payments
Paddle
Merchant of Record for SaaS — global tax, billing, checkout in one
Merchant of Record (MoR) for SaaS + digital goods. Single 5% + 50¢ fee covers payment, tax, fraud, subscriptions, checkout. Compete with Stripe on simplicity-for-tax.
Pricing
| Tier | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Pay-as-you-go | Free | 5% + 50¢ per Checkout transaction. No monthly fee. All-inclusive (tax, fraud, support). |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom rates for high-volume. Dedicated success. Custom migration + implementation. |
| Invoicing (<$10 products) | Custom | Custom pricing for invoicing / products under $10. |
Limits
| Tier | Metric | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| — | compared to diy | Equivalent DIY Stripe + TaxJar + Churnkey setup ~7%+ combined | Cost comparison |
| — | fraud protection | Included — Paddle handles disputes + chargebacks | Fraud |
| — | localized checkout | 25+ languages + local currency display | Localization |
| — | merchant of record | Yes — Paddle is the MoR. Handles global tax, VAT, sales tax, GST. | MoR role |
| — | payment methods | Card (Visa/MC/Amex), PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, SEPA, iDEAL, Alipay, WeChat Pay, 25+ local methods | Payment methods |
| — | revenue recovery | Auto dunning + smart retries for failed payments | Recovery |
| — | subscription mgmt | Full billing: trials, proration, dunning, recovery | Subscriptions |
| — | tax jurisdictions | 100+ countries covered by Paddle tax registration + remittance | Tax coverage |
Features
- Affiliates (Rewardful partnership) — Affiliate tracking (via partner).
- Customer Portal — Self-service subscription management.
- Fraud Protection — ML + human review. Paddle absorbs chargebacks.
- Global Tax Compliance — Automatic VAT/GST/sales tax calc + remittance + filing.
- One-time Sales — Perpetual license sales, single purchases.
- Paddle Checkout — Hosted or overlay checkout. Localized + fraud-protected.
- Paddle Retain — Revenue recovery + cancel flows (acquired Retain).
- ProfitWell Analytics — Included subscription analytics (acquired ProfitWell).
- Self-Serve Invoices — B2B invoicing with custom POs.
- Smart Dunning — Retry logic + email sequences for failed payments.
- Subscriptions — Full lifecycle: trials, changes, cancellations, recovery.
- Webhooks — Standard resource events with HMAC signing.
Developer interfaces
| Slug | Name | Kind | Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| rest-api | Paddle Billing API | rest | v1 |
| checkout | Paddle Checkout | other | — |
| sdk-js | Paddle.js | sdk | 1.x |
| sdk-node | @paddle/paddle-node-sdk | sdk | 1.x |
| sdk-python | paddle-python | sdk | 0.x |
| webhooks | Paddle Webhooks | other | — |
Compare Paddle with
ai-api
Paddle vs Anthropic API
Side-by-side breakdown.
ai-api
Paddle vs AssemblyAI
Side-by-side breakdown.
ai-api
Paddle vs Deepgram
Side-by-side breakdown.
ai-api
Paddle vs ElevenLabs
Side-by-side breakdown.
ai-api
Paddle vs Google Gemini API
Side-by-side breakdown.
ai-api
Paddle vs Groq
Side-by-side breakdown.
ai-api
Paddle vs OpenAI API
Side-by-side breakdown.
ai-api
Paddle vs Replicate
Side-by-side breakdown.
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Paddle are plain references to their official pages. Pricing is verified at publication time — reconfirm on the vendor site before buying.