Disputely uses transparent per-alert pricing with no monthly fee, plus commission-based recovery. Here is the full breakdown, what actually drives your bill, and how it compares to partner-priced prevention.

How much does Disputely cost?

If you are asking how much Disputely costs, the honest answer is that there is no single number, because Disputely does not sell a plan with a monthly price tag. It charges per alert. Every time a network flags a transaction that is about to turn into a chargeback, you pay a small flat fee for that alert, and nothing when the alerts are quiet. On top of that, when Disputely wins a chargeback back for you through representment, it takes a commission on the amount recovered.

That structure is unusual in a good way. Most chargeback tools bury a platform fee, a setup fee, or a minimum spend somewhere in the contract. Disputely publishes its per-alert rates openly, which makes it one of the easier tools to price out before you commit. Your real monthly cost is simply your alert volume multiplied by the per-alert rate, plus whatever commission the recovery side earns that month.

The catch is that a low, transparent per-alert rate is only half the picture. What you actually spend depends on how many alerts your store generates, which networks those alerts come from, and how much of the work you are expected to do yourself once an alert lands. This guide breaks down the published rates, shows what really drives the bill, and compares it honestly to partner-priced prevention so you can see where Disputely fits.

The short version: Pay per alert (about $16 for RDR/CDRN, about $25 for Ethoca), no monthly fee, no setup fee, plus a commission on any chargebacks Disputely recovers. Your bill scales with alert volume, not a subscription.

Disputely pricing, line by line

Disputely splits its cost into two moving parts: prevention (the alerts) and recovery (the disputes it fights and wins). Here is what each one costs and when you pay it.

Prevention alerts: A flat fee per alert, published at roughly $16 for Visa RDR and CDRN alerts and about $25 for Ethoca alerts. There is no monthly fee and no setup cost, so you pay only for the alerts you actually receive. If a slow month brings few alerts, you pay little.

Recovery commission: For chargebacks that slip past the alert stage, Disputely fights the dispute and takes a commission on what it recovers. Because the fee is a cut of successful recoveries, recovery cost rises and falls with how many disputes it wins back for you, and you are not paying for attempts that fail.

What is not on the bill: No monthly platform fee, no onboarding charge, and no long lock-in are part of the published model. That is genuinely one of Disputely's strengths, and it is worth crediting: the pricing page is public, and the math is easy to run before you sign up.

A transparent per-alert rate tells you the price of a single alert. It does not tell you how many alerts your store will generate. That second number is the one that decides your bill.

What actually drives your Disputely bill

Two stores on identical per-alert rates can pay wildly different amounts. The published rate is a unit price, not a total. Four things decide what that total becomes each month.

Alert volume: This is the single biggest lever. A store with a clean dispute profile and a few alerts a week pays almost nothing. A store running aggressive paid traffic, free trials, or subscriptions can generate hundreds of alerts a month, and at a flat per-alert rate the bill scales linearly with that volume. Before you compare rates, estimate your volume honestly.

The network mix: Not all alerts cost the same. Ethoca alerts are published higher than RDR and CDRN alerts, so a store whose disputes skew toward Ethoca coverage will see a higher blended cost per alert than one dominated by cheaper Visa RDR alerts. Your card-network and issuer mix quietly shapes the bill.

Recovery win rate: Because recovery is commission-based, the amount you spend there depends on how many disputes are actually won. A higher win rate means more recovered revenue, and a larger commission on top of it. That is a good problem to have, but it is a real line on the bill, not a rounding error.

How much work stays on your plate: This one does not show up as a dollar figure, but it is the most expensive variable of all. A per-alert tool sends you the alert. Someone still has to act on it, refund the right orders, tune the rules, and track outcomes. If that someone is you or your team, the labor cost is real even when the software cost looks low.

Why RDR, CDRN, and Ethoca alerts are priced differently

The reason your bill depends on network mix is that these alerts come from different systems and do different jobs. RDR (Rapid Dispute Resolution) and CDRN (Cardholder Dispute Resolution Network) are Visa-side mechanisms that catch a dispute early and let you refund before it becomes a formal chargeback. Ethoca is Mastercard's equivalent network, with its own coverage and its own cost to the provider, which is why it is published at a higher per-alert rate almost everywhere, Disputely included. None of this is unique to Disputely. It is the underlying economics of the alert networks, and any honest per-alert tool prices Ethoca above RDR for the same reason.

How commission recovery adds to the total

Prevention alerts stop disputes before they harden. Recovery is the second line of defense: when a chargeback gets through anyway, the provider assembles the evidence and fights the representment. Disputely charges a commission on what it wins here, which is a fair model because you only pay when money comes back. But it does mean your total cost of ownership is the alert spend plus a variable recovery cut, not the alert rate alone. When you are pricing tools against each other, compare the whole path (alerts plus recovery), not just the headline per-alert number, or you will misjudge which one is actually cheaper for your store.

Disputely pricing vs Apptics Shield

Apptics Shield uses the same core idea as Disputely: per alert, no monthly fee. The difference is where the alert price comes from. Shield's alerts are partner-priced through official Disputifier and Chargeblast partnerships, which pulls the low end down a few dollars. To be clear, Disputely and Disputifier are different companies; Disputifier is one of the partners that prices Shield's alerts, and it is not the tool this article is about. Here is the full cost anatomy side by side.

Disputely rates from disputely.com; Apptics rates from apptics.ai/shield (July 2026). Per-alert pricing changes, so confirm current terms with each provider directly before you decide.

