You ship a product. Someone wants to pay. Then you find out you owe sales tax in Texas, VAT in Germany, GST in Australia – and the clock started the moment your first dollar crossed a border.
Nobody tells you this when you're building. You find out when a payment processor flags your account, or when a user in Canada completes checkout and the math is wrong, or when you read a thread on X about a founder getting hit with a six-figure tax bill from two years ago.
This is the compliance problem. It's not fun. And it's exactly what a Merchant of Record (MoR) exists to solve.
What a Merchant of Record actually does
A Merchant of Record (MoR) is the legal entity that processes transactions, assumes tax and compliance responsibility, and manages refunds and liabilities for every sale made on your behalf. In practice, that means the MoR's name sits on the invoice. Their legal entity files the tax returns. When a customer in France disputes a charge, the chargeback lands with the MoR, not with you.
For an indie SaaS founder, this is significant. You don't have to register for VAT in the EU. You don't have to track economic nexus thresholds in 45 US states. You don't have to deal with bank disputes. The MoR absorbs all of it.
The tradeoff is a fee on every transaction – typically somewhere between 3.4% and 7%+ depending on the platform and what your transaction actually looks like (international card, currency conversion, subscription billing, etc.).
That fee range matters more than most founders realize. The listed rate and the real rate are often very different.
What indie founders should actually look for
Most MoR comparison articles optimize for the wrong things – feature tables, logo grids, and category scores. What actually matters when you're a solo founder or a small team:
1. All-in pricing (not headline pricing)
Platforms advertise a base rate. International cards, currency conversion, subscription billing, and payout fees stack on top. Get to the all-in number before you decide.
2. No sales calls, no minimums
Some MoR platforms (mostly enterprise-focused ones) require a demo before you can even see a pricing page. As an indie founder, you need to sign up, test, and go live – not wait for a callback.
3. Tax coverage that actually works
The whole point of an MoR is tax compliance. Check which countries are covered, whether digital goods are handled separately (the EU's OSS regime is its own beast), and whether VAT invoicing is automatic.
4. Speed to live
Integration should take hours, not days. Look for SDKs, pre-built checkout flows, and documentation that assumes you're one person, not a team of five engineers.
5. What happens when something breaks
Chargebacks, failed payments, disputed refunds – your MoR's support quality becomes your support quality. Slow response times or black-box processes will cost you.
The 2026 MoR landscape for indie SaaS
Here's how the main options compare right now.
Paddle
Paddle is the oldest indie-focused MoR in the space and still the most mature. It handles tax compliance in 200+ countries, has polished checkout flows, and has been the default choice for bootstrapped SaaS for years.
The friction: it's increasingly built for teams, not solo founders. The onboarding process has gotten heavier, and the pricing reflects that. Paddle Billing (their newer product) is more flexible but also more complex to set up. If you're already at $10k MRR and need something enterprise-grade, Paddle holds up. If you're just getting started, the setup cost may not be worth it.
All-in rate: ~5% + $0.50.
LemonSqueezy (now part of Stripe)
LemonSqueezy was the beloved indie-hacker MoR until Stripe acquired it in July 2024. The product still works, but the roadmap has gone quiet, support response times have slipped, and there have been documented incidents of checkout errors and payout delays.
The core tension: LemonSqueezy was built to be founder-friendly. Stripe is an infrastructure company. Those are genuinely different priorities, and it shows in how the product has evolved post-acquisition. If you're building something new today, building on a Stripe-owned platform with an uncertain future is a real risk to weigh.
All-in rate: ~7% + $0.50.
Polar
Polar raised on an open-source Merchant of Record pitch and has built a strong developer community. It integrates natively with GitHub, works well for open-source projects with paid tiers, and has a clean API.
The limitation: Polar is billing-only. You still need to wire up authentication separately, maintain a customer database elsewhere, and build your own analytics setup. The base rate is 5% + $0.50, but international cards add 1.5% on top. The actual all-in cost lands around 6.5% + $0.50 for a typical SaaS transaction.
All-in rate: ~6.5% + $0.50.
Creem
Creem positions itself as the lowest-fee indie hacker option in the space. The pitch is simple: no monthly fees, no setup costs, and a flat 3.5% + 30¢ rate that stays flat for most transaction types. The onboarding is self-serve and fast.
