Not a switch. A layer.
These two are not really competitors, and a page that pretended otherwise would waste your time. Lemon Squeezy takes the money and deals with the tax. LicensorPro decides whether a licence key is valid and ships the update. Plenty of people run both, and that is a sensible setup rather than a compromise.
| Lemon Squeezy | LicensorPro | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Merchant of record | Licensing & update server |
| Takes payments | Yes | No — you bring your own gateway |
| Handles global sales tax / VAT | Yes, as the seller of record | No |
| Issues licence keys | Basic key generation | Yes, with activations and limits |
| Serves plugin auto-updates | No | Yes |
| Cost | 5% + 50¢ per transaction | $199–$799/year, flat |
Worth knowing if you are picking a billing partner for the next five years. In their own words on the Lemon Squeezy blog: “When Stripe acquired Lemon Squeezy last year, we knew it was the start of something special.” The two are converging on Stripe Managed Payments.
That is not a warning. Stripe is about as stable a home as a billing product can have, and nothing suggests Lemon Squeezy is going anywhere. But it does mean the roadmap is Stripe's roadmap, which is worth a moment's thought if being on a large platform's schedule is something you have been burned by before.
A merchant of record earns its percentage. Lemon Squeezy becomes the legal seller, so EU VAT, US sales tax, invoices and remittance stop being your problem. For a solo developer that is genuinely worth paying for, and we will not pretend otherwise.
The thing to be clear-eyed about is that the percentage never stops, and it scales with your success rather than with the work being done for you.
| Monthly revenue | Lemon Squeezy fee | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| $1,000 | ~$50 + 50¢/txn | ~$600+ |
| $5,000 | ~$250 + 50¢/txn | ~$3,000+ |
| $10,000 | ~$500 + 50¢/txn | ~$6,000+ |
LicensorPro is $199 to $799 a year regardless of what you sell. But read that comparison honestly: it is not $6,000 against $399, because LicensorPro does not take payments at all. You would still be paying a gateway, and you would still owe the tax work to somebody.
pre_set_site_transient_update_plugins just works.Lemon Squeezy at the front for checkout and tax, LicensorPro behind it for licensing and updates. The webhook from the sale creates the licence; everything after that is yours. That is how this site runs its own products, which is either reassuring or self-serving depending on your temperament, but it is at least true.
Found something wrong on this page? Lemon Squeezy's pricing and ownership have both changed recently, and we would rather be corrected than be inaccurate. Tell us and we will fix it — [email protected].
Lemon Squeezy charges 5% + 50¢ per transaction for ecommerce, with no monthly fee for ecommerce features. Their email marketing is priced separately by subscriber count, from $0 up to $399 a month. Some payments may carry additional fees.
Yes. Lemon Squeezy state it themselves on their blog: "When Stripe acquired Lemon Squeezy last year, we knew it was the start of something special." The products are converging on Stripe Managed Payments. Lemon Squeezy continues to operate and sell.
It can generate licence keys, but it is a payments product rather than a licensing server. It does not serve WordPress plugin updates, and its activation handling is basic compared with a dedicated licensing system.
Yes, and it is the most common arrangement. Lemon Squeezy handles checkout and acts as merchant of record for tax; a webhook from the completed sale creates the licence in LicensorPro, which then handles activations and updates.
If you sell internationally and do not want to register for VAT in multiple jurisdictions, very often yes. The fee buys you out of tax registration, filing and remittance. The trade-off is that it scales with revenue rather than with the work involved.
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