What $10,000 a month in sales costs you on each payment provider

Take one month of sales: $10,000, made of 200 orders at $50 each. Stripe takes $350 of it. Creem takes $470, Paddle takes $600, and so do Polar’s free plan and Lemon Squeezy. Gumroad takes $1,450.

Those are the headline numbers, and none of them is the whole bill. Tax, payout fees, chargebacks and the size of your average order all move them, sometimes by a lot.

Every fee below comes from the provider’s own pricing page or docs, checked on September 29, 2026. Prices change, so redo the math with your own numbers before you sign up. I show the arithmetic once so you can.

The month we are pricing

$50 sits in the middle of what indie developers sell: a book, a small course, a desktop app license, a month of a SaaS plan. The other assumptions, each of which has a price attached further down:

• One-time purchases of a digital product, not subscriptions
• Buyers pay with a card issued in the United States
• No sales tax or VAT is collected on these orders
• No refunds and no chargebacks during the month
• You are a US business with a US bank account

Every provider here charges a percentage of the sale plus a fixed amount per order:

fee = sales × percentage + orders × fixed fee

For Creem, at 3.9% + $0.40:

10,000 × 0.039 = 390
200 × 0.40     =  80
390 + 80       = 470

$470, or 4.7% of sales. The same two multiplications produce every row in the table.

The fixed fee is the part people underestimate. At $50 per order, 40 cents is 0.8% of the sale. At $10 per order the same 40 cents is 4%. There is a second table further down for a $10 cart and a $200 cart.

Some of these companies are the seller of your product, legally. They are the Merchant of Record: the customer buys from them, they collect and file sales tax and VAT wherever it is due, and they pay you the net. Others only move the money, and you stay the seller, tax included. I explained that split in Merchant of Record or payment processor?. It matters here because a processor’s lower fee comes with tax work the Merchant of Record fee already includes.

The table

Here are the effective rates on the $10,000 month as a chart, from cheapest to most expensive:

xychart-beta horizontal
  title "Effective rate on a $10,000 month (%)"
  x-axis ["Stripe", "Stripe + Tax", "Creem", "Polar Pro", "Dodo", "Paddle", "Polar Starter", "Lemon Squeezy", "Gumroad"]
  y-axis 0 --> 16
  bar [3.5, 4.0, 4.7, 4.8, 4.8, 6.0, 6.0, 6.0, 14.5]

Everyone except Gumroad sits between 3.5% and 6%. Gumroad costs more than twice the next one.

Payout fees are not in the table because they depend on how often you withdraw and where your bank is. They show up in each provider’s section.

1. Creem

Creem is a Merchant of Record built for indie SaaS, AI tools and digital products, and it has the lowest rate of any Merchant of Record here without a monthly plan. Full disclosure: Creem sponsors this site. The numbers here come from its pricing page and finance docs.

The fee is 3.9% + $0.40 per successful transaction, with no monthly fee and no setup fee. It’s the same rate on every sale: international cards and subscription renewals cost nothing extra. The percentage applies to the total order value, tax included. On our month with no tax collected, the base is the plain $50.

The $10,000 month costs $470 in platform fees.

Creem pays out on the 1st and the 15th. Once your balance reaches $50 you click Withdraw, and sales may be held for 7 to 12 days for a risk check before they can be paid out. A bank payout costs $7 or 1% of the amount, whichever is higher, so one payout of $9,530 costs $95.30 and the month comes to about $565. The pricing page says several payout methods are free, so ask Creem which ones apply in your country. USDC payouts on Polygon cost 2%.

Chargebacks cost $25, and Creem handles the dispute on your behalf. Refunds are free to process, though the original fee isn’t returned, the same as on Stripe. License keys, affiliates and revenue splits are built in. Affiliate and split sales add 2%, and abandoned-cart recovery, which is off until you enable it, takes 5% of the sales it recovers. Creem accepts sellers from 87 countries and reviews each store before it goes live.

