Originally published at devtoolpicks.com
Stripe bought Lemon Squeezy in July 2024. Since then, the roadmap has gone quiet, support response times have slipped, and some users have reported checkout errors and payout delays. If you are an indie hacker building a SaaS in 2026, that uncertainty is a real problem.
Two serious alternatives have emerged: Polar, which is open source and developer-first with native Laravel support, and Creem, built specifically for indie hackers and AI builders with the lowest fees in the MoR market.
This post covers all three. What they actually cost, where each wins, and which one to pick based on where you are right now.
Quick verdict: Creem has the lowest fees and the most indie-hacker-friendly positioning. Polar is the best choice if you want open-source control, GitHub integration, and Laravel support. Lemon Squeezy still works, but building on a Stripe-owned platform with an uncertain roadmap is a risk worth thinking about.
Quick Comparison
| Polar | Lemon Squeezy | Creem | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transaction fee | 4% + $0.40 | 5% + $0.50 | 3.9% + $0.40 |
| Monthly fee | None | None | None |
| MoR (tax handled) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | No | No |
| Laravel support | Native | Via API | Via API |
| Revenue splits | No | No | Yes |
| Best for | Developer-first SaaS | Creator products | Indie hackers, AI builders |
| Rating | 4.4/5 | 3.9/5 | 4.5/5 |
Why This Comparison Matters Now
Before getting into each tool, it's worth understanding what a Merchant of Record actually is and why it matters more in 2026 than it did two years ago.
When you use Stripe directly, you are the seller of record. That means you are legally responsible for collecting and remitting VAT in every EU country where you have customers, sales tax across US states, GST in Australia, and a growing list of other jurisdictions. As a solo developer, that is a compliance nightmare you genuinely cannot manage on your own.
A Merchant of Record (MoR) steps in as the legal seller. They handle global tax collection, remittance, chargebacks, and compliance. You keep building your product. They deal with the paperwork.
Lemon Squeezy pioneered this model for indie hackers. Polar and Creem are now competing for that space with lower fees and more developer-focused tooling.
Lemon Squeezy in 2026
Lemon Squeezy launched around 2021 and quickly became the default choice for indie hackers who wanted Paddle-level MoR features without Paddle's enterprise pricing. Clean checkout, simple API, solid affiliate tools. It worked.
Then Stripe acquired it in July 2024.
The platform still operates independently and the core product functions. But there are real signals worth paying attention to. Post-acquisition, users have reported slower feature shipping, support delays, and occasional checkout errors. More fundamentally, nobody knows what Stripe's long-term plan is for Lemon Squeezy. Will it remain a standalone product? Get absorbed into Stripe's MoR beta? Quietly deprioritised? Those questions don't have answers yet.
Lemon Squeezy Fees
5% + $0.50 per transaction. No monthly fee. International transactions may incur additional small fees on top.
On $10,000/month in revenue: approximately $550 in fees.
What Lemon Squeezy Still Does Well
The checkout experience is polished. Integration is straightforward. The built-in affiliate management system is genuinely good, better than what Polar and Creem currently offer. Email marketing features (free up to 500 subscribers) are a useful bonus for early-stage products.
For digital product sellers (ebooks, templates, courses), Lemon Squeezy remains one of the smoothest options. The platform was built for creators first, and that polish shows.
What Lemon Squeezy Gets Wrong in 2026
The Stripe acquisition uncertainty is the elephant in the room. Beyond that, the 5% + $0.50 fee is now the most expensive of these three options. When Polar charges 4% + $0.40 and Creem charges 3.9% + $0.40, you're paying a meaningful premium for... what exactly? Post-acquisition, the value proposition has weakened.
Revenue splits between co-founders are not supported. If you're building with a partner, you're manually wiring money every month.
Who should NOT use Lemon Squeezy: Anyone building a new product in 2026 who isn't already locked in. The acquisition risk is real, the fees are the highest of these three, and the alternatives have caught up. If you're already on it and it's working, there's no urgent reason to migrate. But starting fresh on it today is harder to justify.
