Paddle

Overview

Paddle is the most established merchant of record in the SaaS billing space. When a customer buys your product through Paddle, Paddle is the legal seller. They handle payment processing, global tax compliance, subscription management, invoicing, chargebacks, and payouts.

The key differentiator from newer MoR platforms: Paddle has years of operational depth. Revenue recovery (dunning), advanced subscription lifecycle management, and a proven compliance track record across jurisdictions. This is the MoR you grow into when billing reliability and churn reduction start mattering to the business.

Paddle raised $25M from CIBC Innovation Banking in July 2025, citing 40% year-over-year growth driven by AI products and Apple opening its app ecosystem to web payments. The platform serves 6,000+ SaaS, AI, and app companies globally.

Best For

SaaS companies with meaningful recurring revenue that want a single vendor handling tax, billing, and compliance. Paddle is the right choice when you’ve outgrown “just get payments working” and need subscription depth, revenue recovery, and enterprise-grade compliance without building it yourself.

Strengths

• Tax and compliance at scale. Global tax calculation, collection, and remittance with years of handling edge cases across jurisdictions. This is Paddle’s deepest moat
• Revenue recovery reduces churn. Smart retry logic, dunning workflows, and payment method updaters. For subscription businesses, this directly impacts the bottom line
• Advanced subscription management. Trials, pausing, resumption, proration, plan migrations, and co-terming. The subscription lifecycle is a first-class product, not an afterthought
• Proven at scale. 6,000+ companies, established track record, battle-tested infrastructure. When billing reliability is non-negotiable, this matters
• Expanding payment coverage. BLIK, MB Way, Pix, Kakao Pay, Naver Pay — Paddle is actively adding regional payment methods across Europe, LATAM, and APAC

Trade-offs

• Less flexible than Stripe. You’re working within Paddle’s system. Custom checkout experiences, non-standard billing flows, and marketplace payouts are constrained compared to building on Stripe directly
• MoR pricing is higher. 5% + $0.50 per transaction. That bundles tax, compliance, fraud protection, and billing — but at high volumes the cost is meaningful. Model it early
• Checkout customization is limited. Paddle provides checkout overlays and embedded checkout, but deep UI customization of the payment experience isn’t available
• MoR lock-in. Paddle is the merchant of record. Migrating to Stripe later means establishing your own merchant accounts, tax registrations, and billing infrastructure. This is a real project, not a config change

Ready to start?

• Try Paddle