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E-Commerce · head to head

BigCommerce vs Braintree

BigCommerce logo

BigCommerce

E-Commerce

Hosted e-commerce platform that charges no transaction fee and no surcharge for third party gateways

From
$29.95/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Braintree logo

Braintree

E-Commerce

PayPal's payment gateway and processor for cards, PayPal, Venmo and digital wallets

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: BigCommerce plans are gated on annual online sales, so a strong year pushes you into a higher tier and a higher subscription even though your traffic, catalogue and resource usage are unchanged.; Braintree the merchant relationship sits with PayPal, whose risk operations can place reserves on or hold funds in accounts they flag, and appeals run through support queues, so a business with thin working capital carries real exposure to a decision it cannot negotiate.
  • They diverge on capability: BigCommerce covers No platform transaction fee, Braintree covers Card processing.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 30 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which BigCommerce and Braintree actually diverge.

Attributes where BigCommerce and Braintree differ
AttributeBigCommerceBraintree
Starting price$29.95/monthOn request
Pricing modelsubscriptiontransaction
Founded2009Unknown

Identical on both: free tier (No), platforms (Web), user rating (Not yet rated), category (E-Commerce).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in BigCommerce

  • No platform transaction fee
  • Stencil theme framework
  • Multi-storefront
  • Faceted search
  • B2B capabilities
  • Headless support
  • Built-in tax integrations
  • Multi-currency

Only in Braintree

  • Card processing
  • PayPal and Venmo acceptance
  • Digital wallets
  • Hosted fields
  • Card vault
  • Recurring billing
  • Split payouts
  • Multi-market coverage

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

BigCommerce

  • A merchant whose volume makes a percentage transaction fee the largest line in the platform decisionnot Braintree
  • A retailer needing several branded storefronts sharing one catalogue and one back officenot Braintree
  • A B2B seller who needs company accounts and customer-specific price lists without custom developmentnot Braintree
  • A team going headless who wants a managed commerce back end rather than a self-hosted onenot Braintree

Braintree

  • A United States consumer brand that wants Venmo in the checkout rather than as an off-site redirectnot BigCommerce
  • A subscription business that needs a vault and recurring billing alongside wallet acceptancenot BigCommerce
  • A marketplace splitting each payment between the platform and multiple sellersnot BigCommerce
  • A merchant consolidating card and PayPal acceptance into a single integration and a single settlementnot BigCommerce

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

BigCommerce

  • Plans are gated on annual online sales, so a strong year pushes you into a higher tier and a higher subscription even though your traffic, catalogue and resource usage are unchanged.
  • There is a documented ceiling on the number of variants a single product can have, which breaks configurable, made-to-measure and heavily optioned catalogues and forces awkward workarounds such as splitting one product into several listings.
  • The application marketplace is much smaller than the largest competitor's, so a specific integration or niche feature is more often a custom build, and custom builds are the line item that quietly exceeds the platform cost.
  • Theme customisation past the visual settings means Stencil, Handlebars templates and a local command line workflow, so changes that look small to a marketing team still require a developer and a deployment.
  • Migrating out moves products and inventory reasonably well and moves the things that matter badly, since customer passwords cannot be exported in usable form, order history rarely transfers intact, and reviews and URL structure have to be rebuilt with a redirect map you must produce yourself or lose the search traffic.

Braintree

  • The merchant relationship sits with PayPal, whose risk operations can place reserves on or hold funds in accounts they flag, and appeals run through support queues, so a business with thin working capital carries real exposure to a decision it cannot negotiate.
  • Cross-border transactions and currency conversion carry additional charges on top of the headline rate, so an international customer base costs materially more per order than the quoted percentage suggests.
  • Disputes carry a per chargeback fee in addition to the reversed transaction amount, so a category with a high dispute rate loses money at roughly twice the rate a naive model predicts.
  • Leaving means requesting a vault export to another PCI compliant processor and then re-tokenising every stored card and every active subscription, which is an engineering project with a customer-visible failure mode if any subscription fails to migrate.
  • It is a payments component rather than a commerce platform, so checkout, tax determination, invoicing and refund workflow still have to be built and maintained somewhere else, and merchants who assume otherwise underestimate the integration.

Pricing, plan by plan

BigCommerce

$29.95/month
  • Standard$29.95/month
    • Unlimited products
    • 2 staff accounts
    • Basic reports
  • Plus$79.95/month
    • All Standard features
    • Up to 5 staff accounts
    • Advanced reports

Braintree

On request

No published plan breakdown. See the Braintree review.

Which should you pick?

Choose BigCommerce if

  • You need no platform transaction fee.
  • You also want stencil theme framework.
BigCommerce review

Choose Braintree if

  • You need card processing.
  • You also want paypal and venmo acceptance.
Braintree review

Questions people ask

Is BigCommerce or Braintree better?
Neither clearly leads. BigCommerce starts at $29.95/month and Braintree at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, BigCommerce or Braintree?
BigCommerce starts at $29.95/month and Braintree at On request.
Does BigCommerce or Braintree run on more platforms?
Both run on Web, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
What is BigCommerce best used for?
BigCommerce is most often used for a merchant whose volume makes a percentage transaction fee the largest line in the platform decision, a retailer needing several branded storefronts sharing one catalogue and one back office, a b2b seller who needs company accounts and customer-specific price lists without custom development, a team going headless who wants a managed commerce back end rather than a self-hosted one. Of those, a merchant whose volume makes a percentage transaction fee the largest line in the platform decision and a retailer needing several branded storefronts sharing one catalogue and one back office are not what Braintree is typically brought in for.
What can BigCommerce do that Braintree cannot?
BigCommerce covers No platform transaction fee, Stencil theme framework, Multi-storefront, Faceted search. Braintree covers Card processing, PayPal and Venmo acceptance, Digital wallets, Hosted fields.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

BigCommerce: Does BigCommerce charge transaction fees?

No, and it does not surcharge third party payment gateways either. Revenue affects the price through plan sales thresholds instead.

Braintree: How is it different from using PayPal directly?

Braintree gives you a full processing account and a native checkout with cards, PayPal and Venmo in one integration, rather than a redirect flow bolted onto a separate card processor.

BigCommerce: What happens when I exceed my plan's sales threshold?

You move to the next plan tier. Model this at your projected growth rate, because the increase is driven by revenue rather than by usage.

Braintree: Is Venmo the main reason to choose it?

For United States consumer brands, frequently yes. It is the practical route to native Venmo acceptance, and no competing processor offers an equivalent.

BigCommerce: Is the app ecosystem large enough?

It covers the common integrations. For anything niche, assume a development project rather than an install, and price that in before comparing subscriptions.

Braintree: What does it actually cost?

A percentage plus a fixed fee per transaction on standard accounts, with interchange-plus available at volume. Add cross-border and currency conversion charges, plus a fee per chargeback, before comparing.

BigCommerce: How hard is it to leave?

Products export cleanly. Customer passwords, order history, reviews and SEO URLs do not. Build the redirect map before you cut over, not after traffic drops.

Braintree: How hard is it to switch away later?

Harder than most merchants expect. The vault export to another compliant processor is possible but every stored card and subscription has to be re-tokenised and tested.

Braintree: Can PayPal hold my money?

Reserves and holds are a documented part of PayPal's risk management. Ask about reserve policy for your category and volume before you migrate revenue onto it.

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