Paddle or Lemon Squeezy: SaaS Fees Beyond the Base Rate

Paddle’s checkout pricing lists 5% plus 50 cents per transaction, with no monthly fee and no separate subscription or international surcharge. For SaaS sellers, that makes its published fee relatively straightforward to forecast across customer locations.

Lemon Squeezy’s ecommerce pricing starts at the same 5% plus 50 cents, also without a monthly ecommerce charge. But its detailed fee schedule adds 0.5% for subscription payments and 1.5% for transactions outside the US. Under those published rates, Paddle costs less for the card-paid subscriptions modeled below, and the gap grows with the share of outside-US sales.

What the shared base fee covers

Both platforms act as merchants of record for sales through their services. Their offers combine payment collection, subscription billing and handling of applicable sales tax or VAT. A SaaS company choosing between them is comparing two ways to outsource similar checkout and indirect-tax work, so the transaction fee is a useful starting point.

The matching base rate applies most cleanly to a one-time, US card sale. For a US subscription, Lemon Squeezy’s recurring addition creates a smaller gap; for an outside-US subscription, the recurring and international additions stack. Its schedule also lists an extra charge for PayPal payments, so a card-only estimate should not be treated as a forecast for every payment method.

Three subscription cost scenarios

For a hypothetical $10 domestic SaaS subscription charge, Paddle’s published fee is $1 and Lemon Squeezy’s is $1.05.

These are illustrative calculations using the published prices checked on November 1, 2026. Each buyer makes one successful monthly card payment in US dollars, and the examples assume no tax is added to the stated order totals. They exclude refunds, optional services, negotiated rates and payout costs. “Outside the US” follows Lemon Squeezy’s international-transaction category; the results are platform transaction fees, not seller profit.

Low-priced, US-only plan: In one month, 100 US transactions are $10 each, producing $1,000 in buyer charges. Paddle’s formula gives 100 × ($0.50 + 5% of $10) = $100. Lemon Squeezy’s subscription formula gives 100 × ($0.50 + 5.5% of $10) = $105.
Mixed customer locations: In one month, 200 transactions are $40 each; 140 are in the US and 60 are outside it. Paddle’s fee on the $8,000 total is $500. Lemon Squeezy’s base and subscription fees total $540, while the international addition on $2,400 of charges adds $36, for $576 overall.
Outside-US subscription base: In one month, 1,000 outside-US transactions are $100 each, totaling $100,000. Paddle’s published checkout formula gives $5,500. Lemon Squeezy’s combined subscription and international formula gives $7,500, or $2,000 more for that month.

The fixed component has a different effect from the percentage additions. On a $10 charge, 50 cents alone is 5% of what the buyer pays, making the modeled total fees 10% and 10.5% respectively. On a $100 outside-US subscription charge, the same fixed component has less weight; the two percentage additions account for most of Lemon Squeezy’s higher modeled bill.

Tax and payouts change the amount left over

The examples set added tax to zero to make the fee formulas comparable. Lemon Squeezy calculates its platform fee on the total order value, so tax added at checkout can increase the amount on which its percentage is charged. Tax collected for remittance is also separate from the seller’s earnings. A listed subscription price and a buyer’s final payment therefore need not be the same amount in every market.

Payouts are another layer beyond the transaction fee. Lemon Squeezy’s published payout charges vary by method and destination, and the examples above do not include them. For a meaningful comparison of cash received, a seller would need to use its expected payout country, method and currency alongside its customer mix. The modeled fee gap describes checkout transactions under the stated assumptions, not an all-in estimate for every business.

Plans below $10 need separate terms

Both vendors direct sellers of products below $10 toward custom pricing. Neither publishes a universal replacement rate for that price band, so applying the standard formula to a $5 plan would be a provisional estimate, not a quoted fee. The $10 scenario sits at the boundary and uses the published formula; a lower price needs terms from the provider before it can be compared with the same confidence.

The fixed charge explains why this exception matters for inexpensive SaaS. Cutting a recurring plan’s price reduces the percentage portion of each fee but leaves the fixed amount attached to every successful charge. A longer billing interval could reduce the number of fixed charges for a customer who would otherwise pay monthly, although it changes when that customer pays and may change the plan a seller can offer. Custom pricing remains the decisive unknown for a product below the published threshold.

Invoices before and after payment serve different needs

Paddle documents invoicing before bank-transfer payment, while Lemon Squeezy documents invoices generated for completed orders.

For a buyer who must pay by bank transfer after receiving an invoice, Paddle’s service terms specify 3.5% of the selling price for an invoiced bank-transfer payment. They apply the ordinary checkout fee if the invoiced buyer is redirected to checkout instead. On a hypothetical $100 sale with no tax or other charges, those formulas produce $3.50 for bank-transfer invoicing and $5.50 for checkout; the payment route changes the fee.

Lemon Squeezy’s invoice guide describes generating a PDF for an existing order or an individual subscription payment. That meets a buyer’s need for a record of a charge, but the documented flow does not establish an equivalent invoice-before-payment bank-transfer route. A SaaS business with buyers who require that route should distinguish it from simply providing invoices after card payments.

Which billing model favors which platform?

Recurring sales outside the US: Paddle has the lower published card transaction fee in the modeled conditions. The more revenue that falls into Lemon Squeezy’s outside-US category, the larger the difference in absolute dollars.
Mostly US, one-time card sales: The listed base fees match. The fee schedule alone offers little reason to prefer either platform for those transactions; subscription needs may change that calculation.
Products below $10 or buyers who pay against an invoice: Resolve the low-price terms or the required invoice workflow first. Those conditions determine whether the standard checkout comparison describes the sales the SaaS business will actually make.