2. Paddle

Paddle is the established Merchant of Record for SaaS. The pay-as-you-go rate is 5% + 50¢ per checkout transaction, with international cards, tax compliance and chargeback protection included. If you sell products under $10, or need to invoice business customers, Paddle asks you to contact sales for custom pricing.

The $10,000 month costs $600, exactly 6%: $500 from the percentage and $100 from 200 times 50 cents.

Payouts are monthly. On the 1st your balance becomes a payout if it is above your threshold (minimum $100), and Paddle sends it by the 15th. The payout is usually free when the currency matches your bank’s country, dollars to a US bank or euros to a Eurozone bank. A mismatch goes by SWIFT and costs $15.

Chargebacks cost 20 USD, GBP or EUR (40 CAD or AUD), and the fee stays when Paddle wins the dispute. The optional Checkout Recovery emails take 10% of each checkout they recover.

I sell my courses through Paddle, and this is the fee I pay.

The catch is the calendar. A sale on September 2 sits in your Paddle balance until October 1. Paddle sends the payout by October 15, and it can take up to three more working days to reach your bank. Six weeks between sale and bank account is fine with a buffer and hard without one.

3. Polar

Polar is the developer-focused Merchant of Record, with usage-based billing, license keys and an open-source codebase. It changed its pricing in 2026 and now publishes four plans:

Organizations created before May 27, 2026 keep the old Early Member rate, 4% + 40¢ plus 0.5% on subscription payments, until they upgrade. Organizations created on or after that date start on Starter.

On every plan, cards issued outside the US add 1.5%. Disputes cost $15 each, whatever the outcome. Like Creem, Polar applies the percentage to the tax-inclusive total.

The $10,000 month on Starter is $600, the same as Paddle. On Pro it is $380 from the percentage, $80 from the fixed fees and $20 for the plan: $480. Growth would be $530 and Scale $800, so at this volume Pro is the plan to pick. Polar puts the point where Pro beats Starter at about $1,379 a month in sales, assuming $40 orders. At our $50 orders it’s about $1,430.

Payouts go through Stripe Connect, and Polar passes Stripe’s fees through with no markup: $2 for each month with an active payout, plus 0.25% + $0.25 per payout. Polar keeps your balance in dollars, so a bank account in another currency adds a conversion fee of 0.25% in the EU and up to 1% elsewhere. Withdrawals are manual, so you can batch the month into one payout, which costs about $26. Organizations created on or after May 12, 2026 wait 7 days before a sale can be withdrawn.

StackPlan’s monthly plan runs on Polar, and I wrote up the integration in How I added Polar payments to an Astro app.

The catch is the plan choice. Starter looks free and costs $120 more than Pro on this month.

4. Lemon Squeezy

Lemon Squeezy is a Merchant of Record aimed at creators and small SaaS. Stripe bought the company in 2024, and in a January 28, 2026 update the team wrote that its goal is to give Lemon Squeezy users an easy way to migrate to Stripe Managed Payments. The platform fee is 5% + 50¢ on the total order value including tax, and three surcharges stack on top: +1.5% for transactions from outside the US, +1.5% for PayPal, +0.5% for subscription payments. Marketing features cost extra too: 5% on sales recovered by abandoned-cart emails and 3% on affiliate referrals.

The $10,000 month, US cards, one-time purchases, costs $600.

Lemon Squeezy creates a payout on the 1st and the 15th, holds the sales in it for 13 days, and pays out on the 14th and the 28th, with a $50 minimum. Bank payouts are free to a US bank and cost 1% for a bank outside the US, so a seller in Europe pays $94 on the $9,400 paid out, and the month lands at about $694. Disputes cost $15. For products under $10, Lemon Squeezy also points you to its sales team for custom pricing.

The catch is how the surcharges stack. A subscription renewal paid with PayPal by a buyer in Germany is 5% + 1.5% + 1.5% + 0.5%, so 8.5% + 50¢ on the tax-inclusive total. The headline 5% is the best case.

5. Dodo Payments

Dodo Payments is a newer Merchant of Record with a low headline rate: 4% + 40¢ on domestic US cards and wallets. Payments from outside the US, by card or local payment method, add 1.5%. PayPal and buy-now-pay-later add 3%, subscriptions add 0.5%.

