The best platform depends on who files your tax return
Every list of these platforms sorts them by price, which is the least useful thing about them. The question that actually changes your year is whether the platform becomes the legal seller — because that decides whether VAT registrations, sales tax nexus and chargebacks are yours or theirs. We are one of the platforms below, so read our row with that in mind; the figures are each company's own published rates and every one is linked.
Six platforms, on the three things that decide it
Monthly cost is easy to compare and rarely the number that matters. These are the three that do.
5% + 50¢ per sale, flat. No monthly fee. Negotiable at higher sales volume.
Us. We register, collect and file across 150+ countries, and disputes come to us.
Store builder, hosting and your own domain included.
5% + 50¢, then +1.5% on international cards, +1.5% on PayPal and +0.5% on subscriptions.
Them, worldwide.
Hosted storefront and checkout. Acquired by Stripe in July 2024.
5% + 50¢ per checkout transaction. Products under $10 sit outside standard pricing.
Them, worldwide.
Checkout only. You bring the site.
10% + 50¢ on direct sales before card processing, or 30% when a buyer arrives through Discover.
Them, since 1 January 2025.
A Gumroad profile page, or embeds on a site you already have.
Free with 5% per sale, $29/mo with 2%, or $99/mo with 0%. Card processing on top of all three.
You, everywhere except the EU and UK — Payhip handles VAT there and leaves the rest with you.
Storefront, courses and memberships on every plan.
$29–$119/mo billed annually and no platform fee, but card processing on top and each plan caps annual sales.
You. Sellfy takes no tax role.
Store builder with print-on-demand and email marketing.
Two of these rates are not comparable to the other four. Payhip and Sellfy do not process payments, so Stripe or PayPal takes roughly 2.9% + 30¢ on top of everything in their column — a 0% platform fee is not a 0% cost. The four Merchant of Record rates already include processing.
What to judge them on, once price is out of the way
- Who is the legal seller
- A Merchant of Record buys from you and sells to your customer, so the tax registrations, filings and chargebacks are theirs. A payment processor moves money and leaves all of that with you. This single distinction is worth more than any fee difference on the table.
- What the headline rate leaves out
- A platform fee and a processing fee are different things. Gumroad's 10% is before card processing; Payhip's and Sellfy's plans are entirely before it. Compare all-in or you are comparing two unlike numbers.
- Whether a storefront comes with it
- Paddle and Lemon Squeezy sell you a checkout and assume you have a site. If you do not, the real cost includes building and hosting one. Payhip, Sellfy and we include the shop.
- What you can actually sell
- The banned lists differ more than the pricing does. Gumroad prohibits AI tools and generation services outright. Check the prohibited-products page against your catalogue before you migrate anything.
- How and when you get paid
- Paddle pays monthly against a $100 minimum. Gumroad holds each sale seven days and requires a $100 balance. Lemon Squeezy pays twice a month and charges 1% on non-US bank accounts. We pay daily by default with no minimum.
- What happens at volume
- Percentage models get more expensive as you grow; monthly-plan models get cheaper until you hit a revenue cap and are pushed up a tier. Model your next twelve months, not your last one.
Choosing without a spreadsheet
- 01
Decide if you want the tax work
Sell to one country and it is manageable. Sell to the EU and you are inside the VAT regime from the first euro, with no threshold for digital goods. If that answer is no, the shortlist is only the Merchant of Record platforms and the rest of the comparison is moot.
- 02
Work out your all-in rate
Take your realistic monthly revenue and average order value, then add the platform fee, the processing fee and the monthly plan together. Small average orders punish flat per-transaction fees; large ones punish percentages.
- 03
Check your catalogue against the banned list
The fastest way to waste a migration is to move everything and then discover one product category is prohibited. Every platform publishes this page and almost nobody reads it first.
- 04
Try the checkout as a buyer
Buy something from yourself on each shortlisted platform, from a card in another country if you can. Conversion is decided here, and it is the one thing no comparison table can tell you.
