Polar vs Bolt.new
Merchant of Record for devs — usage-based billing, MoR, 4% + 40¢
vs. Prompt to full-stack app in your browser — by StackBlitz
Pricing tiers
Polar
Pay-as-you-go
4% + 40¢ per transaction. Cheapest Merchant-of-Record. No monthly or setup fees.
$0 base (usage-based)
Enterprise
Custom. Volume discounts for high-growth teams.
Custom
Bolt.new
Free
1M tokens/month. 300K tokens/day cap. Public + private projects. 10MB file uploads. Hosting + unlimited DBs.
Free
Pro
$25/month. Starts at 10M tokens/month, no daily cap. No Bolt branding, 100MB uploads, custom domains, SEO support, image AI edit. Rollover tokens.
$25/mo
Teams
$30/member/month. Centralized billing, team access, private NPM registries, design system knowledge.
$30/mo
Enterprise
Custom. SSO, audit logs, dedicated account manager, 24/7 support.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing payg on Polar vs free on Bolt.new.
| Metric | Polar | Bolt.new |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
Polar · 15 features
- Customer Portal — Self-serve subscription management.
- Feature Flags — Simple flag mgmt tied to subscription tiers.
- Framework Adapters — Next.js, BetterAuth, TS, Python, Laravel, Ruby, 11+ more.
- Fraud Protection — Chargeback + fraud handling included.
- GitHub Sponsors Import — Import existing sponsors to Polar.
- Global Tax Compliance — VAT/GST/sales tax filed by Polar.
- Hosted Checkout — Polar-hosted + embeddable checkout.
- License Keys — Generate + validate license keys for software.
- Metering — Track API calls, tokens, custom units.
- One-off Purchases — Single purchases + digital downloads.
- Open-Source Backend — Full platform code on GitHub.
- Sandbox Environment — Test transactions without charging.
- Subscriptions — Tiered plans with upgrades/downgrades.
- Usage-Based Billing — Event ingestion → meter → invoice.
- Webhooks — Resource events with HMAC signatures.
Bolt.new · 14 features
- Browser Terminal — Real shell in-browser. Run npm install, scripts, etc.
- Deploy to Netlify — One-click deploy to Netlify.
- Deploy to Vercel — One-click deploy to Vercel.
- Design System Knowledge — Team plan: shared design-system context for consistent UI.
- Expo Support — Build React Native/Expo apps too.
- GitHub Export — Push full project to a new GitHub repo.
- Image Input — Upload image/sketch → Bolt generates matching UI.
- Import Existing Project — Upload an existing repo and iterate in Bolt.
- Live Edit + Run — Edit code + hot reload alongside AI agent.
- Private NPM Registries — Team plan: use private packages.
- Prompt to App — Describe app → Bolt scaffolds + codes + runs it in the browser.
- Stripe Integration — Hook up Stripe payments in-chat.
- Supabase Integration — Provision + connect Supabase from chat.
- WebContainer runtime — Node.js + terminal + filesystem running entirely in your browser.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Polar | Bolt.new |
|---|---|---|
| SDK | polar-sdk-python, @polar-sh/better-auth, @polar-sh/nextjs, @polar-sh/sdk | — |
| REST | Polar REST API | — |
| MCP | Polar MCP | — |
| OTHER | Polar Checkout, Polar Webhooks | Bolt Web App, GitHub Export, StackBlitz Sync, WebContainer runtime |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Polar and Bolt.new are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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