Payments
Take money from customers, and who handles the sales tax. Prices checked 2026-10-20.
What it is, and what decides the price
Payments is what it costs to take money from customers. Vendors charge a percentage of each payment plus a fixed amount, and the big split is who the legal seller is. With Stripe Payments you are the seller and you handle sales tax and VAT yourself.
With a merchant of record (Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, Creem, Dodo Payments, Gumroad) the vendor is the seller: it collects and pays the tax and charges more per payment for it. Stripe also sells its own merchant of record service, Managed Payments, on top of its normal fee. We compare subscription payments of $29 a month from a US seller.
Which one do you pay for today?
Other tools we compare
What each costs at 200 paying customers
Cheapest first, for the default use case (2 must-haves). Pick a tool to see its plans, limits and sources, or open a leader above to compare it with the others at every size.
| tool | plan | $/mo | covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Creem | Pay as you go | $306.20 | all 2 |
| Polar | Pro | $320.40 | all 2 |
| Dodo Payments | Standard | $341 | all 2 |
| Paddle | Pay-as-you-go | $390 | all 2 |
| Lemon Squeezy | Ecommerce | $419 | all 2 |
| Stripe | Payments + Managed Payments | $471.80 | all 2 |
| Gumroad | Direct sales | $680 | all 2 |
How we compare
Each paying customer is charged $29 once a month (one subscription payment). A US seller, US cards, USD, no refunds or disputes, no discount codes. The cost is the vendor's fee on those payments (a percentage plus a fixed amount each, and a monthly fee where a plan has one), which includes card processing, plus the 0.7% Stripe charges for Stripe Billing and the 0.5% Lemon Squeezy and Dodo Payments charge on subscriptions. Fees for international cards, PayPal, payouts and disputes are not included; they are listed on each tool's page. "Sales tax and VAT handled for you" is a must-have by default (US sellers owe sales tax in many states too), so Stripe is priced with Managed Payments, its merchant of record service; untick it to see Stripe Payments on its own, where you collect and file tax yourself. Prices are worked out from each vendor's published rates, not read off a calculator.