annually, 0% on Premium at $30); on Stan the store itself, since there is no free plan, at 0% from the first month.
• What a creator who sells nothing pays: $0 on Onlink; $29 a month on Stan after the 14-day trial, or a twelfth of $300 on annual billing.

Onlink or Stan Store: which should you pick?

It depends on what the page has to do, and the table takes it case by case. For selling before you pay, for the money in your own Stripe account without a cash-out step, and for a page that carries your photos and video, the answer is Onlink; for memberships, communities, email marketing or funnels it is Stan, once you sell enough each month for $29 to cost less than a fee.

Per the pages linked under the tables above, read on 4 September 2026. The same cases, with the reason behind each pick:

• You have not sold anything yet: Onlink Free at $0 with 10% on a sale; Stan has no free plan and its trial ends after 14 days.
• You sell less than $290 a month: Onlink Free costs less than Stan Creator's $29, by the arithmetic above.
• You sell more than that and want 0%: Onlink Premium at $30 a month billed annually, or Stan Creator at $300 a year; both print a 0% fee, and the difference is $5 a month and where the money sits.
• You want the money in an account that is yours: on Onlink the Stripe account is a Standard account under your own Stripe login, managed at Stripe; on Stan it is a Custom account managed by Stan, per its own help page.
• You want photos, video and Spotify cards on the same page as the paid cards: Onlink, on every plan; Stan's pages describe a storefront of products.
• You want memberships, communities, email broadcasts or funnels: Stan Creator prints the first two at $29 and Creator Pro the rest at $99; Onlink does not offer them.

Every Stan number in this list comes from the pages linked above, read on 4 September 2026; if Stan changes a price, its plan page is the place to check. Onlink's are on the pricing page, and the wider field, Linktree and Beacons included, is in our comparison of Linktree alternatives, and Beacons on its own in Onlink vs Beacons; Stan against Gumroad, Payhip, Sellfy and Etsy on the cost of a sale is in our comparison of platforms to sell digital products.

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