Polar in 2026
Polar is the most technically interesting of these three. It's open source (all code is public on GitHub), developer-first in its positioning, and built with native SDK support for frameworks most indie hackers actually use, including Laravel.
It launched in earnest in 2023, gained traction among developers selling tools and open-source software, and became an official GitHub funding partner in 2024. By 2026 it has thousands of companies using it including Tailwind Labs and Midday.
Polar Fees
4% + $0.40 per transaction. No monthly fee. Additional +1.5% for international cards and +0.5% for subscription payments. These are Stripe pass-through fees that Polar does not mark up.
On $10,000/month in revenue: approximately $440 in fees (before international surcharges).
What Polar Does Exceptionally Well
The developer experience is genuinely excellent. Six lines of code to implement a checkout. The SDK adapters for Next.js, Laravel, BetterAuth, and other frameworks mean you're not writing boilerplate; you're calling a function. For a solo developer who wants to ship billing in an afternoon and never think about it again, Polar's DX is the best of these three.
Open source. You can read every line of Polar's code. You can contribute to it. You can audit what's happening with your payment data. For developers who care about transparency, this is meaningful. No other MoR in this space is open source.
GitHub-native features. Polar lets you grant private GitHub repository access, Discord roles, or license keys as product benefits. If you are selling developer tools, CLI apps, or libraries, this is a native workflow no other payment platform offers.
Laravel support. Polar has a documented Laravel SDK. If you are building with the stack covered in the Laravel Forge vs Ploi vs Coolify comparison, Polar integrates without custom HTTP wrapper code.
What Polar Gets Wrong
Revenue splits are not supported. Polar does not have a native co-founder or affiliate revenue splitting feature. If you are building with partners or running an affiliate program, you need to handle distribution manually.
It is a younger platform. The trust reviews on Trustpilot show a mixed picture, with some users reporting account holds during verification (a common issue with newer payment platforms building fraud controls). The platform is moving fast, but "we're a startup" is a real risk for billing infrastructure.
Who should NOT use Polar: Teams who need a battle-tested, highly stable platform with years of track record. Also: anyone building a non-developer-facing product where GitHub integration and open-source positioning don't add value. And anyone who needs revenue splits between business partners natively.
Creem in 2026
Creem launched in 2024 and positioned itself explicitly as the Lemon Squeezy replacement for indie hackers. It has the lowest transaction fee of these three, a genuinely aggressive "0% up to €1,000 in revenue" offer for new accounts, and the most complete feature set for co-founder and affiliate scenarios.
Creem Fees
3.9% + $0.40 per transaction. No monthly fee. 0% on the first €1,000 in revenue (a meaningful buffer for early products still finding their first paying users).
On $10,000/month in revenue: approximately $430 in fees.
What Creem Does Exceptionally Well
Lowest all-in fees. 3.9% + $0.40 is the best MoR rate currently available. On $100,000 in annual revenue, Creem saves you roughly $1,100-$1,500 compared to Lemon Squeezy. That adds up.
Revenue splits built in. Creem lets you automatically split payments between co-founders, affiliates, or contractors on every transaction. This is the one feature neither Polar nor Lemon Squeezy offers natively. If you are building with a partner and want clean, automatic revenue distribution, Creem is the only option here.
Crypto payouts. Creem supports USDC payouts to your wallet. For builders on international teams who want dollar-denominated payouts without bank wire complexity, this is genuinely useful.
Speed. Multiple founders report going from signup to accepting real payments in under two hours. The onboarding is deliberately frictionless. The founder is reportedly responsive to DMs. For a solo developer who wants to ship now and optimise later, this matters.
The 0% introductory offer. Your first €1,000 in transactions costs you nothing in platform fees. That covers a lot of early validation work: your first 10-20 customers, your initial product-market fit experiments.
What Creem Gets Wrong
It's the newest platform here and the trust record is the thinnest. Creem launched in 2024. You're placing billing infrastructure on a platform that is less than two years old. That is a meaningful risk for a product you intend to run for years.
