Paddle vs Lemon Squeezy

Side-by-side — pricing, strengths, tradeoffs, and fit.

Paddle

The complete payments infrastructure for SaaS

Lemon Squeezy

Payments, tax & subscriptions for software companies

At a glance

· Not enough data·From 5% + 50¢ per checkout transaction
Free Tier
· Not enough data·From 5% + 50¢ per transaction

Overview

One-liner

The complete payments infrastructure for SaaS

One-liner

Payments, tax & subscriptions for software companies

Maturity

Not enough data

Maturity

Not enough data

Open source

✕ No

Open source

✕ No

Pricing

Free tier

✕ None

Free tier

✓ Available

Starts at

5% + 50¢ per checkout transaction

Starts at

5% + 50¢ per transaction

Model

Usage-based

Model

Usage-based

Enterprise

✕ None

Enterprise

✕ None

Best for

✓ Best for

SaaS companies wanting a merchant of record to handle global tax and compliance

✓ Best for

Indie developers and small SaaS companies selling digital products globally

Not ideal for

✕ Not for

—

✕ Not for

—

Strengths

↑ Strengths

Acts as merchant of record for global sales tax obligations
Fraud protection: blocks card attacks, fights chargebacks, screens fraudsters
Subscription billing in 20+ currencies with multiple payment methods
Includes free subscription analytics for revenue reporting

↑ Strengths

Acts as merchant of record: takes on sales tax and VAT collection and filing
Issues, deactivates and re-issues software license keys automatically after each sale
Built for digital goods — software and SaaS, eBooks, PDFs, design assets

Weaknesses

↓ Weaknesses

Standard pricing is not available for low-value products or invoicing requirements
High transaction fees for low-value items
Cannot be used to sell physical products or anything that needs physical delivery
Not for human services unrelated to software, such as pure consulting

↓ Weaknesses

Ecommerce transactions incur a transaction fee plus a fixed per-transaction cost.
Transactions made outside the US may carry small additional fees on top of the standard fee
Only sells digital goods that can be fulfilled through Lemon Squeezy — not physical products
Full Paddle profile →Full Lemon Squeezy profile →