Payments
Each provider is profiled from its own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure. The rate is the visible difference and the smaller one: what actually separates these is whether the company becomes the seller of record and takes on your sales-tax registrations, or moves the money and leaves those with you. Every percentage below names the region it applies to.
Payments
| Provider | Per-transaction fee | Merchant of record | Pricing model |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dodo Payments | 4% + 40 cents per transaction on cards and wallets, plus 3% for PayPal and 1% for cards and payment methods outside the US. The page contrasts itself with the 5% + 50 cents other providers charge. | Supported | One headline rate with named surcharges stacked on it: +3% when the customer pays with PayPal, +1% for cards and alternative methods outside the US. No setup fee. |
| Lemon Squeezy | 5% + 50 cents per sale, with no monthly charge for ecommerce features. | Supported | A cut of each sale and nothing else: no monthly charge for ecommerce features, no trial and no contract. |
| Paddle | 5% + 50 cents per checkout transaction, the same worldwide, with no migration fees, monthly fees or hidden extras. | Supported | One rate per checkout transaction, worldwide, with custom pricing offered to high-volume sellers. Sales-tax compliance is included rather than billed separately. |
| Polar | 5% + 40 cents on the free Starter plan; 3.8% + 40 cents on Pro at $20/month. A monthly fee that lowers the percentage, which is the opposite shape to the rest of this category. | Supported | Tiered: the monthly fee buys the transaction percentage down rather than unlocking features. Starter is free at 5% + 50 cents, Pro is $20/month at 3.8% + 40 cents, Growth $100/month lower again. |
| Stripe | 1.5% + 20p for standard UK cards and 2.5% + 20p for EU cards, on the UK pricing page. Rates are per-country: the same URL family prints 2% for cards issued in India on stripe.com/in/pricing. | Not supported | Pay-as-you-go per successful charge, with no setup fee, no monthly fee and rates set per country. Volume discounts, multi-product discounts and interchange-plus pricing are offered on a custom package. |
Which to consider
The cheapest merchant of record published here — 4% + 40¢ against the category's usual 5% + 50¢, across 220+ countries, with the comparison made on its own pricing page.
Digital products and small SaaS that want checkout, subscriptions and global tax compliance with nothing to configure and no monthly charge — a flat 5% + 50¢ of each sale and no trial or contract to start.
SaaS sold worldwide by a team that does not want tax registrations. One rate — 5% + 50¢ per checkout transaction, the same everywhere — with Paddle as the seller of record and the sales-tax liability its problem rather than yours.
Developers who expect volume and would rather pay a subscription than a percentage. Polar is the only merchant of record here whose monthly fee buys the rate down — $20/month takes 5% + 50¢ to 3.8% + 40¢ — so the maths flips in its favour as revenue grows.
Selling where you already handle your own tax registrations. At 1.5% + 20p on a standard UK card, Stripe is roughly three and a half points cheaper than every merchant of record here, and that gap is the whole reason to take on the VAT work yourself.