Creem vs Polar
Creem
creem.ioPolar
polar.shSide by side
| Figure | Creem | Polar |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | $20/mo |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 4 |
| Spec score · Merchant of Record Software | 8.0 (#8) | 8.2 (#6) |
| Spec score · Frictionless Checkout Software | 7.9 (#12) | 8.4 (#6) |
| Headquarters | Tallinn, Estonia | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Merchant of record | Creem says it is the legal seller on each transaction and handles payment processing, tax calculation and remittance, invoices, fraud, and chargebacks. | Polar says it resells products in over 100 markets and handles payments, sales tax, fraud, refunds, and chargebacks as merchant of record. |
| Product | Creem provides payments, tax handling, payouts, affiliates, usage billing, conversion attribution, and analytics for selling software and digital products globally. | Polar describes itself as a billing stack for AI products that combines usage billing, subscriptions, credits, invoicing, and merchant-of-record services. |
| Support | The standard offering lists human support, while the Partner plan includes a dedicated account manager and weekly payments concierge sessions. | Polar lists standard support for Starter, prioritized support for Pro and Growth, and P1 support plus a shared Slack channel for Scale. |
Plans
In their own words
Creem
Creem is a payments and monetization platform for selling software and digital products worldwide. It says it acts as the legal seller for each transaction, handling payment processing, tax calculation and remittance, invoices, fraud, and chargebacks. Billing features include subscriptions, credit wallets, usage-based pricing, custom meters, free trials, discounts, and seat-based charges. Partner tools provide affiliate commissions, automatic revenue splits, and short links with click and conversion tracking. Developers can use an API, SDKs, CLI, webhooks, and an MCP server for agent-driven store management; listed compatible options include Claude Code, Cursor, Claude Desktop, and any MCP client. Creem says merchants can sell in 190+ countries and lists cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. Checkout can use a merchant’s domain and branding. Native iPhone and Android apps provide real-time sales notifications. Pay as you go costs $3.94, paid once per successful transaction, with no monthly or setup fees and no minimum volume. A Partner plan has custom pricing for higher-volume businesses.
Polar
Polar is a billing stack for AI products, combining subscriptions, usage billing, credits, invoicing, and merchant-of-record services. It collects usage events into customer meters and adds metered charges to the next invoice. Meters can count, sum, average, find minimums or maximums, and track unique values. Usage collection options cover LLM activity, streaming responses, S3-compatible storage, elapsed time, and manually submitted events; LLM integrations include the Vercel AI SDK and compatible models that return usage data. As merchant of record, Polar says it resells products in over 100 markets and handles payments, sales tax, fraud, refunds, and chargebacks. Its hosted checkout supports localized currencies and includes sales tax. Automated benefits include usage credits, license keys, file downloads up to 10GB, and invitations to private GitHub repositories and Discord. Polar lists apps for iOS and Android and plugins for Raycast and Framer. The Starter plan is free; Pro is $20/month, Growth is $100/month, and Scale is $400/month, with transaction fees on each plan. Usage meters do not block activity when a quota is exceeded; the product using Polar must enforce limits.