The $10,000 month costs $480: $400 plus $80.

Refunds cost $1 each and disputes cost $30 each, the highest flat dispute fee in this group. Payouts are free above $1,000 and cost $5 below it, twice a month by default, once Dodo’s verification checks pass. A non-US business receiving dollars by SWIFT pays $25 per payout, so two payouts add $50 and bring the month to $530. Getting paid in your local currency through a local bank transfer avoids that wire fee, with standard exchange rates applied instead.

The catch is the extras. Ten refunds and two chargebacks in a month add $70 on Dodo, against $40 on Paddle for the same two chargebacks. Visa disputes of $100 or less cost $18 instead of $30, because Dodo turns on Visa’s Rapid Dispute Resolution by default, which refunds those buyers automatically before a chargeback is filed.

6. Gumroad

Gumroad is a storefront for creators that became a Merchant of Record on January 1, 2025. The fee on a direct sale, through your profile or your own links, is 10% + $0.50. Card processing is not included in that number: Gumroad’s help center adds 2.9% + $0.30 on top, so a direct card sale costs 12.9% + $0.80. A sale through Gumroad’s Discover marketplace costs a flat 30%, processing included.

The $10,000 month in direct sales costs $1,450: $1,290 from the percentage and $160 from 200 times 80 cents. If all 200 buyers found you through Discover, the same month costs $3,000.

There is a volume discount. Once your paid sales in a calendar month reach $20,000, new direct sales that month drop to 5% + $0.50. It resets on the 1st, and our month never reaches it.

Payouts need a $100 balance and usually go out once a week, and on the weekly schedule each sale waits 7 days first. Gumroad pays to a local bank account in your local currency. PayPal, with a 2% fee, is the option only in countries where bank deposits aren’t available.

The catch is the price: at $50 per order, Gumroad costs nearly two and a half times what Paddle costs for the same tax handling. You are paying for the audience on Discover and a store that needs zero code, and if you already have both, that is an expensive convenience.

7. Stripe

Stripe is a payment processor. You are the seller, the receipt has your name, and the tax is yours to register, collect and file. It has the cheapest headline fee in the table: 2.9% + 30¢ per successful domestic card transaction.

The $10,000 month costs $350: $290 plus $60.

The surcharges: +1.5% for cards issued outside the US, +1% when currency conversion is required. Disputes cost $15 when you receive one and another $15 if you counter it, refunded only if you win. Standard payouts are free, and so are refunds, though Stripe keeps the processing fee from the original charge.

Now the tax add-on, because $350 is not the fair number to put against a Merchant of Record. Stripe Tax has two plans.

Tax Basic costs 0.5% per transaction in the jurisdictions where you are registered to collect, on sales through Checkout, Payment Links, Billing or Invoicing. If all 200 buyers are somewhere you are registered, that is $50, and the month becomes $400. Tax Basic calculates and collects. It does not register you or file for you.

Tax Complete adds registrations and filings on a yearly contract billed monthly. The smallest tier is $90 a month for 2 registrations a year, 200 transactions a month and 4 filings a year, which makes our month $440. Notice the 200 transactions cap: it is exactly our month. Each order past 200 costs another 50 cents, and the next tier is $430 a month for 1,000 transactions. And even then the legal duty stays with you: if a filing is wrong, the letter comes to your company.

Stripe also sells its own Merchant of Record layer, Managed Payments, at 3.5% per transaction on top of the Payments fee. That is 6.4% + 30¢, or $700 on our month, more than Paddle.

FastSpring and the others

FastSpring is a Merchant of Record for software and digital products, and I left it out because it publishes no rate. Its pricing page says the team works out a flat rate based on your transaction type and volume, and without a public formula there is no honest row to write.

PayPal, Braintree, Square and Airwallex are processors like Stripe. Their US online card rates run from 2.8% + 30¢ (Airwallex) to 2.99% + 49¢ (PayPal) or 3.3% + 30¢ (Square’s free plan), and a buyer who pays with a PayPal account costs 3.49% + 49¢. The Stripe section applies to them with different decimals.

