Comparing three Merchants of Record, and how to check the answer yourself
All three take on the tax liability, which is the point of the model and the thing they have in common. The differences are in what the rate becomes at your mix, when the money reaches you, what surrounds the checkout, and what a dispute costs. We publish dated figures for Paddle and Lemon Squeezy, read off their own pages. We do not publish figures for FastSpring, so this page does not quote any — it tells you what to go and read instead.
The six things that actually separate them
- Who is the legal seller
- Paddle and Lemon Squeezy both state they are the seller of record and file the tax, as do we. If a provider only processes payments, the registrations stay yours — check the terms rather than the marketing page, on any vendor you shortlist.
- The rate after surcharges
- Paddle and Lemon Squeezy both start at 5% + 50¢, and so do we. Lemon Squeezy then adds 1.5% for international cards, 0.5% for subscription payments and 1.5% for PayPal; their own published example puts a $20 sale into France at 8.6%. Paddle adds neither surcharge but excludes products under $10 from standard pricing. Ours does not move.
- When you are paid
- Paddle converts monthly against a $100 minimum and sends by the 15th, with no withdrawal on demand. Lemon Squeezy pays twice a month and charges non-US bank accounts 1% of every payout. We pay daily by default with no floor. Ask any other vendor for the schedule, the minimum and the payout fee as three separate questions.
- What surrounds the checkout
- Paddle is checkout only and expects you to bring a site, and each domain is reviewed before it can take payments. Lemon Squeezy includes a storefront, signed download links and license key issuance and validation. We include the store builder, hosting and your own domain.
- What a dispute costs
- Paddle charges $15 per card dispute and $20 via PayPal, and charges on pre-dispute alerts too. Lemon Squeezy handles chargebacks but does not publish a per-dispute fee on its pricing page. Ours is inside the commission. This line is easy to skip and expensive to discover.
- Whether your catalogue fits
- Paddle says plainly it is built for software companies and has no in-game purchase tooling. Lemon Squeezy is built for software and digital downloads. If you sell Steam keys, in-game items or a web store for mobile purchases, ask each vendor directly rather than assuming digital means the same thing everywhere.
How to run this on your own numbers
- 01
Export last month's transactions
One real month beats a worked example. You need each sale's amount, the buyer's country, whether it was one-off or a renewal, and what they paid with.
- 02
Split it the way the surcharges do
Domestic against international, one-off against subscription, card against PayPal. Those three splits are what turn one headline rate into three different effective rates.
- 03
Price each platform against that split
Read every figure off the vendor's own pricing page on the day you do it, including ours. Published rates move, and a comparison table with no date on it is a claim rather than a fact.
- 04
Then check the terms around the money
Payout schedule, minimum balance, payout fee, dispute fee, whether there is a contract term, and whether they review your domain or your catalogue before you can go live. Run a test sale through the shortlist before you migrate anything.
When each of the four is the right answer
Paddle, for established B2B SaaS
Fourteen years of filings, sales tax exemption certificates, invoicing built for procurement teams, negotiated rates at volume and a migration service. When a CFO asks who carries the liability and what the track record is, that history is real and we cannot manufacture it. Their RevenueCat integration also makes them the shortest path if web billing has to reconcile against existing iOS and Android subscriptions.
Lemon Squeezy, for licensed software and downloads
License key issuance and validation plus signed download links means a desktop app that checks a key on launch is a working business on day one. The affiliate programme is more mature than ours, and email marketing is included free to 500 subscribers. Note that Stripe acquired them in July 2024 and they now bill as Sold through Link, LLC — which shortens the path to Stripe's own Merchant of Record product, and is a consideration either way depending on how you feel about it.
FastSpring, on evidence you gather
We do not publish sourced figures for FastSpring, so we are not going to characterise it. Establish six things from their own pages before choosing them: whether pricing is published or quoted, the effective rate on your country and subscription mix, the payout schedule and any minimum, the dispute fee, whether a contract term or volume commitment applies, and whether they sell your category. If those answers beat the alternatives for your business, that is a good reason to pick them.
Fungies, and the case against us
Flat 5% + 50¢ with no international, subscription or PayPal surcharge and negotiable at volume, daily payouts with no minimum, a store builder and domain included, sub-$10 products at the standard rate, and games, keys and in-game items treated as first-class. Against that: we are younger than Paddle, so if a filing history stretching back over a decade is what your buyer's finance team needs to see, we do not have one. On our own comparison table we are not the cheapest platform listed either — Creem is.
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 about this comparison
Comparisons and the questions larger teams ask.
Decide it with your own transactions in front of you
Price your last month against all four, then run one real sale through the shortlist. Opening an account here costs nothing and commits nothing, which makes it a cheap way to check the claims on this page.