Gumroad vs Paddle Fees, Two MoRs With One Big Gap
Gumroad and Paddle both handle sales tax as merchants of record, but a $100 sale costs $13.70 on one and $5.50 on the other. See where each fee goes.
Gumroad breakdown
- Base fee (10% + 50¢) $10.50
- Payment processing (2.9% + 30¢) $3.20
Paddle breakdown
- Base fee (5% + 50¢) $5.50
| Platform | Fee | Effective rate | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|
 PaddleMoR | $5.50 | 5.50% | $94.50 |
 GumroadMoR Direct sale (your audience) | $13.70 | 13.70% | $86.30 |
The ranking counts per-transaction cost only. Monthly plan fees, payout fees, and dispute fees are listed separately on each platform page. Rates are verified against official pricing pages, and the sources list the dates.
Every Gumroad vs Paddle fee side by side
| Gumroad | Paddle | |
|---|---|---|
| Base transaction fee | Direct sale (your audience) 10% + 50¢ + processing Gumroad Discover marketplace 30% iOS/Android app sale 40% | 5% + 50¢ |
| International cards | No surcharge | No surcharge |
| Currency conversion | No surcharge | No surcharge |
| Subscription billing | Included | Included |
| PayPal | Supported (processing fee applies) | Included |
| Monthly fee | None | None |
| Payout fees | Weekly payouts to bank or PayPal | Free payouts. An FX margin of roughly 1.5–3% applies when your payout currency differs from the sale currency ($15 SWIFT wire fee for some currency/bank combinations) |
| Dispute / chargeback fee | Not published | Chargeback fees absorbed by Paddle |
| Sales tax / VAT handling | MoR Gumroad has handled all sales tax worldwide as merchant of record since Jan 2025 | MoR Paddle handles global sales tax and VAT as the legal seller |
| Source | Official pricing, last verified 2026-07-10 (Direct-sale processing fees are charged on top of the 10% + 50¢. Confirm in-app) | Official pricing, last verified 2026-07-10 |
| Platform | $10 sale | $50 sale | $500 sale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gumroad | $2.09 | $7.25 | $65.30 |
| Paddle | $1.00 | $3.00 | $25.50 |
Equal tax coverage, unequal invoices
On the compliance axis these two are interchangeable. Each is the merchant of record, each registers for and remits sales tax and VAT worldwide, each stands as the legal seller. Gumroad has done so since January 2025, and Paddle has for more than a decade. The invoices are not interchangeable. A $25 direct sale leaves you $20.97 after Gumroad’s 12.9% + 80¢ and $23.25 after Paddle’s 5% + 50¢. At $100 the fees are $13.70 and $5.50.
Fees follow the channel on Gumroad, not on Paddle
| Sales channel | Fee | On a $15 sale | You keep |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gumroad (direct link) | 12.9% + 80¢ | $2.74 | $12.26 |
| Gumroad (Discover marketplace) | 30% flat | $4.50 | $10.50 |
| Gumroad (mobile app) | 40% flat | $6.00 | $9.00 |
| Paddle (any channel) | 5% + 50¢ | $1.25 | $13.75 |
Paddle has no equivalent of Discover because it has no marketplace to source buyers from. It supplies checkout, subscription billing, and tax handling to businesses that bring their own traffic. Gumroad’s channel fees are the price of the traffic it brings.
A hundred $15 sales a month
For direct sales only from a US seller, Gumroad takes $273.50 (18.2% effective) and Paddle takes $125 (8.3%). The monthly difference is $148.50, or $1,782 a year, on identical products, identical customers, and identical tax treatment. If a third of those sales came through Discover instead, Gumroad’s take rises to about $332, while Paddle’s number wouldn’t exist at all, since marketplace buyers don’t follow a seller to external checkout infrastructure.
The floor, the payout, the fine print
Two asymmetries cut against Paddle. Anything priced under $10 requires contacting Paddle’s sales team, while Gumroad will sell a $3 item without ceremony. At 12.9% + 80¢ that item pays a 39.6% effective fee, but it can be sold. Payouts differ in kind rather than amount. Gumroad pays weekly, while Paddle applies a 1.5-3% conversion margin when revenue converts into your payout currency, plus a possible $15 SWIFT fee on some transfer routes. A US seller pricing in dollars may never see either Paddle charge, but a seller with localized international pricing will.
From storefront to checkout infrastructure
These platforms mostly serve the same person at different stages. Gumroad’s hosted store, missing price floor, and Discover marketplace make it the lowest-friction way to sell a first hundred copies. Paddle’s economics reward the later stage of recurring billing, $10-plus price points, and an audience that arrives through your own site. The switch itself carries no tax cost (merchant-of-record coverage continues uninterrupted on either side), which makes the 7.9 points and 30 cents of fee difference on every direct sale the entire bill for staying put.
Verdict
If you’re selling $5-15 digital products to an audience Gumroad helps you find, stay. Paddle can’t even list a $5 product on self-serve terms, and Discover’s 30% only costs you money on sales you otherwise wouldn’t have made. If you’re running anything that looks like software (a subscription, a license, a $29+ product sold to an audience you already own), Paddle does the identical tax job for less than half the fee. A hundred $15 sales a month costs about $274 on Gumroad and $125 on Paddle, roughly $1,780 a year in difference. The practical path many sellers take is sequential rather than either-or. Launch on Gumroad while the storefront and marketplace earn their premium, then move recurring revenue to Paddle once pricing clears $10 and the audience follows you rather than the platform.What’s the best alternative?
Gumroad and Paddle aren’t the only two options for this kind of selling. Kelviq, a newer merchant of record, charges 3.5% + 40¢ per sale with no monthly fee (2.9% + 40¢ on your first $5,000). On a $100 domestic sale that works out to $3.90, next to $13.70 on Gumroad and $5.50 on Paddle, and the fee includes usage metering and entitlements that SaaS and AI products otherwise build separately. Run your own numbers in the Kelviq fee calculator, or see the direct matchups in Kelviq vs Gumroad and Kelviq vs Paddle.