CANDI vs Lemon Squeezy — stay the seller, or hand it over?

The difference

It is a different billing model, not a cheaper one. Lemon Squeezy is a merchant of record. CANDI is not, and that single fact decides almost everything else.

	Merchant-of-record platforms	CANDI
Who is the seller	The platform. Their name is on the charge and the invoice.	You. Your name is on the charge.
Whose payment account	Theirs. Your customers pay them.	Yours. You connect your own account.
Where the money lands	With them, then paid out to you on their schedule.	In your account, on your own payout schedule. CANDI never holds it.
Sales tax / VAT	They calculate, collect and remit it.	Yours. CANDI does not calculate, collect, remit or file it.
Who verifies you	They do, as part of onboarding.	Your payment provider does. Not us.
Chargebacks	Theirs to fight, under their terms.	Yours, on your own account.

This is a structural comparison of the two billing models, not a claim about any one vendor. Business models change — check the vendor's own pricing and terms before you decide.

Which to pick

Pick on who you want to be to your customer. Neither answer is universally right.

Lemon Squeezy handles the seller role and the tax that comes with selling across borders. Like every MoR, the headline rate is worth reading closely — surcharges for international cards, alternative payment methods and subscriptions are common in this category, so the effective rate on your particular mix can differ from the number on the pricing page. Read their current pricing against your own card mix rather than against a headline.

The structural difference

With an MoR you are supplying the platform, and it resells to your customer. With CANDI you connect your own payment account and sell directly. The money lands with you, the charge carries your name, and your payout schedule is your payment provider's, not ours.

What CANDI gives you on top of a raw payment account

Hosted and embedded checkout, on a separate origin so you stay out of PCI scope.
Subscriptions with proration handled in one rounding path, not re-derived per feature.
Licence keys, and usage credits for products that meter.
Discounts, revenue splits and affiliates.
A customer billing portal, and HMAC-signed webhooks with retries and replay.

The thing we do not give you is tax. If that is the job you are hiring for, hire an MoR.

Before you switch

The honest part. Read this before you move anything.

Where CANDI actually is today. Live payments are not switched on yet, so nobody is taking live money through CANDI. Test mode is fully open — its own database, its own keys, the whole API, and Stripe onboarding, so you can connect a Stripe account and build the entire integration today. Stripe hosts the verification; CANDI never sees your identity documents.

If cross-border sales tax is the problem you are actually trying to solve, a merchant of record solves it and CANDI does not. That is a real reason to choose Lemon Squeezy, and we would rather say so here than have you find out after you migrate. Check their current pricing and terms directly — we deliberately do not restate them, because a number we copied today is a number that is wrong later.

Also compare

The rest of the field. Same comparison, different vendor.

CANDI vs Creem

MoR at a rate close to ours, tax remittance included.

CANDI vs Paddle

The established MoR for software, deep compliance.

CANDI vs Polar

Developer-first MoR with tiers that cut the rate.

CANDI vs Gumroad

Creator storefront and marketplace, MoR, at a much higher rate.

Merchant of record vs seller of record

The underlying decision, without a vendor attached.

Questions

Answered plainly. Including the ones where the answer is no.

Does CANDI charge extra for international cards or subscriptions?

Our published floor is from 3.9% all in, and rates vary by country, card type and ticket size — 3.9% is a floor, not a promise. What we will not do is quote you one number and add named surcharges on top of it.

Does CANDI do tax like Lemon Squeezy?

No. CANDI does not calculate, collect, remit or file tax. Orders book a zero tax line.

Can I sell through CANDI right now?

Not live. Live payments are not switched on yet. Test mode is open with the full API.

CANDI vs Lemon Squeezy Lemon Squeezy is a merchant of record aimed at people selling software and digital products on their own. CANDI covers a similar surface but leaves you as the seller.