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 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: 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 help centre 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, videos, Spotify and YouTube cards, notes and a map, plus digital products, courses, paid calls, donations and tips, and 10 GB of media. The only charge is 10% when a sale happens.

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, Stan's $25 a month 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 $25 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 usual path is 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, 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, its design 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: photos, video and music 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 Onlink's free plan, and anyone who signs up through your page counts as your referral.

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

Onlink or Stan Store: which should you pick?

Start on Onlink's free plan if you want to sell before you pay anything, or if you want the money in your own Stripe account without a cash-out step. Pick Stan if memberships, email marketing or funnels are the reason you are shopping, and you sell enough each month for $29 to cost less than a fee. The list takes each reason one at a time.

• 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 $25 a month billed annually; 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 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.
• You want photos, video and music on the same page as the paid cards: Onlink, on every plan; Stan's pages describe a storefront of products.

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; 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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