CoinGate vs Plisio

Half the rate, half the disclosure#

Plisio charges 0.5% against CoinGate's 1%, and prices white label openly at 1.5% rather than routing it through a sales conversation. Both of those are genuine advantages and neither is the whole story.

CoinGate publishes conversion and payout costs. Plisio publishes neither. That means 0.5% is a floor whose distance from the real number is unknown, while CoinGate's 1% is close to a total for a euro-settling merchant. Comparing the two headline figures compares a partial number against a nearly complete one.

Which asset lists actually cover your customers?#

Both are narrow. CoinGate publishes ten or more assets, Plisio lists twelve. Neither is a candidate for a merchant who needs long-tail asset coverage, and both are perfectly adequate for one whose customers pay in Bitcoin and a stablecoin.

Plisio's list includes Monero and Zcash, which most of this category declines outright. For the small set of businesses that need privacy assets specifically, that single fact settles the comparison regardless of anything else on this page.

Which one can you actually price?#

It can be priced from public pages to within a small margin, because processing, conversion, SEPA, SWIFT and crypto payout costs are all published. That is unusual enough in this category to count as a feature.

Plisio cannot. The 0.5% is real and the distance between it and your all-in cost is unknown, because neither conversion nor payout is published. A merchant who converts every payment to fiat, as the fees guide describes, could plausibly end up paying more at Plisio than at CoinGate, and public information will not tell them which.

Who is each one wrong for?#

Plisio is wrong for a merchant converting everything to fiat, because the two unpublished cost components are exactly the ones that conversion triggers. The low headline rate is least informative for the customer most attracted to it.

CoinGate is wrong for a business needing privacy assets or a cheap white-label tier. Plisio publishes both, and CoinGate's branded checkout is not priced in the same open way.

Two ways of being cheap#

Plisio is cheap on the headline and unknown on the rest. CoinGate is more expensive on the headline and complete on the rest. A merchant converting everything to fiat may well pay less at CoinGate despite the doubled processing rate, and public information will not settle it.

That is the recurring shape of this category rather than a quirk of these two providers, and it is the reason the cost criterion in the method scores publication rather than price.

Custody, unusually clear on both sides#

Plisio is documented non custodial, CoinGate custodial. Both state it, which is more than most pairs in this index manage, and it means the most consequential question here has a public answer on both sides.

Use it. Decide whether you want funds reaching your own wallet or a provider balance before comparing anything else, because that single answer eliminates one of these two.

What to send both of them#

Ask Plisio for the conversion spread and the payout cost, because without them the 0.5% is a floor of unknown distance from your real number. Ask CoinGate whether the assets you need are live locally.

One of these providers can already be priced from public pages and the other cannot. That asymmetry is the comparison, and closing it takes one email.

If you need Monero or Zcash, stop here: Plisio names them and almost nobody else in this index does, and that requirement overrides everything else on this page.

Reading this pair by business type#

A merchant converting everything to fiat should take CoinGate, because the component that decides its cost is published on one side and absent on the other. The cheaper headline is least informative for exactly this reader.

A merchant settling in crypto should take Plisio, where 0.5% is close to the real figure and the unpublished conversion never applies.

A business needing privacy assets or a priced white-label tier should take Plisio regardless of the rest, since almost nothing else in the index offers either.

What would change this comparison#

Plisio publishing a conversion figure. It is the single missing number that would let a merchant decide whether the halved headline is a genuine saving or an artefact of what each provider chose to disclose.

Nothing CoinGate could publish would change its coverage, which is the structural rather than informational half of this comparison.

If you only do one thing#

Ask Plisio for the conversion spread. If you convert everything to fiat, that single number determines whether the halved headline rate is a saving or an illusion, and it is the only missing input that matters.

What this comparison leaves open#

What remains open is support. Both score modestly and neither publishes a response commitment, which is normal for this category and unhelpful when a payment is stuck. Ask both for a median first-response time and whether anyone is reachable outside business hours, since payments break at inconvenient moments by definition.

If Plisio publishes conversion pricing at any point, this comparison changes materially. Until then the checked dates on both cards are the honest limit of what can be said.

Fee transparency against custody#

CoinGate publishes every cost component and holds your balance. Plisio publishes a processing rate, leaves conversion unpublished, and never holds your funds at all.

Those are the two things merchants most often say they want, and this pair makes you pick one. Neither answer is wrong; choosing without noticing the trade is.