Polar vs Cody
Merchant of Record for devs — usage-based billing, MoR, 4% + 40¢
vs. AI coding assistant by Sourcegraph — code graph + enterprise codebase context
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
Cody
Cody Free
$0. 500 autocompletes + 20 chat messages/mo. Claude Sonnet + GPT-4o-mini.
Free
Cody Pro
$9/user/mo. Unlimited autocomplete, unlimited chat, premium LLMs (Claude Opus, GPT-5).
$9/mo
Enterprise Starter
$19/user/mo. Adds advanced context (code graph), SSO, centralized billing.
$19/mo
Enterprise
$59/user/mo. On-prem deploy option, full Sourcegraph platform, audit logs, SLA.
$59/mo
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing payg on Polar vs free on Cody.
| Metric | Polar | Cody |
|---|---|---|
| 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.
Cody · 17 features
- Audit Logs — Enterprise compliance.
- Autocomplete — Inline code completion.
- Batch Changes (Enterprise) — Large-scale automated refactors.
- Chat — Conversational AI with @-context.
- Code Graph Context — Automatic dependency-aware context.
- Commands (Slash) — Pre-built prompts (/explain, /doc, /test).
- Custom Prompts — Shareable team-level prompt library.
- Inline Edit — Highlight code → edit via natural language.
- JetBrains Plugin — IntelliJ/PyCharm/WebStorm/etc.
- @ Mentions — Add files/symbols/URLs as context.
- Multi-LLM Selection — Pick Claude/GPT/Gemini per request.
- Neovim Plugin — Nvim integration.
- On-Prem Deploy (Enterprise) — Self-host full Sourcegraph + Cody.
- OpenCtx Extensions — Third-party context providers.
- Prompts Library — Team-wide reusable prompts.
- SSO (Enterprise) — SAML + OIDC.
- VS Code Extension — Primary IDE.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Polar | Cody |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | — | src CLI (context tool) |
| SDK | polar-sdk-python, @polar-sh/better-auth, @polar-sh/nextjs, @polar-sh/sdk | — |
| REST | Polar REST API | Cody API (Enterprise) |
| MCP | Polar MCP | — |
| OTHER | Polar Checkout, Polar Webhooks | Cody for JetBrains, Cody for Neovim, Cody for VS Code, Sourcegraph Cloud Web |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Polar and Cody may be affiliate links — Staxly may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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