Polar vs Wise
Both are finance tools. Here is what separates them.
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.
What Wise is
Wise is an account for holding, sending and receiving money in several currencies at once. It converts money at the mid-market exchange rate and charges a separate, stated fee on top. Transfer and conversion fees start from 0.23% and vary by currency, with a volume discount once a customer sends more than 25,000 USD or the equivalent. Registering an account is free, holding money in it is free, and there is no subscription fee. The figures below come from Wise's US pages and are quoted in dollars. An account holds and manages 40 currencies and provides local account details for receiving money in 20 of them. Domestic incoming payments in AUD, CAD, EUR, GBP, HUF, NZD, PHP, SGD and USD are free, while receiving by SWIFT costs 6.11 USD for dollars, 2.16 GBP for sterling and 2.39 EUR for euros. Sending money to another Wise user in the same currency is free. Transfers can be funded by debit card, credit card, bank transfer, direct debit or an existing Wise balance, and Wise states that 74% of its transfers arrive in under 20 seconds and 95% in less than a day. The Wise card costs a one-time fee of 9 USD and can be spent across 150 countries and territories. Purchases made in a currency already held in the account are free. ATM withdrawals are free up to a total of 250 USD per calendar month, after which each further withdrawal costs 1.95 USD plus 1.95%. Topping up an e-wallet with the card costs 2%. Digital cards are issued alongside physical ones, and a card can be frozen and unfrozen from the app. The business account has a one-time setup fee of 31 USD and comes with account details for receiving in 22 currencies. BatchTransfer pays up to 1,000 recipients in a single action, there is a public API documented at docs.wise.com, and team members can be given physical or digital cards with per-card spending controls. Wise states that 96% of its international business payments take less than 24 hours. An opt-in feature called Wise Interest pays a return on GBP, EUR and USD balances at rates that differ by currency, with passthrough FDIC insurance up to a total of 250,000 USD through its program bank, though it is not available to residents of New York or Alaska.
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