Read the alert rows carefully and you will see the prices overlap. Shield's RDR alerts start lower than Disputely's published $16, and its Ethoca alerts start lower than $25, but the top of Shield's ranges sits above Disputely's flat numbers. This is not a clean price win for either side, and it would be dishonest to claim one. On raw per-alert cost, they are in the same neighborhood.

Here is the simpler comparison stripped down to the numbers most people search for.

Both are low and monthly-fee-free. Confirm current rates directly with each provider, since per-alert pricing changes.

What the money actually buys

If the per-alert prices are close, the decision is not really about price. It is about what happens after the alert fires. Disputely is a self-serve Shopify app: it delivers the alerts and the recovery service, and your team runs the operation around it. Apptics Shield is a done-for-you service where an operator team runs prevention and recovery for you, monitors alerts around the clock, tunes the rules, and handles the representment work, so the alert never turns into a task on your list.

That operational difference is where the outcome lives. Run well, alert-based prevention plus active recovery is what takes a merchant from a dangerous dispute rate to a safe one. Across Apptics Shield accounts that has meant chargeback reduction of up to 97 percent, dispute rates pulled from 2.1 percent down to 0.31 percent inside 90 days, and more than $50M in revenue protected. The tooling matters, but the hands on it matter more.

The labor you are not seeing: A cheap alert you ignore is worthless. The gap between a good chargeback outcome and a bad one is almost entirely execution: acting on every alert fast, refunding the right orders, and keeping the representment evidence tight. Price the tool by including who does that work, because that is the cost that decides your result.

Critical questions answered

Is there a Disputely free trial or free tier? There is no traditional monthly plan to trial, because the model is pay-per-alert with no monthly fee. In practice the low-commitment structure works like a soft trial: with no setup cost and no subscription, a quiet month simply costs very little.

Will I know my Disputely bill in advance? You will know the per-alert rates in advance, since they are published, but not the monthly total, because that depends on how many alerts your store generates. Estimate your recent monthly alert volume, split it by network, and multiply to get a realistic range.

Is Apptics Shield cheaper than Disputely? Not cleanly. Both are per-alert with no monthly fee, and the ranges overlap. Shield's partner-priced alerts start lower (RDR from $13, Ethoca from $17), but the top of its ranges sits above Disputely's flat rates. The larger difference is the done-for-you service, not the sticker price.

Does per-alert pricing get expensive at scale? It can. At a flat rate per alert, a store generating hundreds of alerts a month pays a total that grows with volume. That is exactly why alert cost is only part of the equation: fewer disputes reaching the alert stage, through better prevention upstream, is what keeps the bill down.

What matters most when you price this out

Compare the whole path, not the headline rate: Alerts plus recovery plus your own labor is the true cost. A tool with a lower per-alert number can cost you more overall if you carry the operational load yourself.

Estimate your volume before you compare: The per-alert rate is meaningless without your alert count. Pull your recent monthly volume and network mix first, then price each option against your real numbers.

Do not confuse Disputely with Disputifier: They are separate companies. Disputifier is one of the partners that prices Apptics Shield's alerts. Disputely is the standalone Shopify app this article prices. Mixing them up will send you comparing the wrong things.

Weigh who runs it: A self-serve app and a done-for-you service can share a price band and still produce very different results, because the outcome depends on the work done after the alert fires.

The bottom line

Disputely is transparently priced and genuinely simple: about $16 per RDR or CDRN alert, about $25 per Ethoca alert, no monthly fee, no setup cost, plus a commission on recovered chargebacks. Your real bill is that unit rate multiplied by your alert volume, weighted by your network mix, plus the recovery cut. Apptics Shield runs the same per-alert, no-monthly-fee model with partner-priced alerts that start a little lower, and the two land close on price. The deciding question is not which per-alert number is smaller. It is whether you want an app you operate yourself or a team that runs prevention and recovery for you, because that is what actually moves your dispute rate.

Frequently asked questions

Does Disputely have a monthly fee?
No. Disputely charges per alert with no monthly fee and no setup cost, plus a commission on recovered chargebacks. Your bill scales with alert volume, not a subscription.

What are Disputely's alert rates?
About $16 per RDR or CDRN alert and about $25 per Ethoca alert, based on its published pricing. Ethoca is priced higher because it is a separate network with different underlying costs.

What will Disputely actually cost me per month?
It depends on your alert volume and network mix, since the rates are per alert. Estimate your recent monthly alert count, split it by network (RDR/CDRN vs Ethoca), and multiply by the published rates, then add any recovery commission for disputes won that month.

Is Apptics Shield cheaper than Disputely?
They are close. Both are per-alert with no monthly fee. Shield's partner-priced alerts start lower (RDR from $13, Ethoca from $17), but the ranges overlap and the top of Shield's ranges sits above Disputely's flat rates. The bigger difference is the done-for-you service, not the price.

Is Disputely the same as Disputifier?
No. They are separate companies. Disputifier is one of the partners that prices Apptics Shield's alerts. Disputely is a standalone Shopify chargeback app with its own per-alert pricing, and it is the tool covered here.

Key takeaway: Disputely is transparently priced per alert (about $16 for RDR/CDRN, about $25 for Ethoca) with no monthly fee and commission-based recovery, so your real cost is unit rate times alert volume plus the recovery cut. Apptics Shield runs the same flat model with partner-priced alerts that start a little lower, so the two land close on price. The deciding factor is not the per-alert number but whether you run the tool yourself or have a team run prevention and recovery for you.