Comparison
LicensorPro vs Easy Digital Downloads
This is a much closer contest than the Freemius one. EDD is self-hosted, takes no cut of sales on the passes that include licensing, and its Software Licensing extension does the same core job we do. The differences are architectural, not ideological — and if you already run a WordPress site you are happy with, EDD may well be the right answer.
Software Licensing is not in the cheap tiers
On the passes that include licensing, neither product takes a percentage, so this mostly comes down to licence cost, and the thing that matters with EDD is which tier you need: Software Licensing is not in the cheaper plans. One catch below Extended: EDD's Stripe docs (updated 31 August 2026) say a “3% application fee” applies to Stripe payments without an Extended or higher pass, renewals included, and that “the fee will return if the license key fails to renew and/or expires.” LicensorPro takes nothing on any plan.
| Price / year | Includes licensing? | |
|---|---|---|
| EDD Personal | $99.50 intro, $199 renewal | No |
| EDD Extended | $199.50 intro, $399 renewal | No |
| EDD Professional | $299.50 intro, $599 renewal | Yes |
| EDD All Access | $499.50 intro, $999 renewal | Yes |
| LicensorPro Solo | $199 · $149.25 with WELCOME25 | Yes |
| LicensorPro Studio | $399 | Yes |
| LicensorPro Agency | $799 | Yes |
Do not read that table as "we are three times cheaper". EDD Professional includes a whole store — a storefront with product marketing pages inside WordPress, a multi-item cart, customer reviews, and dozens of extensions. We do have public pricing, product and bundle pages, checkout, coupons, subscriptions, invoices, affiliate commissions and a customer portal, so those are not the difference. What we are not is a shop: there are no reviews, wish lists or comparisons, and no cart holding several items at once. If you need a storefront, you are comparing a store against a licensing server and the prices are not measuring the same thing.
The real difference: a store versus a service
EDD is a WordPress plugin. Your licensing lives inside a WordPress site, alongside your marketing pages, your theme, and every other plugin on it. That is a genuine advantage if you already run that site: one system, one login, one host.
It is also the thing that makes people look for an alternative. Your licence API's uptime becomes your WordPress site's uptime. A plugin conflict, a bad theme update, or a PHP upgrade on the host is now an incident in which customers cannot activate. LicensorPro runs as its own small PHP app — usually on a separate host or subdomain — so your store and your marketing site can break without your customers' activations breaking.
What EDD does that we do not
- It is a full storefront. Product pages, cart, discounts, reviews, upsells, and a large extension library. We have a checkout and a customer portal, not a store.
- Commissions and payouts for multi-vendor marketplaces, built in on the higher tiers.
- A very large ecosystem. More than a decade of extensions, integrations, tutorials and people who have already solved your problem.
- Everything in WordPress. If your team knows WP and nothing else, EDD is one fewer thing to learn and to host.
- EU VAT compliance on every pass. We calculate tax only through Stripe Tax or a merchant-of-record gateway, and filing is yours.
What we do that EDD does not
- Licensing is not coupled to a WordPress site. Separate app, separate uptime, separate failure domain.
- Licensing is in the base price. Our cheapest paid tier licenses software; EDD's two cheapest do not.
- Nineteen payment gateways with per-country routing, including Polar, Lemon Squeezy, Paddle, Razorpay, Mollie and PayU — so buyers outside the US and EU get a processor that actually works for them.
- Not only WordPress. SDKs for PHP, Python, Java, .NET and JavaScript share one licensing contract.
- Lighter to run. PHP 8.2+ with SQLite or MySQL. No WordPress, no theme, no plugin stack under your licence API.
Where we are genuinely behind. We don't file sales tax: Stripe Tax can calculate it at checkout, or you put a merchant of record in front of us. Free trials work on Stripe and PayPal only. There is no multi-item cart, no reviews and no marketplace. And Solo caps you at 5 products where every EDD pass is unlimited.
Feature by feature, including where we lose
EDD rows come from the plan cards on its pricing page (which pass lists each feature), its Software Licensing page and its Stripe docs. Our rows are checked against the LicensorPro 2.5.1 release.
