Abstract The two-point model by Stangeby has been widely used to gain insight into the relevant transport processes in the tokamak Scrape-Off-Layer (SOL). It has been adapted into a stellarator two-point model (STPM) by Feng to consider additional perpendicular transport (Y. Feng et al 2006 Nucl. Fusion 46 807). We characterize a stellarator-specific recycling regime, detrimental for exhaust performance: the diffusion-limited regime. We extend the stellarator two-point model with additional terms to investigate the impact of the convected power fraction, the fraction of power dissipated in front of the target, as well as a more general parametrization of momentum loss factor. We find that increasing the convected power fraction is particularly detrimental for exhaust performance, and that the momentum loss factor parametrization is key to predict the recycling regime. Herein, scalings made with this extended STPM are compared to EMC3-EIRENE simulations. A simplified island divertor geometry which is limited to a narrow power carrying layer is used. This effectively suppresses cross field transport in the flux-surface-perpendicular direction, but retains the relevant stellarator island divertor features such as bi-normal transport, the 3D geometry of the targets and the flux tubes, as well as the resulting existence of a target shadow region (TSR). Using the additional parameters - extracted from numerical simulations - in the STPM, we obtain a quantitative agreement between this 0D model and the 3D SOL modelled by EMC3-Eirene. This work identifies the key parameters to assess the exhaust performance of the island divertor and ultimately the reactor-relevance of the concept.