Dodo Payments vs Polar
Both are finance tools. Here is what separates them.
| Dodo Payments | Polar | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Finance | Finance |
| Pricing model | paid | freemium |
| Price from | Paid | Freemium |
| Upvotes | 6 | 4 |
| What it does | Merchant-of-record billing for AI products, with usage and credits built in. | Merchant-of-record billing for software, with tax and entitlements handled. |
What Dodo Payments is
Dodo Payments is a billing and payments platform that acts as the merchant of record, which means it assumes legal responsibility for the sale and handles VAT, GST and sales tax worldwide rather than leaving those registrations with you. That is the same arrangement Paddle, Lemon Squeezy and Polar offer, and the reason to reach for any of them is the same: selling software internationally otherwise means registering for tax in countries you have never visited. What separates this one is who it was built for. The platform is aimed at AI-first and SaaS companies, and token metering and API call tracking are billing features rather than something you assemble yourself. The billing models reflect that. Alongside one-time payments and subscriptions there is usage metering and credit-based billing with rollover and overage controls, subscriptions can carry add-ons, and the models can be combined. Credits with rollover are the part generic subscription billing handles worst, and they are how a growing number of AI products actually charge. What a sale costs is assembled from parts rather than quoted as one rate. A domestic United States card or wallet transaction costs 4 percent plus 40 cents, and there are no setup fees, monthly charges or minimum commitments. Surcharges stack from there. Cards and alternative payment methods outside the United States add 1.5 percent. Klarna and Afterpay add 3 percent, as does PayPal. Subscriptions and usage-based billing add 0.5 percent. A domestic India transaction is 4 percent plus 15 cents. Direct debit is cheaper and capped: ACH in the United States and SEPA in Europe both cost 1.5 percent, capped at 15 US dollars and 15 euros per transaction. Bringing your own processor costs 0.5 percent. A refund costs 1 US dollar and a dispute costs 30 US dollars. Standard payouts are free, a USD SWIFT payout costs 25 US dollars, and currency conversion costs the seller nothing because the 2 to 4 percent foreign exchange fee is charged to the customer instead. The integration surface is wide for a platform this young. There is a complete REST API with an OpenAPI reference and full webhook support, official SDKs for TypeScript, Python, Go, PHP, Java, Kotlin, C sharp, Ruby and Rust, and adapters for Next.js, SvelteKit, Nuxt, Remix, Express, Fastify, Hono, Astro, TanStack, Better Auth, Supabase and Convex. Checkout can be a no-code payment link, an overlay, or an inline embed, with React Native for iOS and Android. Coverage is 190 or more countries, 80 or more currencies and 30 or more payment methods, and the platform is PCI DSS Level 1 certified. The trade is the one every merchant of record asks for. You pay a higher percentage than a bare processor charges, and in exchange you never file a tax return in a jurisdiction you have never visited. Worth comparing against Polar and Paddle on the billing model you actually need rather than on the headline rate, because the surcharges are where the real difference sits.
What Polar is
Polar is a billing and payments platform that acts as the merchant of record for the seller. Polar Software, Inc. registers as the reseller in the relevant jurisdictions, so it, not you, collects and remits VAT, GST and US sales tax. EU business-to-business sales with a valid VAT ID are handled under the reverse charge rule. You remain responsible for income tax on your own revenue in your own country. Signing up is free and needs no credit card, but account approval goes through a merchant of record and KYC review that usually takes about a week. What a sale costs is built from several parts rather than a single rate, and the headline percentage falls as the monthly fee rises. Starter has no monthly fee and charges 5 percent plus 0.50 US dollars per transaction. Pro costs 20 US dollars a month and charges 3.8 percent plus 0.40. Growth costs 100 US dollars a month for 3.6 percent plus 0.35. Scale costs 400 US dollars a month for 3.4 percent plus 0.30, and is the only tier with a shared Slack channel and prioritised support. Surcharges then stack on top: cards issued outside the United States add 1.5 percent, cross-border currency conversion costs 0.25 percent within the EU and 1 percent elsewhere, and a dispute or chargeback costs 15 US dollars whatever the outcome. Transaction fees are not returned when an order is refunded, in full or in part. Payouts run through Stripe Connect Express or a manual withdrawal, and Polar never moves the balance automatically. Stripe payouts cost 2 US dollars per month per active payout, plus 0.25 percent and 0.25 US dollars per payout, and Stripe's minimum payout amount per currency means anything below it stays on the balance until next time. More than 130 currencies are supported and checkout picks the currency from the buyer's location, with orders converted to US dollars at the time of the transaction. Unusually for this category, the Polar codebase is open source under the Apache 2.0 licence. Products can be one-time purchases or subscriptions, priced as fixed, pay what you want with an optional minimum, free, metered usage or per-seat, with intervals from daily to yearly. Two decisions are permanent: the billing interval and the pricing type are locked once a product is created, and existing subscribers stay on the price they signed up at when a price changes. Benefits automate delivery of what the customer bought: licence keys, feature flags, file downloads up to 10 GB, private GitHub repository access and Discord invites with roles. There are SDKs for JavaScript or TypeScript and for Python, plus adapters for frameworks including Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit, Astro and Laravel. The customer portal is hosted by Polar under your own slug and cannot be switched off, so part of the customer relationship sits on Polar's domain rather than yours.
We are not affiliated with either product. Upvote counts come from the published formula and neither position was paid for.