✓ included✓ Pro+ only from that tier up~ partly (catch noted)✗ not availablenot tested hands-on paid screen we did not buy
Cost and setup4 rows
| Feature | Easy Digital Downloads | LicensorPro |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest plan with software licensing | Professional: $299.50 first year, $599 after | Solo: $199 a year |
| Fee on your sales | 3% on Stripe below Extended, or if the licence lapses; PayPal and Square also carry fees below Extended | None on any plan |
| Product limit | Unlimited on every pass | Solo 5, Studio 15, Agency unlimited |
| Runs as | A WordPress plugin | A standalone PHP app, SQLite or MySQL |
Licensing and updates11 rows
| Feature | Easy Digital Downloads | LicensorPro |
|---|---|---|
| Licence keys, activation limits, deactivation | Professional | ✓ Yes |
| One-click updates for plugins and themes | Professional | ✓ Yes |
| Beta versions | Professional | Studio: beta, RC, dev |
| Staged rollouts | Professional | ✓ Yes |
| Upgrade paths between licence levels, prorated | Professional | Plan changes prorated on Stripe and Polar |
| Renewal reminders | Professional | ✓ Yes |
| Renewal discounts | Professional | Via coupons |
| Releases from GitHub or Bitbucket | Git Download Updater extension | ✗ No |
| Licensing outside WordPress | JSON API with samples | SDKs for PHP, Python, Java, .NET and JS |
| Dev and staging sites that don't use a seat | not tested hands-on | ✓ Yes |
| Per-customer build watermarking | not tested hands-on | ✓ Yes |
Store and checkout11 rows
| Feature | Easy Digital Downloads | LicensorPro |
|---|---|---|
| Product pages and checkout | Personal | Pricing, product and bundle pages; one-plan checkout |
| Multi-item cart | Personal | ✗ No |
| Subscriptions and free trials | Personal | Subscriptions; trials on Stripe and PayPal |
| Abandoned cart recovery | Personal | ✓ Yes |
| Discount codes and bundles | Codes Personal; bundles Extended | Codes Solo; bundles Studio |
| Payment gateways | Stripe, PayPal, Square, Apple Pay; Authorize.net and 2Checkout from Extended | 19 drivers incl. Paddle, Polar, Razorpay, Mollie, PayU |
| EU VAT | Personal | Stripe Tax, or a merchant-of-record gateway |
| Multi-currency | Extended | Currency set per plan |
| Customer reviews, wish lists, product comparisons | Reviews Extended; others Professional or All Access | ✗ No |
| Multi-vendor marketplace, commissions and payouts | Professional | ✗ No |
| Affiliate programme | not tested hands-on | Studio |
Running it5 rows
| Feature | Easy Digital Downloads | LicensorPro |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue reports | Personal; advanced reports All Access | Revenue, MRR, churn, LTV, ARPU, conversion, refund rate |
| Customer portal and invoices | not tested hands-on | ✓ Yes |
| Zapier, REST API and webhooks | Zapier Extended; REST API Professional | Studio: REST API and webhooks |
| Fraud prevention | All Access | Blocklist |
| Sites the plan covers | Store sites: 1, 1, 2, 3 by pass | Instances: 1, 3, unlimited by plan |
Sources (5)
- Easy Digital Downloads: https://easydigitaldownloads.com/pricing/
- Easy Digital Downloads: https://easydigitaldownloads.com/downloads/software-licensing/
- LicensorPro: https://jnkplugins.com/licensorpro/pricing.php
- Easy Digital Downloads: https://easydigitaldownloads.com/docs/stripe/
- Easy Digital Downloads: https://easydigitaldownloads.com/docs/software-licensing-staged-rollouts/
What only one of them does
Only in Easy Digital Downloads
- A full WordPress store: multi-item cart, customer reviews, wish lists, product comparisons, content restriction and post-purchase funnels.
- Unlimited products on every pass, a multi-vendor marketplace with commissions, and physical product shipping.
- Releases from GitHub or Bitbucket, readme.txt parsing for update dialogs, and a large extension ecosystem.
- Everything inside the WordPress site you may already run.
Only in LicensorPro
- Licensing in the cheapest plan ($199), with no 3% Stripe fee on any plan and none if your licence lapses.
- A licence server separate from your WordPress site, so a plugin conflict there doesn't stop activations.
- 19 payment drivers, merchants of record included, and SDKs for PHP, Python, Java, .NET and JS.
- Dev and staging domains that don't use a seat, per-customer build watermarking and conversion reporting.
What LicensorPro looks like
Screens from LicensorPro 2.5.1 on our own machine with demo data. The licence page's API address is shown as licenses.northwind.studio instead of our local address.
EDD, for fairness: we haven't bought an EDD pass, so there are no screenshots of Software Licensing here. The free Easy Digital Downloads plugin on wordpress.org shows the store side.
How we compared. EDD prices and pass contents come from easydigitaldownloads.com/pricing (read card by card), the Software Licensing page and the Stripe documentation, all read on 17 September 2026. LicensorPro rows were checked against the 2.5.1 release and our pricing page. Rows marked not tested are features EDD's pages don't settle.
Which one should you actually pick
Choose EDD if…
- You want one system: store, marketing site and licensing in the same WordPress install.
- You need a real storefront — product pages, cart, reviews, upsells.
- You run a marketplace and need commissions and vendor payouts.
- Your team is WordPress-only and adding a second stack is a real cost.
Choose LicensorPro if…
- You want activations to keep working when your WordPress site does not.
- You only need licensing and updates, and do not want to buy a store to get them.
- Your buyers are outside the US and EU and you need gateways that reach them.
- You sell, or will sell, something that is not a WordPress plugin.
Found something wrong on this page? EDD's pricing and bundling change, and we would rather be corrected than be inaccurate. Tell us and we will fix it — [email protected].