Payment Processors · reliability comparison
Braintree vs PayPal: which is more reliable? (2026)
Braintree is more reliable than PayPal, scoring 94.0 vs 80.0 out of 100. Over the last 90 days Braintree reported 2 incidents and PayPal reported 3, with effective uptime of 99.97% and 99.92% respectively. Braintree resolves incidents faster on average (2h 7m).
Data updated Nov 1, 2026 · How we score
| Metric | Braintree | PayPal |
|---|---|---|
| Reliability score | 94.0 | 80.0 |
| Rank (payment processors) | #1 | #5 |
| Uptime (90 days) | 99.97% | 99.92% |
| Incidents (90 days) | 2 | 3 |
| Partial / major outages | 0 | 0 |
| Avg time to resolve | 2h 7m | 3h 3m |
| Outages we detected | 0 | 1 |
| Transparency score | 100/100 | 50/100 |
Where Braintree and PayPal differ
- PayPal reported 50% more incidents than Braintree over the last 90 days (3 vs 2).
- Braintree fixes problems faster: 2h 7m on average, against 3h 3m for PayPal.
- Braintree's longest incident on record lasted 3h 2m (Sep 23, 2026); PayPal's lasted 4h 20m (Oct 22, 2026).
- Our own probes detected 0 outages at Braintree and 1 at PayPal, of which 0 and 0 respectively were acknowledged on their status pages.
90-day uptime
Braintree
PayPal
- No incidents
- Degraded
- Partial outage
- Major outage
- No data
Recent Braintree incidents
- Degraded performanceSep 23, 2026 · resolved in 3h 2m
Detected Resolved: Impact to Braintree Apple Pay Tokenization (PP-LIVE-109944)
Affected: Enterprise Solutions (Braintree) > United States Transaction Processing, Enterprise Solutions (Braintree) > Gateway API
- Degraded performanceSep 22, 2026 · resolved in 1h 11m
Impact to PayPal Checkout (PP-LIVE-109937)
Affected: Online Checkout, Enterprise Solutions (Braintree) > GraphQL API
Recent PayPal incidents
- Degraded performanceOct 22, 2026 · resolved in 4h 20m
Detected Resolved: Impact to Online Checkout (PP-LIVE-110330)
Affected: Online Checkout
- MaintenanceOct 16, 2026 · resolved in 3h
Initial Notification: PayPal Live Site Maintenance (PP-LIVE-110012)
Affected: Retail Checkout > Mobile In-Store, Retail Checkout > PayPal Here, Online Checkout > Payments Standard (WPS), Online Checkout > Express Checkout, Enterprise Solutions (Braintree) > Pay with Venmo, Hyperwallet > Payouts Processing and Network +1 more
- Degraded performanceOct 11, 2026 · resolved in 3h 39m
Impact to BNPL (Pay Later) authorizations (PP-LIVE-110179)
Affected: REST APIs > Orders, Online Checkout > PayPal Complete Payments (PPCP) - Payment Service
- MaintenanceOct 9, 2026 · resolved in 3h 30m
Initial Notification: PayPal Live Site Maintenance (PP-LIVE-110005)
Affected: Retail Checkout > Mobile In-Store, Online Checkout > Payments Standard (WPS), Online Checkout > Express Checkout, Enterprise Solutions (Braintree) > Pay with Venmo, Homepage > PayPal Homepage, Account > Seller Onboarding +1 more
- MaintenanceOct 2, 2026 · resolved in 3h 30m
Initial Notification: PayPal Live Site Maintenance (PP-LIVE-109883)
Affected: Retail Checkout > Mobile In-Store, Retail Checkout > PayPal Here, Online Checkout > Payments Standard (WPS), Online Checkout > Express Checkout, Enterprise Solutions (Braintree) > Pay with Venmo, Hyperwallet > Payouts Processing and Network +1 more
- MaintenanceSep 25, 2026 · resolved in 3h 30m
Affected: Retail Checkout > Mobile In-Store, Retail Checkout > PayPal Here, Online Checkout > Payments Standard (WPS), Online Checkout > Express Checkout, Enterprise Solutions (Braintree) > Pay with Venmo, Hyperwallet > Payouts Processing and Network +1 more
Other payment processors to consider
- Paddle · #2 · 99.96% uptime
- Stripe · #3 · 99.99% uptime
- Clover · #4 · 99.88% uptime
- Shift4 Payments · #6 · 99.36% uptime