Paddle is a payments and billing platform for software and digital product companies. It acts as the merchant of record, which means it sells to your customers on your behalf and takes on sales tax and VAT collection, filing, fraud protection, chargebacks and payment-related buyer support.
Paddle gives you a branded, localized checkout, and its JavaScript library, Paddle.js, lets you embed that checkout to take payments. Subscriptions come with plan changes, proration, pauses, optional trials and dunning built in. You can bill per seat, add usage charges to the next invoice or sell one-time purchases alongside plans. A built-in customer portal lets subscribers manage their own plans. Paddle Retain works to recover failed payments and cut cancellations, and real-time analytics track payments and revenue.
Paddle presents itself as a merchant of record handling subscriptions, payments and tax compliance for SaaS, mobile apps and other digital product businesses, and it has dedicated pages for games, startups and enterprise. When a customer changes plans, you can choose to bill right away, wait for the next renewal or skip the charge. High-volume software sellers can work with Paddle’s implementation experts on custom integrations.
Developers can use Paddle’s APIs and listen to its webhooks for live data, and the APIs can link Paddle to CRMs, BI tools and reporting systems. Developer docs cover the API reference, webhooks and getting started. If you’re moving from another billing system, Paddle’s migration specialists help bring your existing subscribers over, with payment method details sent securely from your old provider’s vault. Paddle then starts billing each subscription automatically on its next payment date. A help center and billing FAQs answer common questions.
Pricing is one percentage plus a fixed fee per transaction, with no monthly fee or lock-in period, and high-volume businesses can ask for custom pricing. A developer sandbox lets you test before going live. Current rates are in the pricing box above.