Payments
Paddle
Merchant of record for software and digital products. Paddle handles payments, sales tax, and compliance across markets.
Pricing as seen
See site. Paddle publishes all-inclusive or custom pricing rather than a simple per-card rate.
Checked 16 Oct 2026. Prices change. Confirm on the vendor site before you buy.
Pricing sourceUpdated
16 Oct 2026
Added
16 Oct 2026
Supported builders
Call it from a server-side integration in any of these stacks. Do not put private API keys in the client. Overlay checkout can be triggered from a frontend only with the keys Paddle tells you are public.
What it is
Paddle’s homepage says it acts as the merchant of record for digital product businesses and manages payments, tax, compliance, and billing. You integrate checkout and subscriptions. They remit sales tax and sit between you and the card networks.
That is the trade versus Stripe. You give up some control and pay Paddle’s fee structure, which their pricing page describes as all-inclusive or custom rather than a single public card rate we are willing to quote here.
Best for: A digital product sold in many countries, where sales tax and being the merchant are the problems you want to hand off.
Watch-outs
- Paddle has to approve what you sell. Not every business model is accepted.
- Moving from Stripe later means migrating customers, not only code.
Our take
Opinion from ShipSafeStack. Not a score, not a certification, and not a sponsorship.
The serious option when selling software globally is mostly a tax problem you do not want. Read what “merchant of record” means for refunds and chargebacks before you switch an existing Stripe app. It is a business change, not a library swap.