Risk Score

A risk score is a number that estimates how likely a payment is to be fraudulent. Stripe Radar scores every payment, and you or your rules use the score to allow the payment, send it to review, or block it.

How the score is calculated

Radar scores payments from 0 to 99. 0 is the lowest risk and 99 the highest. The model looks at hundreds of signals, including card and device details, location, spending patterns, and data from across Stripe's network.

Each score falls into a risk level:

• Normal. Most legitimate payments.
• Elevated. Some risk signals. A common point to send payments to manual review.
• Highest. Strong fraud signals. Radar blocks these by default.

By default, Stripe treats a score of 65 or more as elevated and 75 or more as highest risk. Some paid Radar plans let you change these thresholds. Check Stripe's Radar plans for which ones.

Why it matters

The score is a threshold you can tune. Set it too loose and fraud turns into chargebacks and early fraud warnings. Set it too strict and you decline real customers. The score also helps later. A disputed charge that scored high at checkout needs a different response than one that scored low.

Using scores in practice

• Send elevated-risk payments to a review queue instead of blocking them.
• Watch for many high-score, low-value attempts in a short time. That pattern usually means card testing.
• Add your own rules on top of the score.