Merchant of record payments for SaaS — simplifies global tax compliance, not without tradeoffs
Short answer: No — but read on.
Paddle sits in an uncomfortable middle ground. Not a scam, but a product where a meaningful share of customers walk away feeling like they were oversold or mishandled.
The strongest "this feels like a scam" signals tend to come from one of two places: marketing claims that don't match reality, or billing practices that make leaving harder than joining. Below are the 1 flags in those two categories we've documented for Paddle.
SaaS companies on Paddle paying 5% per transaction describe the cost as meaningful at scale — a company doing $100K MRR pays $5,000+ monthly to Paddle vs $2,900+ to Stripe for the same volume, a $25,000+ annual difference.
Our AI scanner searches Reddit, Trustpilot, BBB, and news sources for fresh complaints from the past year, paraphrases what it finds, and adds anything new to this page. Takes up to 90 seconds.
For the full record — lawsuits, churn signals, support failures, and BBB filings — see the complete complaints page.