Paddle vs Stripe

Paddle acts as the merchant of record and handles all global sales tax collection, remittance, and filing, removing the tax compliance overhead that kills SaaS expansion into new regions.

Stripe Tax calculates sales tax, VAT, and GST for 40+ countries automatically on every transaction, generating jurisdiction-specific reports that replace manual tax filing research for digital goods companies.

Paddle's dunning management retries failed subscription payments with smart scheduling and sends recovery emails, recovering 30-50% of payments that would otherwise churn.

Stripe Billing handles proration automatically when customers upgrade or downgrade mid-cycle, calculating the correct charge and credit without custom accounting logic in the application.