The real question is whether merchant-of-record convenience is worth more to you than control over your billing — Lemon Squeezy absorbs VAT, refunds, and checkout plumbing for a higher cut, while Stripe leaves you with deeper subscription, pricing, and lifecycle control for a thinner one. If you are comparing them on headline fees alone, your margin math is missing what actually happens to a software sale after VAT, refunds, coupons, license keys, and partner payouts come out. Open the calculator with your own price and see which one leaves more in your pocket.
Lemon Squeezy wins when a small software team wants a faster storefront, merchant of record coverage, and lighter tax handling without building every workflow from scratch. If license key delivery and cross-border admin are slowing launches, the convenience can outweigh extra fee drag.
Stripe wins when your product needs deeper billing control, custom checkout logic, or direct ownership of pricing and customer data. That flexibility matters once you are testing bundles, annual plans, partner deals, or more advanced subscription billing rules.
Run your real software assumptions through the calculator before you decide. Compare the resulting net profit, break-even price, and target-margin price against the operational relief Lemon Squeezy would buy you.