Payment method coverage is 80+ currencies across 100+ countries, solid but less than Lemon Squeezy's 95 currencies and 200+ countries. If you are targeting non-standard markets, check that your customers' countries are covered.
Who should NOT use Creem: Teams who need the maximum stability and track record for billing infrastructure. Also: anyone selling into markets that Creem doesn't yet cover. And developers who specifically want open-source billing infrastructure. Polar is the right choice there.
Head-to-Head: What Actually Matters
Fee comparison at real revenue levels
| Monthly Revenue | Polar | Lemon Squeezy | Creem |
|---|---|---|---|
| $1,000 | ~$44 | ~$55 | Free (under €1K) |
| $5,000 | ~$220 | ~$275 | ~$215 |
| $10,000 | ~$440 | ~$550 | ~$430 |
| $50,000 | ~$2,040 | ~$2,550 | ~$1,990 |
At $50K/month, Lemon Squeezy costs you ~$560/month more than Creem. That is $6,720/year in unnecessary fees.
If you are building a developer tool
Polar wins. The GitHub integration, open-source codebase, and native framework SDKs are purpose-built for this use case. No other MoR comes close for developer-tool products.
If you are building with a co-founder or running affiliates
Creem wins. Revenue splits are built in. The others require you to handle distribution manually or use a separate tool.
If you want the most established option
Lemon Squeezy wins by track record, though that track record now has a Stripe acquisition asterisk. It has more transaction history, more integrations, and a more mature support infrastructure than either Polar or Creem.
Decision Tree
FAQ
Is Lemon Squeezy still safe to use after the Stripe acquisition?
For existing users, yes. The platform continues to work and Stripe has not announced any deprecation. For new products starting from scratch in 2026, the uncertainty is worth factoring in. Both Polar and Creem offer comparable MoR features at lower fees, which makes starting on Lemon Squeezy harder to justify today compared to 18 months ago.
Is Polar reliable enough for production billing?
Polar has thousands of companies using it in production, including well-known developer tools like Tailwind Labs and Midday. The platform has been running since 2023. That said, it is smaller and newer than Lemon Squeezy. Check the current Trustpilot reviews before committing, as the picture can shift with a growing platform.
What is the real total cost difference between these three?
At $10,000/month in revenue: Polar costs ~$440, Lemon Squeezy costs ~$550, Creem costs ~$430. The gap widens significantly at scale. At $100,000/month, Lemon Squeezy costs approximately $1,200/month more than Creem.
Can I use these outside the US?
All three handle global tax compliance as Merchants of Record. Lemon Squeezy supports 95+ currencies and 200+ countries. Polar and Creem support a slightly narrower range. If you're based in Italy or another EU country, all three handle EU VAT through their MoR status, so you don't need to register for VAT yourself.
Do any of these integrate with Laravel?
Polar has a documented native Laravel SDK. Lemon Squeezy and Creem both integrate via their APIs, which work cleanly with Laravel but require more manual implementation. If Laravel is your stack, Polar is the most frictionless choice.
Final Verdict
Three solid options. The right one depends on your situation.
Use Polar if you are building a developer tool, want open-source billing infrastructure, use Laravel, or care about GitHub-native features like private repo access as a product benefit.
Use Creem if you are starting a new product and want the lowest fees, you have a co-founder who needs automatic revenue splits, or you want the most indie-hacker-focused onboarding and support experience available right now.
Stay on Lemon Squeezy if you are already running on it and it is working. Migration has real costs and the platform still functions. But if you are evaluating payment options for a new product in 2026, both Polar and Creem offer lower fees and fewer acquisition-related unknowns.
If you are picking a payment processor alongside your hosting and deployment stack, the Railway vs Render vs Fly.io comparison covers the infrastructure side, and the Lemon Squeezy vs Stripe vs Paddle breakdown covers the broader payment processor market including the original three-way comparison.
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