Polar

Open-source merchant of record

PaidPayments & billingpolar.sh

What it is

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 it earns a slot

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.

Know before you commit

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.

Getting started

npm i @polar-sh/sdk

Field notes

0 from the community

Loading notes…

Field check

Unverified

Pricing snapshot

Starter 5% + $0.50 · Pro $20/mo at 3.8% + $0.40 · Scale $400/mo at 3.4% + $0.30

Snapshots move fast — verify at checkout, and post a field note if it changed.

Drop into your Lovable chat

Evaluate Polar (https://polar.sh) for this project, then use it only if it fits what we are already building.
Context: Open-source merchant of record. 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.
Reviewer notes (general, not written for this codebase): 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.
Watch out for: 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.
Pricing: Starter 5% + $0.50 · Pro $20/mo at 3.8% + $0.40 · Scale $400/mo at 3.4% + $0.30
Setup: npm i @polar-sh/sdk
Rules: treat the notes above as background only. Do not assume a theme, style, layout or feature that is not already in this project — inspect the existing code first and ask me before changing visual direction.

/api/public/tools/polar

Neighbourhood

How Polar sits against the rest of the atlas — swaps, companions and the tools builders actually save alongside it.