Alternatives / Stripe
Looking for an open source Stripe alternative? We compared 2 open source platforms for selling digital products and SaaS: Gumroad and Polar. Neither is a payment processor like Stripe. They are commerce platforms that handle checkout, tax, and delivery for you in exchange for a fee.
Written by Maxime DERAME
Last updated:
| Alternative | Best for | License |
|---|---|---|
| Polar | Selling SaaS and digital products with billing and tax handled | Apache-2.0 |
| Gumroad | Creators selling digital products | MIT |
We looked for open-source tools that cover Stripe's core use for small online businesses: taking payments, handling billing, and delivering products. We verified each project's license, recent activity, stars, and self-hosting in its repository. No open-source project replaces a card network or acquirer, so both of these sit on top of a payment infrastructure and act as sales platforms. See our methodology for the full criteria.
Gumroad and Polar do not move money on their own network. They are platforms that handle checkout, subscriptions, and delivery, and they rely on existing payment infrastructure. If you need card processing for a marketplace or a custom product, you will still need a payments provider.
Polar acts as a merchant of record for digital products and SaaS, handling tax, and automates benefits such as license keys and GitHub or Discord access, with support for subscriptions and usage-based billing. It is Apache-2.0, and its pricing is listed at 4% plus 40 cents per transaction.
Gumroad is a marketplace and storefront where creators sell digital products such as courses, ebooks, and software, with file hosting and delivery handled for them. Its code is MIT-licensed, but using it means paying its platform fees unless you run your own deployment.
Polar is Apache-2.0 and Gumroad is MIT.
Both projects had commits within days of this update.
Stripe is a proprietary payment processor that charges per transaction and leaves tax, invoicing, and delivery to you or to add-ons. Open-source commerce platforms let you inspect the code, build on a billing system you can customize, and in some cases use a merchant-of-record model that handles sales tax for you, at the cost of platform fees and less flexibility than a general payments API.
Polar is an Apache-2.0 open-source payments and billing platform for digital product and SaaS businesses. It acts as the merchant of record to handle tax, automates benefits such as license keys and GitHub or Discord access, and supports subscriptions and usage-based billing. Its hosted pricing is listed at 4% plus 40 cents per transaction.
Pricing: Free to self-host the code; the hosted service charges 4% plus 40 cents per transaction.
Gumroad is an MIT-licensed marketplace and storefront where creators sell digital products such as courses, software, ebooks, and music, with payments, file hosting, and delivery handled for them. It is a sales platform rather than a payment processor, and the hosted service charges platform fees.
Pricing: Free to self-host the code; the hosted service charges fees on sales.
| Alternative | Type | License | Self-hosted | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polar | Billing and merchant of record | Apache-2.0 | Yes (code is open) | SaaS and digital products |
| Gumroad | Creator storefront | MIT | Yes (code is open) | Selling digital products |
Want billing and tax handled for a SaaS or digital product
Polar is an Apache-2.0 merchant-of-record platform with subscriptions, usage-based billing, and automated benefits.
Want to sell courses, ebooks, or software as a creator
Gumroad handles storefront, payments, file hosting, and delivery, with an MIT-licensed codebase.