{
  "slug": "polar",
  "name": "Polar",
  "url": "https://polar.sh",
  "cat": "pay",
  "group": "back",
  "tagline": "Open-source merchant of record",
  "price": "Starter 5% + $0.50 · Pro $20/mo at 3.8% + $0.40 · Scale $400/mo at 3.4% + $0.30",
  "tier": "paid",
  "pick": false,
  "what": "Open-source merchant of record built for developers, with usage-based billing, licence keys, digital file delivery and customer portals. New organizations pay 5% + $0.50 on the free Starter tier, and paid monthly plans buy the rate down. Polar acts as seller of record and handles VAT and GST.",
  "why": "The best developer experience among the merchant-of-record options — real SDKs, a sandbox environment, and first-party adapters for Better Auth and Next.js let you wire up entitlements same-day.",
  "warn": "Rates rose in May 2026: organizations created before 27 May keep 4% + $0.40, while everyone new starts at 5% + $0.50. Moving to a paid plan to buy a lower rate permanently forfeits any grandfathered pricing.",
  "install": "npm i @polar-sh/sdk",
  "category": {
    "key": "pay",
    "name": "Payments & billing",
    "desc": "Merchant-of-record versus gateway is the choice that actually matters.",
    "group": "back",
    "groupName": "Give it a backend"
  },
  "freshness": null,
  "health": {
    "ok": true,
    "status_code": 200,
    "final_url": "https://polar.sh/",
    "checked_at": "2026-08-18T16:48:12.002+00:00"
  },
  "corrected_at": null,
  "upstream_changed_at": null
}