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 $1,700 of monthly sales. 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.
Every claim above links back to computed comparisons with sourced, dated pricing.
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