Online payment providers, compared
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.
Comments are hosted by EchoThread, which sets cookies and offers social sign-in. Like the analytics on this site, it does not load until you accept — see the privacy page.