Payments — compare pricing, reliability & setup
Generated 2026-11-02 01:10 UTC · JSON
For saas subscription billing, the current pick is Stripe (score 68.5). See cost by profile below.
Ranking — SaaS subscription billing
| Vendor | Score | Small ($20 avg × 1k) | Medium ($50 avg × 10k) | Large ($80 avg × 100k) | Free | Agent-friction | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stripe | 68.5 | $880 | $17500 | $262000 | yes | 100 | 2026-11-01 |
| Polar | 51.35 | $1200 | $24000 | $360000 | yes | 85 | 2026-11-01 |
| Lemon Squeezy | 38.75 | $1500 | $30000 | $450000 | yes | 65 | 2026-11-01 |
| Paddle | 38.75 | $1500 | $30000 | $450000 | yes | 65 | 2026-11-01 |
Agent-friction — can a service be set up without a human?
Each check and its weight is published; the column total is the 0–100 agent-friction score.
| Check | Stripe | Polar | Lemon Squeezy | Paddle |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Test credentials without a credit card (20) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sandbox or test mode (15) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Setup with no human-only steps (15) | ✓ | × | × | × |
| Official CLI (10) | ✓ | ✓ | × | × |
| Official MCP server (10) | ✓ | ✓ | × | × |
| Markdown docs, current with the SDK (10) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Typed SDK for main languages (10) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Error messages that name the fix (10) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Score | 100 | 85 | 65 | 65 |
How this category is scored
Per use case, weights published in the data: fit 25% · cost 20% · integration 20% · agent_friction 15% · health 10% · lock_in 10%. Affiliate status is never an input.