Freemius alternatives

First, the number you are actually leaving

Freemius advertises 4.7%. If you sell WordPress plugins or themes there is a further 2.3% WordPress surcharge, which their own FAQ describes as covering the specialised WordPress tooling. So the figure that applies to almost everyone reading this is 7%, plus gateway fees.

One thing worth knowing before you do anything, because it changes the answer for larger sellers: the base share is progressive by monthly gross. Their published tiers:

What you are actually replacing — this is where most lists go wrong

Freemius is not one product. It does three separate jobs, and the alternatives below replace different subsets of them. Pick your replacement by which jobs you still need done, or you will end up buying two things to get back to where you started.

The six alternatives, ranked by how well each solves the fee problem

Ranked for the reason people actually arrive here. If you are leaving for a different reason — data ownership, control, or wanting your customer list on your own server — the order changes, and the notes say where.

1. Easy Digital Downloads + Software Licensing

The closest like-for-like replacement if you want to keep a real store. EDD runs on your own WordPress, so there is no cut of any kind — you pay Stripe or PayPal directly and keep the rest. Licensing is not in the cheap tiers: the Software Licensing extension requires the Professional Pass, $599/year at list price. It is frequently discounted, but budget the list price, because a renewal at the discounted rate is not promised.

What you take on: you become the merchant of record. EU VAT, filings, and chasing failed payments are yours now. For a lot of sellers that is the real cost of leaving Freemius, and it is not a line item.

2. LicensorPro — ours, so weigh this accordingly

Flat pricing — Solo $199/year, Studio $399/year, Agency $799/year — and 0% of what you sell. It replaces job 3, the licensing and update server, and you point your own checkout at it. That makes it cheaper than EDD's Professional Pass if licensing is the part you actually need, and more work if you wanted a storefront handed to you.

Where it loses to Freemius: no merchant of record, no install analytics, no in-plugin marketing tooling, and you run a server. Our full head-to-head, including the rows where we lose, is at LicensorPro vs Freemius.

3. WooCommerce plus a licensing extension

Sensible if you already run WooCommerce for something else, since the core is free and the marginal cost is one extension. Not sensible if you would be installing WooCommerce solely to sell three plugins — that is a large amount of ecommerce machinery for a job EDD does more directly.

4. Lemon Squeezy — and be clear what this does not fix

5% + 50¢, and they are the merchant of record, so tax stays somebody else's problem. Against Freemius's 7% that is a genuine saving with almost no operational change.

But read the ranking honestly: if you came here to stop paying a percentage, this does not do that. It is a smaller percentage. On $30,000 a year you would pay roughly $1,500 plus the fixed 50¢ per order rather than roughly $2,100. Real money, and still a cut.

5. Paddle

Also 5% + 50¢ and also a merchant of record, aimed further up-market. Their pricing page notes that products under $10, or sellers needing invoicing, are on custom pricing, so check before assuming the headline rate applies to you. Same caveat as Lemon Squeezy: it lowers the percentage, it does not remove it.

6. Gumroad

Listed for completeness and ranked last on purpose. 10% + 50¢ on direct sales, and 30% when a customer finds you through Gumroad Discover. If your reason for leaving Freemius is the 7%, moving to 10% is moving the wrong way. Gumroad earns its place when simplicity matters more than margin, or when Discover is genuinely bringing you buyers you would not otherwise get.

Freemius and LicensorPro, feature by feature

LicensorPro is one of the alternatives above, and the one we make, so here is the full side-by-side. Freemius's column comes from its own public pages, read 17 September 2026; we didn't sign up to test it. Ours is checked against the LicensorPro 2.5.1 build customers download. The longer write-up is on the Freemius comparison page.

What only one of them does

Where Freemius is still the right answer

We sell a competing product and we would still tell you to stay on Freemius in these cases:

• You are earning enough for the progressive tiers to matter. Above $50,000 a month the base share starts falling, and by $100,000 it is 0.5%. At that point you are paying very little for a lot of handled complexity.
• You do not want to be the merchant of record. This is the strongest reason of all. EU VAT registration and filing is a real, recurring administrative burden, and Freemius absorbing it is worth a percentage to many people.
• You are early and selling very little. Below roughly $2,000–$3,000 a year, 7% is a small enough number that it should not drive an infrastructure decision. Build the product.
• You use the install analytics and in-plugin marketing. Uninstall reasons, opt-in tracking and in-dashboard promos are genuinely useful and most alternatives here have no equivalent at all.

What moving actually involves

The part worth planning for is that the Freemius SDK is embedded in your plugin. This is not a checkout swap — it is a code change that ships to every existing install, and until your users update, they are still talking to Freemius.

1. Stand up the replacement and issue keys to your existing customers before you change anything in the plugin.
2. Ship a release that talks to the new endpoint, ideally accepting both for one version so an un-updated install does not break.
3. Export your customer and licence data while your account is still active. Do this first, not last.
4. Keep the old integration alive for at least one full renewal cycle. Some installs update slowly.

None of that is exotic, but "we will migrate next weekend" underestimates it every time. Plan a month and be pleasantly surprised.

Pricing a different vendor?

These five pages cover the same ground for the other platforms plugin authors actually leave. The honest answer differs by vendor, so they do not all reach the same conclusion.

• Easy Digital Downloads alternatives — nobody leaves over fees — they leave over the pass price.
• LicenseSpring alternatives — a licensing API, not a store — watch the request limit.
• Lemon Squeezy alternatives — leaving means taking EU VAT back in-house.
• Gumroad alternatives — 10% or 30%, but the fee is the second question.