The tradeoff is scope. Creem handles payments and MoR compliance well, but it's a focused tool. If you're selling a single product and want to be live quickly without any extra infrastructure, Creem is worth a serious look. If you need subscription management, customer portals, or anything beyond checkout, you'll be stitching together more pieces yourself.
All-in rate: 3.9% + 40¢ (may vary for international transactions).
Dodo Payments
Dodo is a newer entrant targeting indie hackers directly. It supports global payouts, handles tax compliance across major markets, and has a self-serve onboarding flow that doesn't require a sales call. The developer experience is clean and the docs are well-written.
It's a solid billing-focused MoR. Like Polar and Creem, it's a single-layer solution, which means you still need to build or buy everything outside of payments separately.
All-in rate: ~4% + 40¢ base, with international and subscription add-ons.
tiun
tiun is a different kind of solution. It's the only platform on this list that bundles MoR compliance into a full commercial backend, covering auth, payments, customer database, and AI analytics under a single SDK.
The pricing is ~3.4% + $0.30, all-in. That means international cards are included, currency conversion is included, subscription billing is included. The base transaction rate is 2.9% + $0.30 with a 0.5% subscription add-on — that's it. No surprise line items at checkout.
What makes tiun worth understanding separately: most MoR platforms assume you already have an auth layer, a customer database, and some kind of analytics setup. You're buying a payments wrapper to drop into an existing stack. tiun assumes the opposite — that you'd rather not build or license all that infrastructure separately. One integration replaces Auth0, Stripe, your database sync logic, and your BI tool. You stop writing webhook handlers.
If you're starting fresh or if you're mid-build and tired of gluing services together, the value calculation is different from a pure payment fee comparison. The fee is competitive. The reduction in moving parts is the actual pitch.
All-in rate: ~3.4% + $0.30
How to choose
The right MoR depends on where you are:
If you want minimum fees and a focused tool: Creem. Lowest headline rate, self-serve, get in and out fast.
If you're building on open-source and need GitHub-native billing: Polar, with eyes open on the all-in cost.
If you're at scale and need enterprise-grade compliance infrastructure: Paddle. Most mature, most coverage, not the friendliest for early-stage.
If you want a clean indie-focused billing layer without the LemonSqueezy uncertainty: Dodo Payments is worth evaluating.
If you're starting fresh and want to skip the three-tool stack: tiun. You get MoR compliance folded into auth, customer data, and analytics — one integration, one fee, no glue code.
The compliance problem is real regardless of which direction you go. The question is how much infrastructure you want sitting outside of it.
FAQ
Is a Merchant of Record the same as a payment processor?
No. A payment processor (like Stripe) moves money between a buyer's bank and yours. An MoR does that too, but it also takes on the legal liability for the transaction — tax filings, VAT invoicing, chargebacks, and regulatory compliance. Stripe is a payment processor. Paddle, LemonSqueezy, Polar, Creem, Dodo, and tiun are Merchants of Record.
How much does an MoR actually cost?
More than the headline rate suggests. Most MoR platforms advertise a base transaction fee but charge separately for international cards, currency conversion, and subscription billing. The real cost — what you actually pay per transaction — lands anywhere from ~3.4% + $0.30 (tiun) to ~7% + $0.50 (LemonSqueezy) depending on the platform and transaction type. Always calculate the all-in rate for your typical transaction before committing.
Can I switch MoR platforms later?
Yes, but it takes work. You'll need to migrate your customer billing records, update your checkout integration, and handle any active subscriptions carefully to avoid failed charges during the transition. The closer you are to launch, the easier a switch is. Once you're at scale with thousands of active subscriptions, switching costs go up significantly. Choose carefully before you build on top of a platform.
Do I still need a privacy policy or terms of service if I use an MoR?
Yes. An MoR handles tax and payment compliance — it doesn't cover your data practices, service terms, or GDPR obligations. You still need a privacy policy, terms of service, and data processing agreements for any EU customers. The MoR reduces your compliance surface area around payments and tax. The rest is still on you.
What's the difference between tiun and the other MoRs on this list?
Every other MoR on this list is a payment layer you drop into an existing stack. You still need auth, a customer database, webhook handling, and analytics wired up separately. tiun bundles all of that — auth, payments, customer data, and AI analytics — into a single SDK at a competitive all-in rate (~3.4% + $0.30). If you're fine managing multiple services, the other options work well. If you'd rather not, tiun is built around that assumption.