When the cart is $10 or $200

Same $10,000, different order size: a $10 product sold 1,000 times, and a $200 product sold 50 times.

Here’s how the fixed fee fades as the order grows. The upper line is Paddle at 5% + $0.50, the lower line is Stripe at 2.9% + $0.30:

xychart-beta
  title "Effective rate by order size (%)"
  x-axis "Order size ($)" [10, 20, 50, 100, 200]
  y-axis 0 --> 12
  line [10, 7.5, 6, 5.5, 5.25]
  line [5.9, 4.4, 3.5, 3.2, 3.05]

At $10, the fixed fee is half of what you pay. Paddle’s 50 cents on a $10 sale is 5% by itself, which is why both Paddle and Lemon Squeezy point you to custom pricing under $10. Gumroad at $10 takes one dollar in five. At $200 the fixed fees fade and every Merchant of Record except Gumroad sits between 4.1% and 5.25%.

If your average order is under $20, negotiate the fixed fee, not the percentage. Over $100, do the opposite.

International buyers and VAT

Now the two assumptions most people cannot make: US-only buyers and no tax.

Say half of your 200 buyers pay with a card issued outside the US, and you charge everyone in dollars. Creem, Paddle and Gumroad charge nothing extra for that. Polar, Lemon Squeezy and Dodo add 1.5% on those $5,000, so $75. Stripe adds the same $75, which takes it from $350 to $425 before any tax.

Charging those buyers in their own currency adds a conversion cost. Stripe adds another 1%, $50 here. Paddle converts the sale into your balance currency at the mid-market rate plus 2% for euros and pounds, and up to 3% for other currencies. Creem’s banking partners apply a small conversion fee at payout when your bank account uses a different currency than your customers pay in.

Then the tax base. Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, Dodo and Creem apply the percentage to the total the customer paid, VAT included. A German buyer pays 19% VAT on your $50 product, so the total is $59.50, and a 5% fee applies to $59.50, not to $50. Depending on the rate, that is 37 to 48 cents more per sale, roughly $75 to $95 on a month where every buyer is in the EU.

The Merchant of Record handles that VAT for you. On Stripe, with 100 EU buyers, you owe VAT in their countries from the first sale, and Stripe Tax can calculate it and file through partners while the registration and the liability stay yours. Put a number on your accountant’s hours before you compare $425 with $600.

What I pay

I sell my courses through Paddle at the 5% + 50¢ rate above, so a $50 sale costs me $3. StackPlan’s monthly plan runs on Polar, and the first thing I would check on that account after writing this is the plan table, because what Polar charges depends on when the organization was created and whether it ever upgraded.

For a new product today I would try Creem first, as I wrote in Merchant of Record or payment processor?. It has the lowest rate without a monthly plan, and that rate doesn’t change with the buyer’s country or with renewals.

Take the $50 product with half the buyers outside the US, as in the section above, and add the payout fees for a US business. Creem comes to about $565 (no international surcharge, 1% on the payout). Dodo comes to $555 ($75 of surcharges, free payouts). Polar Pro comes to about $580 (the same surcharges plus Stripe’s payout fees). Paddle stays at $600 with nothing to add. The spread is $45 a month at this volume. That is real money, and it is also less than one hour of accounting time saved every month by not being the seller, which every one of them includes and plain Stripe does not.

With subscriptions the order changes. Creem charges the same rate on a renewal, while Dodo adds 0.5%, so the same month billed as 200 monthly renewals moves Dodo to $605 and leaves Creem at $565, the lowest of the four.

I keep the fee rules behind Payment Processor as data with a check date on each rule. That data was last reviewed in July, and this post goes further in two places: Polar’s paid plans and Gumroad’s $20,000 discount. Take the formula, put in your own average order and your own country, and run it on the day you decide, with the provider’s pricing page open in the next tab. The calculator on paymentprocessor.dev does the same arithmetic with your inputs.

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