FastSpring vs Polar
FastSpring
fastspring.comPolar
polar.shSide by side
| Figure | FastSpring | Polar |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $20/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 4 |
| Spec score · Merchant of Record Software | 8.7 (#3) | 8.2 (#6) |
| Spec score · Frictionless Checkout Software | 8.7 (#4) | 8.4 (#6) |
| Founded | FastSpring says it was founded in 2005. | 2024 |
| Headquarters | The company is headquartered in Santa Barbara, California. | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Merchant of record | FastSpring processes transactions, collects and remits sales taxes, manages subscriptions, monitors fraud and handles tax-audit responses for sellers. | Polar says it resells products in over 100 markets and handles payments, sales tax, fraud, refunds, and chargebacks as merchant of record. |
| Support | FastSpring directs sellers to its Support & Documentation resources and provides developer documentation and a support case portal. | Polar lists standard support for Starter, prioritized support for Pro and Growth, and P1 support plus a shared Slack channel for Scale. |
| Who it serves | FastSpring is designed for SaaS, software, and digital product companies. | Polar says it is building the finance layer for the next generation of AI products and describes its team as remote and distributed worldwide. |
Plans
FastSpring
- Free test modeFree
- Custom quotePriced on request
- Custom revenue-sharePriced on request
In their own words
FastSpring
FastSpring has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
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.