If you’re a founder evaluating an Indian payment gateway in 2026, you’ve probably already sat through three Zoom demos that all said roughly the same thing. The pitch decks lie. Or more charitably: they hide the things that actually matter once you go live.
At Antarix we’ve integrated Razorpay, PhonePe Payment Gateway and Cashfree across roughly two dozen projects — SaaS subscriptions, D2C checkouts, two-sided marketplaces, donation platforms, a couple of fintech sandboxes. So this isn’t a feature-comparison-table-from-the-marketing-page; it’s the stuff we’d tell you over a chai.
कीमत Pricing — the real numbers, not the rack rates
RBI mandated zero MDR on UPI in 2020 and it’s still in force in 2026. So UPI is genuinely free across all three gateways. Where the bill adds up is cards, net banking, wallets and international.
| Razorpay | PhonePe PG | Cashfree | |
|---|---|---|---|
| UPI | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Cards · domestic | 2.0% (1.85% at scale) | 1.99–2.10% | 1.75–1.95% |
| Cards · international | 3.0% | 3.0% | 3.0% |
| Net banking | 2.0% (capped) | 1.95% | 1.80% |
| Wallets | 2.0% | 1.85% | 1.75% |
| EMI | 2.5% | 2.5% | 2.25% |
| Setup & AMC | ₹0 | ₹0 | ₹0 |
The numbers above are negotiable. If you’re doing over ₹50 lakh a month, every gateway will quietly slide on TDR. Don’t accept the rack rate. We’ve seen Razorpay drop to 1.78% for clients clearing ₹3Cr/month.
समाकलन Integration ease — what it’s actually like to build with
This is where the three diverge most.
Razorpay — the developer’s favourite
Razorpay’s docs are the cleanest of the three. The Standard Checkout JS drops in with five lines, the Orders API is straightforward, and signature verification (HMAC SHA256) is clearly documented. Test mode keys work identically to live keys, which sounds basic but saves hours.
The webhook system is mature: idempotency keys, retry with exponential backoff, signature verification, replay-ability from the dashboard. For a Laravel app:
// In Laravel, signature verification is one line.
$payload = $request->getContent();
$signature = $request->header('X-Razorpay-Signature');
$expected = hash_hmac('sha256', $payload, $webhookSecret);
abort_unless(hash_equals($expected, $signature), 400);Cashfree — quietly competent, sometimes confusing
Cashfree’s API surface is broader than Razorpay’s — payouts, KYC, e-NACH, FX, marketplace splits, all first-party. The downside is that the docs jump between API versions (v1, v2, PG-v1, PG-v2) and you have to be careful which one you’re reading. Webhook signature is HMAC SHA256 but the payload concatenation rules are fiddlier.
If you need marketplace splits (e.g. a two-sided platform where each transaction settles to multiple vendors), Cashfree is materially better than Razorpay. Razorpay Route is fine but Cashfree’s Marketplace product has a richer split-rule engine.
PhonePe Payment Gateway — rough around the edges
PhonePe PG is the youngest of the three (launched 2020, productionised around 2022) and it shows. The dashboard is clean but the API documentation is the thinnest, sandbox-to-production parity is unreliable, and webhook signature verification has changed twice in the last 18 months without clear migration notes.
That said, PhonePe’s killer feature is UPI Intent on Android. Because PhonePe controls 47% of UPI volume in India, their Intent flow opens the PhonePe app directly with the highest success rate of any gateway we’ve tested — better than the bank-side UPI flow other gateways trigger. For a UPI-first D2C brand, this matters.
सदस्यता Subscriptions & UPI AutoPay — the SaaS deal-breaker
If you’re a SaaS founder, this section is the entire article.
Indian recurring billing is hard because there’s no native equivalent of stored-card auto-charge after the 2021 RBI mandate. You have three options: e-NACH (bank mandate), UPI AutoPay, or stored-token recurring (works for cards but with explicit pre-debit notifications).
- Razorpay Subscriptions: Mature, well-documented, supports UPI AutoPay + e-NACH + recurring cards. Dashboard for managing plans, addons, dunning. Built-in invoicing. This is the default choice.
- Cashfree Subscriptions: Caught up in 2025. Now supports all three rails. Pricing is slightly cheaper than Razorpay (0.5% per autopay vs Razorpay’s 0.65%). Dashboard is rougher.
- PhonePe: No first-party subscriptions product as of May 2026. You’d roll your own recurring logic on top of one-time payment APIs, which means re-prompting users for UPI AutoPay each cycle. Painful for SaaS.
For a SaaS doing > ₹10L MRR, Razorpay Subscriptions is the right answer in 2026. Once you’re at ₹50L+ MRR, evaluate Cashfree on TDR — the 0.15% delta becomes real money.
वापसी Refunds, disputes & reconciliation
Refunds are where most teams get burned. The gateway sales pitch shows you a one-click refund button. Reality:
- Razorpay: Normal refund 5–7 working days. Instant Refund (₹4 flat fee) puts money back in 30 seconds for IMPS-eligible accounts. Refund webhook is reliable.
- Cashfree: Normal refund 5 working days. Instant Refund standard at 0.5% per refund — cheaper at low value, much more expensive at high.
- PhonePe: 5–7 working days. No instant option. Refund webhooks are sometimes delayed by hours.
For reconciliation: Razorpay’s settlement reports are MIS-quality and download in CSV/Excel with full field labels. Cashfree’s are usable but require a parser-cleanup. PhonePe’s are bare and you’ll write a script.
निर्णय The verdict — which gateway for which business
- SaaS / subscriptions: Razorpay. Hands down.
- D2C / e-commerce, UPI-heavy: Razorpay default; PhonePe if you’re seeing Android UPI checkout drop-off and want the Intent flow.
- Marketplace with vendor splits: Cashfree.
- High-volume (₹5Cr+/month) any vertical: Negotiate with both Razorpay and Cashfree, pick whoever blinks first. The 0.15% TDR delta is ~₹9L/year at ₹5Cr/month.
- Fintech / regulated: Razorpay has the broader compliance product line (RazorpayX neobanking, BaaS).
- Donations / non-profit: Razorpay (they have explicit non-profit pricing).
The boring truth: for 80% of Indian businesses, Razorpay just works, the docs save you a week of debugging, and the 0.2% TDR difference vs Cashfree won’t move the needle until you’re doing serious volume. Use that saved week to ship features.
If you need help
We integrate payment gateways end-to-end — including the parts the sales decks don’t mention: webhook idempotency, settlement reconciliation, refund automation, GST-compliant invoicing, subscription dunning flows, multi-gateway fallback. If you’re evaluating one of the three (or stuck on an existing integration), we do payment gateway integration as a service — written quote within 24 hours, no obligation. Tell us about your project.
Vikram Bhatt is co-founder & engineering lead at Antarix Technology. 14 years building payment infrastructure — previously at Razorpay and Zerodha. Reach him on WhatsApp or info@antarixtech.com.