Lets break these tokens down first:
The positive: At the number 2 spot in market cap Ripple has secured partnerships with over 160 banking establishments - American express, standard chartered and more. With a transaction speed of around 3 seconds and 1,500 tps (transactions per second) ripple also outperforms man of it's rivals in technical specs. It also has ultra low transaction fees. Ripple does have some noble goals to boast of with its goal of empowering communities is third world countries through financial inclusion and reducing financial barriers.
The negative: ripple labs, ripples founders founders own a, quite frankly, ridiculous 60% of the tokens. This has lead many to become suspicious of the token and due to the centralised nature of the toke many have chosen to steer clear of it, opting for more decentralised options.
The positives: At the number 5 spot in market cap Stellars aim is instantaneous peer to peer transactions, Unlike stellar it is open sourced, a decision which has pleased much of the cryptocurrency community. Although, arguably, not as widely adopted as ripple stellar has some big names working with it, most notably IBM. It also boasts a transaction fee of 1 cent per 600,000 transactions so it is incredibly cost effective. It also makes use of smart contract technology.
The negatives: Steller is fast, really fast but it cant boast it is faster than ripple with its 4 second transaction speed. Still relatively young compared to ripple - some would argue that this means greater potential.
Not surprisingly as they had a common founder in Jed McCaleb they have a similar approach and both seek to resolve the issues of cross border payments and have involved large financial institutions in their projects but,in my opinion, Stellar has a little catching up to do. Ripple is massively hyped yes but because it is so active and constantly taking on new institutions. People bitch about it because it is closed source and centralised but this hasn't proven an issue for it's backers, in fact many would argue that is exactly why the banks are interested in it, because of t's transparency.
But to answer your question direct no, Stellar is not currently faster than ripple but it is cheaper. As i said i think that stellar has some work to do and they haven't been great at selling themselves the way ripple has but they may catch up but for now, I'd put my money on Ripple.
