Paddle vs Saleor
Merchant of Record for SaaS — global tax, billing, checkout in one
vs. Open-source, GraphQL-first commerce for composable brands
Pricing tiers
Paddle
Pay-as-you-go
5% + 50¢ per Checkout transaction. No monthly fee. All-inclusive (tax, fraud, support).
$0 base (usage-based)
Enterprise
Custom rates for high-volume. Dedicated success. Custom migration + implementation.
Custom
Invoicing (<$10 products)
Custom pricing for invoicing / products under $10.
Custom
Saleor
OSS (self-host)
$0. BSD-3-Clause. Self-host Saleor Core + Dashboard.
$0 base (usage-based)
Cloud — Development
$0. Dev tier for sandbox projects. Shared infra. Community.
$0 base (usage-based)
Cloud — Staging
$179/mo. Staging tier with dedicated env.
$179/mo
Cloud — Production
$1,999/mo. Production tier with SLA + support.
$1999/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Multi-region, SAML, dedicated clusters, PCI.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing payg on Paddle vs oss on Saleor.
| Metric | Paddle | Saleor |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
Paddle · 12 features
- Affiliates (Rewardful partnership) — Affiliate tracking (via partner).
- Customer Portal — Self-service subscription management.
- Fraud Protection — ML + human review. Paddle absorbs chargebacks.
- Global Tax Compliance — Automatic VAT/GST/sales tax calc + remittance + filing.
- One-time Sales — Perpetual license sales, single purchases.
- Paddle Checkout — Hosted or overlay checkout. Localized + fraud-protected.
- Paddle Retain — Revenue recovery + cancel flows (acquired Retain).
- ProfitWell Analytics — Included subscription analytics (acquired ProfitWell).
- Self-Serve Invoices — B2B invoicing with custom POs.
- Smart Dunning — Retry logic + email sequences for failed payments.
- Subscriptions — Full lifecycle: trials, changes, cancellations, recovery.
- Webhooks — Standard resource events with HMAC signing.
Saleor · 17 features
- Channels — Per-channel pricing/shipping/currency.
- Checkout — Multi-step checkout mutation set.
- Customers + B2B — Customer records + B2B permissions.
- Dashboard — Next.js admin dashboard.
- Gift Cards — First-class gift-card flow.
- Orders — Full lifecycle.
- Permissions + Roles — Granular RBAC.
- Pricing + Promotions — Rule-based promos, catalog pricing.
- Products + Attributes — Full PIM features.
- Saleor Apps — External extensions.
- Shipping Zones + Methods — Multi-zone shipping rules.
- Tax Providers — Pluggable tax (Avalara, etc.).
- Translations — Multi-language product content.
- Variants + Configurable — Deep variant system.
- Vouchers — Discount codes + gift cards.
- Warehouses + Stock — Multi-warehouse inventory.
- Webhooks — Async subscription to events.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Paddle | Saleor |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | — | saleor CLI |
| SDK | Paddle.js, @paddle/paddle-node-sdk, paddle-python | @saleor/app-sdk, @saleor/sdk |
| REST | Paddle Billing API | — |
| GRAPHQL | — | Saleor GraphQL API |
| OTHER | Paddle Checkout, Paddle Webhooks | Saleor App Store, Saleor Dashboard, Saleor Webhooks |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Paddle and Saleor are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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