Plan your Stripe ISO exercise
Calculator · free · no signup · pre-IPOStripe is pre-IPO. Plan your AMT impact at any valuation: current 409A, expected IPO price, or post-IPO scenarios.
Beta · invite-only · AlphaLatitude Inc. · Free Tools
Your grant
Seeded from secondary-market data, as of Jun 16, 2026
Tax inputs
Grant timeline
Net final value at year 3 sale — optimized plan
$307,034
After-tax dollars at end of year 3, net of all federal + state taxes through the sale.
This year: exercise 2,837 shares (of 10,000 total).
= gross gain at sale − federal + state LTCG − AMT premium above baseline regular tax (time-valued)
AMT premium for exercising: $172,675 (on top of $228,434 regular tax across the horizon)
Optimized plan keeps $54,879 more than lump-sum, $402 more than even split.
Federal AMT crossover this year: 854 shares ($57,238 bargain element). Above that, each additional share this year adds federal AMT.
Estimates only. Not financial advice.
Net final value by year
Running tally: NTV from shares exercised through year y, minus AMT premium paid through year y. The last year matches the plan's headline NTV. Hover a year for plan totals.
Optimized exercise schedule
You pay the higher of Regular tax and Tentative AMT per jurisdiction, then subtract Credit recovered. The result is Net tax. Hover any number for the bracket-by-bracket breakdown.
| 1 | 2,837 | |||
| 2 | 3,630 | |||
| 3 | 3,533 |
Federal AMT credit
Earned
$143,478
Recovered
$0
Remaining
$143,478
The AMT credit only recovers in years where regular tax exceeds AMT — typically a year with no ISO exercise. Every year in this schedule has bargain element, so AMT exceeds regular tax in every year and the credit carries forward untouched. Try a longer horizon or fewer total shares to introduce a recovery year.
Plan comparison
Net value at the end of your hold horizon.
Lump-sum
All in Year 1
$252,155
−$54,879
Even split
Equal shares each year
$306,632
−$402
Optimized
Tax-aware schedule
$307,034
Highest
Estimates only. Excludes disqualifying dispositions, NSOs, multi-state moves, and AMT preferences other than ISO bargain elements. Long-term capital gains tax assumes a qualifying disposition (ISO held ≥1 yr from exercise and ≥2 yr from grant); state LTCG follows ordinary brackets except where the state grants preferential treatment (HI, ND, SC, WI, AR, NM) or has a dedicated LTCG-only tax (WA). Assumes you are within the $100K ISO limit (any portion of an annual ISO grant whose FMV at grant exceeds $100K is treated as NSO from the start, §422(d)). State AMT figures are 2025 (next-year values published in late 2026). Not financial advice.
QSBS note. If your shares qualify (typically pre-IPO C-corp grants held 5+ years), a federal rule lets you exclude up to $10M of gain on a future sale from federal tax. That single rule shifts exercise-timing math more than AMT does. (This is §1202 “qualified small-business stock”.) Modeled in beta, not here.
You optimized one grant in isolation. The beta optimizes ISOs alongside your RSUs, NSOs, and stock in one plan.
Request beta access →About Stripe
Stripe is a privately held Fintech company, incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in South San Francisco, CA.
Last reported secondary-market price: $72.01 per share (as of 2026-06-16). Your own 409A may differ.
$95B; RSU-heavy comp.
Equity grants at Stripe typically include incentive stock options (ISOs), non-qualified stock options (NSOs), and restricted stock units (RSUs).
Stripe, Inc. is an Irish and American multinational financial services and software as a service (SaaS) company dual-headquartered in South San Francisco, California, United States, and Dublin, Ireland. The company primarily offers payment-processing software and application programming interfaces for e-commerce websites and mobile applications.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Brothers Patrick and John Collison founded Stripe in 2010 to solve a problem they had encountered themselves: accepting payments online required weeks of bank integrations and bespoke code. Stripe replaced that with a few lines of API. Today the company processes hundreds of billions of dollars in annual payments volume for millions of businesses worldwide. Its most recent primary funding round closed at $694 million in April 2024; by February 2026 an employee tender offer set its valuation at $159 billion.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org
Equity comp at Stripe
- Starting in 2022, Stripe stopped granting ISOs to new hires and switched to RSUs (restricted stock units, where you receive shares directly when they vest, taxed as ordinary income at vest). If you joined Stripe before 2022 and hold ISOs, your grant is fixed: you will not get more ISOs going forward. The AMT + ISO calculator on this page is most useful for planning when to exercise those existing grants. New hires after 2022 should use the RSU sell-vs-hold calculator instead, since they receive no ISOs.
- RSUs use double-trigger vesting. Two things must both happen before the shares are yours: (1) the normal time-based vesting completes, and (2) the company has a liquidity event (an IPO or an acquisition). Until both happen, you do not yet own the shares and you do not owe tax on them.
Sources: theinformation.com
Researched 2026-05-06.
OptionsAhoy is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Stripe.
The calculator works at any Stripe valuation: enter your strike, the current 409A FMV, an expected IPO price, or anywhere in between. AMT is triggered on the bargain element (FMV minus strike) when you exercise; the calculator models federal AMT, state AMT, and the multi-year credit-recovery path.
Example: at Stripe's last reported price of $72.01, exercising 5,000 ISOs with a $21.6 strike creates a $252,050 bargain element. Above the 2026 federal AMT exemption ($88,100 single, $137,000 married joint), the 28% AMT rate adds roughly $70,574 on top of regular tax before any state AMT (CA, CO, CT, MN). The credit recovers in later years when your regular tax exceeds AMT. The calculator above runs your exact figures.
All Stripe tools → · Use the generic AMT + ISO Exercise Calculator for any company.
Stripe equity questions
- How much alternative minimum tax (AMT) will I owe exercising Stripe ISOs?
- Exercising incentive stock options (ISOs) does not create regular income tax, but the bargain element (the fair market value at exercise minus your strike price) counts toward the alternative minimum tax (AMT). The amount depends on the bargain element, your other income, your filing status, and your state. The calculator above models federal and state AMT, the AMT crossover point, and how the credit recovers in later years for your exact Stripe figures.
- Does Stripe grant ISOs, NSOs, or RSUs?
- Equity compensation at Stripe typically takes the form of incentive stock options (ISOs), non-qualified stock options (NSOs), and restricted stock units (RSUs). Incentive stock options can trigger the alternative minimum tax (AMT) when you exercise. Restricted stock units are taxed as ordinary income when they vest.
- Do Stripe RSUs use double-trigger vesting?
- Yes. Stripe restricted stock units (RSUs) vest only when two things both happen: the time-based schedule completes, and the company has a liquidity event such as an initial public offering (IPO) or an acquisition. Until both occur you do not own the shares and owe no tax on them.
- Are Stripe shares eligible for QSBS?
- They might be. Qualified small business stock (QSBS) under Internal Revenue Code Section 1202 can exclude federal tax on much of the gain when shares were acquired at original issuance from a C-corporation while its gross assets were under $50 million, and held at least five years. Whether your Stripe shares qualify turns on when you acquired them and the company's asset size at that time.
One piece of the puzzle.
OptionsAhoy plans your Stripe equity alongside hedging, vesting, and de-concentration, across bullish, neutral, and bearish market scenarios. Free during beta.