Polar is a newer, developer-focused billing platform built specifically for indie SaaS and open source projects, with a simpler setup than Stripe for common subscription use cases.
Choose Polar over Stripe when you want subscriptions working out of the box with less configuration, and you don't need Stripe's full breadth of payment methods and countries. It's newer, so the ecosystem and battle-testing are smaller than Stripe's.
| Provider | Best for | Starters |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe | Teams that want full control over checkout and billing logic, and the widest ecosystem of integrations. | 80 |
| Polar | Indie hackers and open-source maintainers who want subscription billing without configuring Stripe themselves. | 5 |
| Lemon Squeezy | Solo developers selling internationally who want to never think about VAT or sales tax filings. | 24 |
| Paddle | SaaS products selling to many countries that want MoR simplicity with more subscription-management tooling. | 5 |
| Revenuecat | Mobile apps that need unified subscription logic across iOS and Android. | 4 |
| Chargebee | Billing that has outgrown flat subscriptions: usage-based tiers, enterprise contracts, complex proration. | 1 |
| Paypal | Reducing checkout friction for buyers who already trust and use PayPal. | 2 |
| Superwall | Mobile apps that want to A/B test and iterate on paywall design without app-store review cycles. | 1 |