The recent annual letter from Stripe's founders sheds light on the pervasive state of eCommerce fraud. (You can read the full letter in our 2025 Stripe statistics). “Fraud is a bigger drag on the global economy than you might think: one report found that fraud costs 3% of a typical online business's revenue. Fraudulent actors today operate on an industrial scale, with teams of engineers, managers, and data analysts,” writes the Collison brothers.

Visa, elaborating on this complexity, underscores that while common fraud narratives focus on stolen accounts or identity theft, in reality, a significant portion of fraud cases are chargeback abuse. “Up to 75% of chargebacks stem from ‘first-party misuse’ or ‘friendly fraud,’” Visa explains.

Mastercard adds further insights, noting that first-party fraud is “costing the industry over $132 billion a year.”

That’s why combating chargeback fraud is a thriving industry.

By popular demand, we're presenting a detailed comparison of Chargeflow and Chargeback Gurus – two companies that help merchants prevent and recover chargeback losses. This Chargeflow vs. Chargeback Gurus analysis will objectively examine their strengths, weaknesses, and ideal use cases. By the end of this piece, you’ll learn which platform best suits your business needs today.

Chargeflow Features and Overview at a Glance

‍Chargeflow is the world's first fully automated chargeback management solution designed for merchants by merchants. From chargeback alerts to hands-free dispute recovery to analytics, Chargeflow does it all to help you protect your sales from fraudsters.

The chargeback operating system was founded in 2020 by eCommerce veterans Ariel and Avia Chen to tackle the chargeback nightmare they faced in their eight-figure business. Today, Chargeflow is the benchmark in the industry for automating chargeback recovery and combating friendly fraud.

Chargeflow has changed the chargeback management landscape with its science-based algorithms and proprietary technology. It leverages thousands of data points to introduce unrivaled chargeback evidence, helping you efficiently prevent, manage, and recover disputes without lifting a finger. Unlike costly pre-purchase fraud tools or chargeback guarantee services with high false positives, Chargeflow offers a trusted, results-oriented solution for managing post-purchase chargebacks.

Brands like Caraway, IMMI, Obvi, Huel, Olipop, and 15,000+ others using Chargeflow have reported industry-high chargeback win rates, increased profitability, remarkable operational efficiency, and improved relationships with card network partners. The user-friendly functionality, seamless integration, success-based pricing, and robust chargeback protection for eCommerce make the platform a standout chargeback solution.

Chargeflow’s Key Features

Chargeflow has distinguished itself in the market by derisking digital payments and giving merchants total control over the end-to-end chargeback recovery processes. Whether you're looking to streamline operations, protect your revenue, or stop first-party abuse, Chargeflow offers a reliable and scalable solution. The platform’s notable features include:

• AI-powered chargeback dispute automation: From evidence gathering to dispute filing, Chargeflow automates the entire chargeback management process. This hands-free approach saves you time and resources and improves dispute win rates by over 75%.
• Comprehensive chargeback analytics: Chargeflow Insights helps you turn customer-generated data into business insights to close loopholes that can lead to future chargebacks.
• Plug-and-play integration functionality: The 2-step integration means you don't have to write many codes or overhaul anything to use Chargeflow. The platform even supports major payment processors, gateways, and eCommerce platforms.
• Chargeflow Alerts: The pre-emptive chargeback prevention system helps you prevent 90% of incoming chargebacks powered by a collaboration with the vast network of Visa and Mastercard.
• Extensive reporting and data analytics: Using Chargeflow is like having a private data management warehouse due to the detailed, customizable reports you get. You can quickly track performance and ROI in real time.
• Success-first pricing: Chargeflow only gets paid when you win cases, and there are no incremental or hidden fees at all. You know what and when you’re paying from the get-go.

Chargeflow has received significant praise from platform owners like Stripe and Shopify, and the 200+ 5-star reviews from customers validate the company’s mission.

Chargeflow’s Pricing

Chargeflow's pricing model is transparent and results-driven, ideal for both SMBs and well-established businesses. You do not pay any setup or subscription fees. The performance-based system means you can predict costs accurately.

• Flat rate pricing is 25% for every chargeback won.
• Large brands handling over 100 chargebacks monthly or with unique business models get a tailored pricing option, ensuring flexibility.
• Brands using Chargeflow alerts pay only $39 per prevented chargeback.

By aligning service costs to value delivered, merchants benefit from risk-free engagement with Chargeflow.

Chargeflow’s Advantages

Chargeflow is a scalable chargeback management solution with remarkable customer service and user experience.

