Stripe Managed Payments vs Paddle vs Lemon Squeezy in 2026

Selling software to people in other countries means someone has to register for VAT in the EU, GST in Australia, and sales tax in most US states, then file in all of them forever. You can be that someone, or you can pay a merchant of record 3 to 5 percent of revenue to be it instead.

That was a stable trade until Stripe entered the category itself, while owning Lemon Squeezy, one of the incumbents. So the question is no longer only about rates. It is about which of these products will still be the recommended path in two years.

Every rate below came off the vendor’s own pricing page on 21 August 2026. Rates in this category move, so check before you commit.

The distinction that decides everything else

A payment processor charges the card and sends you the money. You are the legal seller, which means you own tax registration, filing, and audit risk in every jurisdiction where you have customers.

A merchant of record buys from you and sells to your customer. They are the legal seller. They register, collect, remit, and take the audit. You get one invoice and one payout instead of a filing calendar.

The crossover is a function of how many jurisdictions you are exposed to, not just revenue. Selling to one country, plain processing wins for a long time. Selling globally, the point where an accountant plus your own hours cost more than the surcharge arrives earlier than most founders expect, and it arrives without warning because nexus thresholds are crossed silently.

What each one actually charges

	Headline rate	Notes
Stripe (processing only)	2.9% + 30¢	US online cards. Tax handled separately
Stripe Managed Payments	+3.5% on top	6.4% + 30¢ all in on a domestic US card
Paddle	5% + 50¢	Custom rates at scale, separate quote under $10 items
Lemon Squeezy	5% + 50¢	Same rate, different product shape
Polar (Starter)	5% + 50¢	Free tier
Polar (Pro, $20/mo)	3.8% + 40¢	Growth $100/mo is 3.6% + 35¢, Scale $400/mo is 3.4% + 30¢
Creem	3.9% + 40¢	No separate international card fee

Two footnotes that change the math more than the headline numbers do. Polar adds 1.5% for non US cards, and its lower rates require a monthly subscription, so the cheapest tier is only cheapest above a certain volume. Stripe Tax on plain processing is 0.5% per transaction on the Basic plan, not a flat fee per transaction, which is a meaningful difference on a $200 invoice.

Stripe’s Managed Payments covers sales tax, VAT, and GST in more than 80 countries across 35 product categories. That is a larger footprint than the coverage numbers circulating in write ups from earlier in the year.

Stripe Managed Payments

The 3.5% surcharge on top of normal processing puts it at 6.4% + 30¢ on a domestic US card, which is the highest all in number in this comparison. What you get for it is that nothing else in your stack changes. Same dashboard, same subscription objects, same webhooks, same payouts, same accountant conversation. For a product already running on Stripe Billing, adopting it is closer to a settings change than a migration.

That convenience is doing most of the work here, and it is worth being clear eyed about it. On a $50k month, the gap between 6.4% and Creem’s 3.9% is more than a thousand dollars, every month, for a difference most customers never see.

Paddle

Paddle stays at 5% + 50¢ with custom pricing for larger volumes, and it is the only independent merchant of record in this group with real B2B depth: purchase orders, custom quotes, procurement friendly invoicing, and a support organization that answers when an enterprise buyer’s finance team asks something specific.

If your buyers are companies rather than individuals, that machinery is the reason to be here, and the rate is the price of it. If your buyers are individuals paying by card, you are paying for a capability you will never open.

Lemon Squeezy

Still 5% + 50¢, still open, still shipping features, and still owned by Stripe since 2024. The company has said publicly that it is building a migration path to Stripe Managed Payments and that public access to Managed Payments is close.

Read that in the plainest way. A company does not build an exit ramp to a sibling product unless the sibling is where the road goes. Nothing suggests an abrupt shutdown, and existing stores keep working. But starting a new business on it in late 2026 means choosing the product whose own roadmap points at a different product, at the same 5% you would pay Paddle for a deeper feature set.

Polar and Creem, the cheaper end

Polar’s tiered structure is the most interesting pricing in the category right now, and the most easily misread. Starter is 5% + 50¢ with no monthly fee. Pro is $20 a month for 3.8% + 40¢, which pays for itself somewhere around $1,700 in monthly volume, and the higher tiers move the same way. The 1.5% international card surcharge is the part to model carefully if your customers are spread across countries, because it can erase the tier discount entirely.

Creem’s 3.9% + 40¢ with no international surcharge is the simplest low rate on offer, and simple matters when you are modeling a mixed geography customer base. It is also the smallest company here, which is the trade.

Picking

Selling to one country, under a few thousand a month: plain Stripe. Add Stripe Tax when you start selling somewhere else, and revisit when the number of somewhere elses reaches three.

Selling globally to consumers, cost sensitive: Creem or Polar on a paid tier, with the international mix modeled first. The difference between 3.9% and 6.4% compounds into real money before you feel it.

Selling to businesses, especially in Europe: Paddle. The invoicing and procurement support is the product, not the payment rail.

Already on Stripe Billing and you would rather ship features than run a payments migration: Managed Payments, knowing you are paying roughly two and a half points for that decision. That can be a perfectly good trade for a small team. It is just worth naming as a trade rather than a default.

On Lemon Squeezy today: nothing is on fire, and there is no reason to move this quarter. Read the migration terms when they publish rather than when you need them.

The number to run before any of this is your own blended rate: last month’s fees divided by last month’s revenue. Most people carrying a 5% merchant of record are surprised in one direction or the other, and that number, not a comparison table, is what tells you whether a switch is worth the week it will take.