Payment stack · data study
Creem vs Polar
Of 851 products that publish their revenue, 6 use Creem and 38 use Polar. Below is what that split actually looks like — company size, geography, and the rest of the stack — instead of another fee table.
Creem share
0.71%
6 of 851
Polar share
4.47%
38 of 851
Median MRR (whole sample)
$396
self-reported
The short answer
Both are merchant of record — tax is not the deciding factor
Creem and Polar both sell on your behalf, so sales tax, VAT and refunds are their problem in either case. The choice comes down to fee structure, payout currencies and which ecosystem you already live in.
Polar is the bigger choice in this sample
38 products use Polar (4.47%) against 6 for Creem (0.71%). Median MRR of users: $39 vs $24. Bigger does not mean better for you — it means more public documentation and more people to ask.
Pick by payout country and fee shape, not by logo
Check three things on both sites today: which countries they can settle to, whether the fee is a flat percentage or has a fixed component, and what happens to subscriptions if you migrate. Rates change — read each provider's own pricing page before deciding.
Who actually uses what
Out of 646 products with public revenue in the sample. Only products that list a provider in their tech stack are counted, so these are floors, not market share.
| Provider | Type | Teams | Share | Median MRR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stripe | Payment service provider (you are the merchant of record) | 341 | 40.07% | $183 |
| Dodo Payments | Merchant of record | 46 | 5.41% | $84 |
| Polar | Merchant of record | 38 | 4.47% | $39 |
| Lemon Squeezy | Merchant of record | 14 | 1.65% | $66 |
| Paddle | Merchant of record | 12 | 1.41% | $30 |
| Creem | Merchant of record | 6 | 0.71% | $24 |
What Creem teams look like
Most common countries
Rest of their stack
Largest public examples
- AI DirectoriesPortugal · $7,890 last 30 days · MRR $554
- AI Herf Scale Yearly$29 last 30 days · MRR $29
- 10Xprofit.ioBangladesh · $148 last 30 days · MRR $20
- Agency Plan$1 last 30 days · MRR $1
Frequently asked
Is Creem cheaper than Polar?
Neither publishes one number that settles it, because both are merchants of record taking a percentage plus a fixed component. Creem and Polar differ in how that fixed part is set and which currencies settle cleanly. Model your own monthly revenue against both pricing pages today — rates on both sides change.
What is the difference between Creem and Polar?
Both are merchants of record: they are legally the seller, so sales tax, VAT, invoices and refunds sit with them rather than with you. The practical differences are fee shape, payout countries, dashboard and API, and the ecosystem around each — Creem skews toward independent makers, Polar toward open-source and developer-first products.
How many startups use Creem vs Polar?
6 of 851 products in this sample use Creem (0.71%), against 38 for Polar (4.47%) — a gap of 3.8 percentage points. Median MRR of their users: 24 vs 39.
Can I move an existing subscription business from Polar to Creem?
Technically yes, but the work is in the boring parts: re-authorising cards or running dunning on existing subscribers, keeping invoice history for tax, re-pointing webhooks, and telling customers why the statement descriptor changed. Both sides are MoRs, so the tax records have to be transferred carefully — budget for migration churn, not just engineering hours.
Method & source
Sample: 851 products that publish revenue data, collected 2026-10-30. Usage = the provider appears in the product's declared tech stack. Median MRR is computed only over products with a non-zero reported MRR. Nothing here is an estimate of fees; pricing lives on each provider's own site.
Aggregated from public revenue disclosures; see the library for each company's own page.
Other comparisons
- Dodo Payments vs Stripe46 teams
- Polar vs Stripe38 teams
- Creem vs Stripe6 teams
- Browse all 851 products
Last updated 2026-11-04 · Makemoneylens