Merchant of Record, compared on what you actually keep
MoR fees range from 3.4% to 10% per sale. At $5,000/month in sales, choosing well is worth hundreds a year — here's the fee math, sourced.
Updated 2026-08-25 · prices verified against official pages
Percentages are the whole product
A Merchant of Record charges nothing monthly and takes a cut of every sale — so the only comparison that matters is the effective cost at your volume. Our scenario: $5,000/month across 50 transactions. At that volume, Creem's 3.9% + 40¢ costs about $215/month; Dodo Payments' 4% + 40¢ about $220; Paddle and Lemon Squeezy at 5% + 50¢ cost $275.
Polar is the interesting ladder: 5% + 50¢ free tier, dropping to 3.8% + 40¢ on the $20/month Pro plan — which pays for itself at around $1,400 of monthly sales by Polar's own break-even figure. Every card on our payments pages shows this math on hover: no fee schedule, no claim.
Know your subtype
Payments is where category labels mislead most, so we split it: processors (Stripe, Mollie, Airwallex) settle money but leave tax to you; Merchants of Record (Paddle, Dodo, Creem, PayPro, FastSpring) become the seller and handle global tax; billing platforms (Chargebee, Recurly) orchestrate subscriptions on top of a processor. A billing platform on a MoR comparison page carries an 'adjacent' tag — it's not a drop-in swap, and we say so.
Gumroad deserves its own note: 10% + 50¢ on direct sales and 30% on marketplace-discovered sales. That's the highest cut on the site — priced for creators who want zero setup, not for anyone optimizing fees.
Compared in this guide
Every claim above links back to computed comparisons with sourced, dated pricing.
Compare the whole category →