Where we win, and where we plainly do not
The storefront and the tax handling are one thing
Paddle and Lemon Squeezy take on the tax but hand you a checkout and expect a site behind it. Payhip and Sellfy give you a shop but leave the filings with you outside the EU and UK. Getting both means running two vendors, or running one and accepting the gap. Here the store builder, hosting, custom domain, checkout, customer portal and the filings across 150+ countries are the same 5% + 50¢.
One rate, whoever buys and however often
Lemon Squeezy publishes 5% + 50¢ and then adds 1.5% for an international card, 1.5% for PayPal and 0.5% for a subscription — on their own worked example, a $20 product bought from France costs 8.6%. Our rate does not move for a buyer's country, their payment method, or the fact that it recurs.
Money arrives daily, without a threshold
Paddle pays monthly against a $100 minimum. Gumroad holds every sale for seven days and needs a $100 balance before it will pay at all. We pay daily by default, with weekly, monthly and manual as options, and no minimum to clear first.
Gumroad is the faster answer for one file and one audience
If you are selling a single download to people who already follow you, Gumroad gets you live in an afternoon and its Discover marketplace can put the product in front of buyers you do not have. It costs more per sale and the storefront is a profile page, but for that job those are reasonable trades.
Payhip Pro is cheaper if you are domestic and steady
At $99 a month with no platform fee, Payhip beats a 5% commission somewhere north of $2,000 a month in sales — and if you sell mainly at home, the tax handling we charge for is work you did not need doing. The monthly fee is only wasted in the months you do not sell.
Sellfy is the one to look at for print-on-demand
We do not do physical goods at all. If your digital catalogue sits alongside merchandise you want fulfilled, Sellfy handles both in one store and we would be the wrong tool no matter what the rates say.
What sellers say once they have switched
★★★★★ 4.8/5 from 10 reviews on G2 →
Vadim Finayev “We work with quite a few merchants of record, but none comes close to the support and speed of implementation of Fungies. If you want a payment partner that actually gives you the feeling they want to work with you — rather than leaving you on read for three days or randomly restricting your account — you are in the right place.”
David Elliott “I researched the options and Fungies was the best fit for functionality and customisation within a store builder you can connect to your own domain. Taking a small percentage of sales, instead of charging a subscription for every environment and plugin, is refreshing.”
Elnura Abdimanap Kyzy “The platform is user-friendly, integrates easily with APIs and webhooks, and simplifies managing digital products and subscriptions. We were up and running quickly and support has been responsive throughout. Fungies is clearly tailored to the needs of SaaS businesses.”
Francisco Magnone Rienzi “Fungies has been a great partner — fast setup, competitive pricing, and real humans providing quick answers. They are constantly rolling out new features, and I am excited to see what is next.”
Questions people ask when comparing these
If you sell one specific thing, start here instead
The shortlist narrows fast once the format is fixed — a platform that is right for a $9 PDF is rarely right for a $49 course or a game key. These go through each in detail.
By format
- Selling PDFs → Ten platforms compared on a $2,500 month, including what you actually keep after fees.
- Selling ebooks → Where the royalty models — Amazon KDP, Apple Books, Kobo — beat a straight commission, and where they do not.
- Selling online courses → Course hosting, drip content and completion tracking are the deciding features here, not the fee.
By audience
- Selling games → Key delivery, Steam, and selling direct to players alongside a storefront.
- Selling digital art → Licensing, print-on-demand and commissions, which change the shortlist entirely.
- Creator platforms in depth → The long version for the creator economy: link-in-bio, memberships, and building an audience-led store.
Going deeper
- Payment processors compared → If you already have a storefront and only need the payment half of this.
- Merchant of Record explained → What the model actually is, why it exists, and what it costs you in control.
- Fungies against one rival → Head-to-head pages for Paddle, Stripe, Lemon Squeezy, Gumroad and seven others.
Comparisons and the questions larger teams ask.
Try the one part nobody can compare on paper
The store builder opens without an account, so you can lay out a shop and see the checkout your buyers would meet before deciding anything. If it is not better than what you are comparing it against, you have lost ten minutes and learned something about the alternatives.