Polar Fee Calculator for Polar.sh Fees in 2026

Polar repriced in May 2026, so check the date on anything you read #

Polar replaced its single flat rate with four plans in May 2026, which made most third-party fee articles stale overnight. The current lineup runs Starter (free) at 5% + $0.50 per transaction, Pro ($20/month) at 3.8% + $0.40, Growth ($100/month) at 3.6% + $0.35, and Scale ($400/month) at 3.4% + $0.30. Every plan adds 1.5% on international cards, and payout and dispute fees are identical across plans. The figures on this page were verified against polar.sh/resources/pricing and Polar’s merchant-of-record fee documentation on July 10, 2026.

Organizations created before May 2026 are grandfathered as “Early Members” at the old 4% + $0.40 rate with a 0.5% subscription surcharge. The upgrade math for those accounts is covered below.

What a sale costs on each plan #

A $100 domestic one-time card payment costs $5.50 on Starter (a 5.5% effective rate), $4.20 on Pro, $3.95 on Growth, and $3.70 on Scale, before monthly fees. Low prices skew worse because of the fixed fee. A $10 sale on Starter loses $1.00 to fees, a flat 10%, while Pro trims that to $0.78 (7.8%).

International cards add 1.5 points everywhere. A $49 subscription charged to a non-US card costs $3.69 on Starter (7.5% effective) and $3.00 on Pro (6.1%). For the identical transaction, Creem charges $2.31, Kelviq $2.80, Paddle $2.95, and Lemon Squeezy $3.93.

Break-even math between plans #

Each upgrade buys a lower percentage and a smaller fixed fee, so the right plan depends on both monthly volume and average order value.

Starter to Pro. Pro saves 1.2% plus $0.10 per transaction for $20/month. On the percentage alone, break-even is $20 ÷ 1.2% = $1,667 of monthly volume. At a $50 average price the dime is worth another 0.2 points, pulling break-even down to about $1,430, roughly 29 sales a month. Anyone processing more than about $1,500/month at that price point is overpaying on Starter.

Pro to Growth. The additional $80/month buys 0.2% plus $0.05 per transaction. At a $50 average price that is $0.15 per sale, so Growth needs 533 sales, about $26,700 of monthly volume, to pay for itself. At a $10 average price the saving per sale is $0.07 (0.7% of the ticket), and break-even falls to roughly $11,400/month.

Growth to Scale. The extra $300/month buys the same 0.2% + $0.05 step, which requires 2,000 sales a month to recoup. That is about $100,000/month at a $50 average price, or roughly $42,900/month at a $10 average price.

The pattern is that cheap, high-frequency products justify upgrades sooner, because the fixed-fee reductions compound across more transactions.

Payout fees bite hardest at small volume #

Polar charges $2 per month in any month a payout occurs, plus 0.25% + $0.25 per payout, plus 0.25-1% currency conversion on non-USD payouts. On a $5,000 monthly payout the total is $14.75, or 0.30%, which is background noise. On a $500 payout it is $3.50 (0.70%), and on a $100 payout it is $2.50, a 2.5% haircut on top of transaction fees. Sellers moving less than a few hundred dollars a month should mentally add one to three points to their effective rate.

The Early Member question #

Grandfathered accounts pay 4% + $0.40 with no monthly fee, which beats Starter outright at $4.40 versus $5.50 on a $100 one-time sale. Against Pro the answer depends on revenue mix. On one-time sales Pro saves only $0.20 per $100, so the $20 monthly fee needs about $10,000/month to break even. On subscriptions the grandfathered rate carries a 0.5% surcharge (4.5% + $0.40 total) while the new plans have none, so Pro saves 0.7 points and breaks even near $2,900/month of recurring volume. Subscription-heavy Early Members hit the upgrade threshold about three times sooner than one-time sellers.

The rest of the stack #

Disputes cost $15 each, matching Stripe’s chargeback fee. Polar is a merchant of record. It is the legal seller on every transaction and files sales tax, VAT, and GST globally, so tax compliance is bundled into the rates above. Polar’s codebase is open source, which is unique among the merchant-of-record platforms in this comparison.

How Polar prices against other MoRs #

Starter’s 5% + $0.50 matches Paddle and Lemon Squeezy and sits above Creem (3.9% + $0.40) and Kelviq (3.5% + $0.40 standard). The paid plans narrow but do not immediately close that gap. At $10,000/month with a $50 average price, Growth totals about $530 including its monthly fee (5.3% effective) versus roughly $470 on Creem. Scale overtakes at six figures. At $100,000/month the same business pays about $4,400 on Scale versus $4,700 on Creem. Below that scale, Polar’s draw is the open-source stack and developer tooling rather than the lowest headline rate.