• A 360° automated chargeback management service. You can effectively dispute and win false and fraudulent chargebacks on autopilot.
• 4x ROI guarantee removes all risks from merchants, the best result in the chargeback history since the 1980s.
• Chargeflow Alerts help you prevent up to 90% of incoming disputes at zero duplication charges.
• Universal processor compatibility offers access to every major payment processor, including all major card companies, for increased transaction acceptance.
• Drag-and-drop onboarding and off-boarding equals a seamless transition in record time.
• Proprietary frameworks like ChargeScore and ChargeResponse enable white-glove evidence curation and submission. You do not need to worry about beating the clock, missing vital documentation, or writing off chargeback costs.
• Chargeflow Intelligence provides mountains of actionable data for business decisions.
• Guaranteed decrease in dispute rate and chargeback fee with Chargeflow alerts.
• Military-grade data protection and security measures.

Chargeflow’s Disadvantages‍

• While comparatively advantageous, 25% of successful chargeback wins might not favor all users or businesses that have high average order value.
• More platform integrations are still in the works.

Chargeback Gurus Features and Overview at a Glance

Chargeback Gurus is a product of a company called Risk Mitigation LLC. They established Chargeback Gurus in 2014 to provide chargeback management and friendly fraud solutions. The company proclaims it delivers "end-to-end transaction dispute management services to clients across a wide variety of industries." However, online reviews and individuals with first-hand experience tell a different story. Chargeback analysts, who, in some cases, are reportedly low-wage freelancers, receive transaction information from merchants and contest chargebacks on their behalf. This makes dispute outcomes unpredictable. These analysts are hired and fired at a whirlwind pace, according to Indeed.

Fintech reviewers have equally observed that Chargeback Gurus' website looks especially underwhelming for a B2B service provider with a decade of experience. Its basic designs, minimal tabs, and scant details are unexpected. While PDF case studies boast thousands and millions of dollars in recovered chargeback losses, the lack of named businesses raises eyebrows. The opacity extends to their product descriptions. A demo request is needed before you can access detailed information or pricing. Such ambiguity contrasts sharply with the full transparency you get from Chargeflow.

Chargeback Gurus’ Key Features

Scholars and researchers have faulted outsourced and manual chargeback management for inefficiency, susceptibility to errors, and inability to scale with rising fraud volumes. That said, here are the key features of Chargeback Gurus:

• A proprietary platform, FPRONE™, streamlines chargeback data exchange between internal teams and Chargeback Gurus analysts.
• Order Intelligence supposedly uses data from Visa’s Order Insight and CE3.0, Mastercard’s Consumer Clarity, and Amex Dispute Resolution for ideal efficiency.
• A/B testing manager helps businesses maximize revenue recovery and enhance business metrics.
• Enhanced Analytics, presumably a feature of the FPRONE™ platform, helps merchants uncover hidden vulnerabilities, spot trends, and make decisions.

Chargeback Gurus’ Pricing

Chargeback Gurus is not transparent with its pricing. One is required to schedule a call for pricing information, which prospects have reported is frustrating.

Insiders say Chargeback Gurus charges a handling fee for each chargeback plus a percentage of the win (the exact percentage reportedly depends on the dollar value involved).

Chargeback Gurus’ Advantages

If you’re someone handling chargebacks manually, Chargeback Gurus might offer some incentives. Yet, that pales in comparison to an automated solution like Chargeflow. Noticeable advantages of Chargeback Gurus are:

• Outsourcing chargeback management to Chargeback Gurus might be more cost-effective than investing in staff, technology, and training in-house.
• Chargeback Gurus has several chargeback analysts on their payroll to handle many chargebacks simultaneously.
• Their website declares Chargeback Gurus serves a wide range of sectors.
• Chargeback Gurus claims hands-on customer support, including assigning a success manager to each client.
• The company also provides chargeback analytics, which they claim can help merchants make better decisions.  

Chargeback Gurus’ Disadvantages

Chargeback Gurus (CBG) relies heavily on analysts—often low-skilled, low-wage remote workers—to manage your chargebacks. That’s a huge downside.

• Insiders say Chargeback Gurus have questionable work culture, with jobs tied to vague targets. Expect decisions driven by profit and targets, not your interests.
• The focus on the enterprise market and companies with a monthly minimum of $2,500 in disputed revenue exclude many SMBs from obtaining the service.
• Insiders have equally noted the process seems complicated, and the potential costs outweigh the benefits for small businesses.
• Outsourcing chargeback management to Chargeback Gurus means you have zero control and process oversight.
• Unlike Chargeflow, which lets merchants know what and when they pay upfront, Chargeback Gurus is not transparent with its pricing.
• Chargeback Gurus Smart Prevention Alert is juvenile when put side by side with Chargeflow Alert. Chargeflow integrates seamlessly with major platforms to help you prevent 90% of chargebacks before they happen.
• The premise of outsourcing chargeback management to handlers like CBG has been repeatedly proven flawed. Newer systems provide undeniably superior value for money without compromising internal operations.

Chargeflow vs. Chargeback Gurus: Key Differences to Note

In today's digital marketplace, technology produces sophisticated capabilities. Artificial Intelligence is reshaping industries and amplifying existing risks, such as chargeback fraud. Given this, do you truly want to outsource your chargebacks to a firm that touts expertise yet relies on cheap labor to manage your disputes?

Chargeflow is using the same AI technology that’s revolutionizing payments and commerce to help you plug fraud loopholes without lifting a finger. Here are more vital distinctions between Chargeflow and Chargeback Gurus:

Features and Benefits

Chargeback Gurus is not a technology company in the traditional sense of what a tech firm is today. Instead, they’re a consultancy firm – in this case, a fraud prevention service firm – augmenting human operations with some digital tools.

There’s nothing wrong with that in principle. After all, technology still benefits from human oversight. The problem is this. The company’s business object – recovering and preventing chargeback fraud – requires extensive technology input nowadays. Perps are using sophisticated strategies. As Stripe founders have said, “Fraudulent actors today operate on an industrial scale, with teams of engineers, managers, and data analysts.”

To deliver the value merchants need, you’ve got to flip the model. You must make advanced technology the backbone of chargeback processing. And then you add human expertise as the icing on the cake.

That’s what Chargeflow is doing for its users. So businesses like Chargeback Gurus that do otherwise are still living in the past.

Suitability for Various Businesses

The business case for outsourcing your chargebacks to firms like CBG is that they have extensive experience in how the industry works, dispute nuances, and processor rules. And so they can take the burden of chargeback management off your shoulders.

But that’s not always the case. Here’s why. Chargeback recovery profit margins are usually slim. Add to that, business overhead keeps going up. To keep costs down, outsourced chargeback firms often rely on remote workers in low-income regions, putting their interest before yours. In the end, you, the merchant, get results that are nowhere near their sweetened sales pitch at onboarding.

That’s why they often go after enterprise markets. An insider specifically noted that CBG is mainly targeting companies with a monthly minimum of $2,500 in disputed revenue.

Chargeflow, on the other hand, gives you an automated chargeback solution that works for all businesses with positive ROI. Chargeflow is shaking up the industry with its “one-click, forget-chargebacks” solution. Here’s a case study of Obvi.

Analytics and Reporting

Chargeback Gurus boasts of helping merchants track chargeback causes, make strategic chargeback management decisions, and assess MID health.

But if you truly want a holistic, bird's-eye view of your payments, platform, and chargebacks – plus insights on how to use that data for better business outcomes – then you need Chargeflow Insights.

Chargeflow Insights consolidates data from multiple processors and platforms. With that, you can analyze chargeback metrics, access customer and product impacts, evaluate revenue implications, conduct fraud analysis, and gain source and network insights. All that happens on a single platform. Oh, it's also free for life!

Chargeflow vs Chargeback Gurus: The Conclusion

Back in 2010, when the first friendly fraud case was reported, many believed a simple payment policy shift would solve the issue. Yet here we are in 2025. Chargeback management remains a major challenge.

The rise of BNPL, digital wallets, and crypto, combined with complex, non-homogeneous regulations, has made things tougher for merchants. As transaction volumes rise, fraud follows suit.

Furthermore, the AI arms race has enabled fraudsters to bypass traditional security measures. So merchants hardly detect fraudulent disputes until it's too late. Meanwhile, card networks continually favor consumers, leaving businesses struggling to fight back.

To stay ahead today, merchants must use equally sophisticated technology to prevent chargebacks before they happen and recover losses when disputes slip through the cracks. The first principle of chargeback prevention TODAY is clear: AI-first. Period.

Stop outsourcing chargeback management to low-wage workers with zero domain expertise or technological capability. Automate your chargebacks. Eliminate friendly fraud.

Chargeflow's plug-and-play automation and integrations support businesses of all sizes. Here's how to get started. Want more proof? Read this case to see how Elementor transformed its chargeback management with Chargeflow.