Gumroad vs Lemon Squeezy: Same Tax Answer, Very Different Cut

You are selling an ebook, a Lightroom preset pack or a Notion template, and somebody in Berlin buys it. Two questions follow immediately. Who owes the German tax office its VAT, and how much of the rest reaches your bank. Gumroad and Lemon Squeezy answer the first question the same way and the second one very differently.

Lemon Squeezy, every sale, processing included5 %9

Gumroad, direct sale through your own link10 %3

Gumroad, card processing charged on top of that2.9 %3

Gumroad, sale found through the Discover marketplace30 %3

030 %

Show the numbers

Row	Value	Source
Lemon Squeezy, every sale, processing included	5 %	9
Gumroad, direct sale through your own link	10 %	3
Gumroad, card processing charged on top of that	2.9 %	3
Gumroad, sale found through the Discover marketplace	30 %	3

What each sale actually costs

Gumroad's pricing page says 10% + $0.50 per transaction on sales through your own links. Its own fees article adds the sentence the pricing page leaves out: that fee does not include credit card processing of 2.9% + $0.30. Both numbers come off the same site, and only one of them is on the page people quote. On a $20 sale that is $2.50 to Gumroad plus another $0.88 to the card at the published rate.

Lemon Squeezy charges 5% + 50c of the total order value, and its docs say that single fee covers card fees, currency conversion and the tax it remits for you. Its own worked example is a $20 product bought in France with 20% VAT: the buyer pays $24, the platform fee is $2.06, and $17.94 lands as net.

Read the label on that fee row before you reuse the number. The docs spell it out as $0.50 + 5% of total + 1.5% int'l payment, so the example is not the plain rate at all. The plain 5% + 50c on $24 is $1.70. The other 36c is the international surcharge, and the buyer being in France is what triggered it. Work the plain rate yourself and the published example will not match, which is the sort of gap that makes people think they have been overcharged.

Then come the surcharges, and they matter more than the gap suggests. Lemon Squeezy adds 1.5% when the transaction is outside the US, another 1.5% on PayPal, 0.5% on subscription payments, 5% on a payment recovered by an abandoned cart email and 3% on an affiliate referral. Gumroad has its own version pointing the other way: a sale a buyer finds through the Discover marketplace costs a flat 30% with processing included, and once your paid sales pass $20,000 in a calendar month, new direct sales that month drop to 5% + $0.50 automatically.

Merchant of record is a tax registration question

This is the part usually written about as if it were bookkeeping. It is not. Merchant of record decides which legal entity is the seller in the eyes of a tax authority, and therefore who has to be registered with that authority before the sale happens.

Both platforms take that job. Gumroad's terms have you appoint it as your non-exclusive reseller, and its sales tax article states it now acts as merchant of record for all sales, handling collection and remittance worldwide. Lemon Squeezy's docs say the same in plainer words: it is technically selling products on your behalf, and it carries the liability. Practically, a seller in Vietnam or Poland selling a $12 preset to a buyer in Berlin does not go and register for EU VAT because of that sale, on either platform.

What sellers rarely read is the other edge of it. If the platform is the seller, the platform decides things you might assume are yours. Gumroad's VAT article answers the question of whether a creator can choose not to charge VAT on digital products with a single word: No. Its terms go further, saying you provide a suggested retail price and Gumroad reserves the right to set the price at which the product is resold. There is also a carve-out worth knowing if you ever ship anything physical: Gumroad does not collect VAT at checkout on a physical product going into the EU, because customs assesses the import VAT on arrival instead.

Gumroad, minimum hold before a scheduled payout7 days4

Lemon Squeezy, hold before net sales are released13 days11

Lemon Squeezy, bank transfer after release1 to 5 days11

015 days

Show the numbers

Row	Value	Source
Gumroad, minimum hold before a scheduled payout	7 days	4
Lemon Squeezy, hold before net sales are released	13 days	11
Lemon Squeezy, bank transfer after release	1 to 5 days	11

How long the money sits before you can touch it

Gumroad holds a sale a minimum of 7 days in your balance on the weekly, monthly and quarterly schedules, and each payout covers sales made through the previous Friday in UTC. Lemon Squeezy holds net sales 13 days, releases on the 14th and 28th of the month, and the bank transfer then takes 1 to 5 days. Its own example: sell on the 4th, get included in the payout created on the 15th, get paid on the 28th.

Gumroad also sells its way around the wait, for some people. Instant payouts skip the holding period for a 3% fee, up to $10K, but only for US creators who have completed at least one payout and whose account has been processing for 60 days.

Getting paid, and what it costs to get paid

You need a $100 balance for a scheduled Gumroad payout, and a long list of countries carry higher local minimums than that. Lemon Squeezy pays at $50, and below it the payout sits as Pending and rolls forward.

The fee on the transfer itself is the line most comparisons miss, and both platforms charge one. Lemon Squeezy is free to a US bank, 1% per payout to a bank outside the US, $0.50 flat to US PayPal and 3% capped at $30 to PayPal outside the US. Gumroad publishes no charge on a bank deposit and 3% on the optional instant payout, but the same getting-paid article also states that PayPal payouts have a 2% processing fee.

That 2% is not an optional extra for everyone. Gumroad supports local bank deposit in local currency where it can, offers PayPal in the countries where bank deposit is unavailable, and names Payoneer, Wise, cheques and wires as unsupported. If you live in one of those countries, PayPal is the only way Gumroad can pay you, so the 2% is not a choice you get to skip. Outside the US, on either platform, the transfer percentage belongs in your arithmetic next to the platform percentage, not as an afterthought.

Taking your customer list with you

Neither one locks the list away. Gumroad gives you a CSV of customers and their purchases within a selected date range, and a separate per-payout CSV, from the Payouts dashboard, that breaks down every fee alongside customer data. Lemon Squeezy has an Export button on the Orders page which emails a CSV to the store owner, carrying user_name, user_email, country, tax and totals per order.

One wrinkle is worth knowing: Gumroad will not let you edit a customer's email address if that customer created a Gumroad account during the purchase. Since the export exists on both, the real risk is not the export. It is losing access to the account before you have run one.

Selling the store

Neither account is an asset you can quietly hand over. Gumroad lists transferring your account and username to another party without consent as prohibited conduct. Lemon Squeezy requires prior written consent for an assignment and reserves the right to review and approve the buyer. On both, what you can sell cleanly is the product files and the audience you exported; the account itself moves only if the platform agrees.

What can end it

Gumroad's terms are blunt. It may halt sales of any product, suspend or terminate an account and suspend the service at any time, in its sole discretion, without cause or notice. It also publishes the trigger digital sellers hit first: a refund rate above 15% authorises Gumroad to hold 25% of your pending funds for 90 days on a rolling basis, and above 25% the account itself may be suspended.

Lemon Squeezy writes it with more process and the same ending. A material breach gets 15 days to cure, or 5 business days if it concerns payment or confidentiality. But it can terminate or suspend immediately, without prior notice, if it decides you are running an illegal business or if a regulator instructs it, and its terms give it the right to delay payouts for risk assessment and to reverse payments without warning where there is evidence of fraud.

Look at who signs the other side, too. Gumroad, Inc. runs terms effective 1 January 2025, last updated 17 August 2026 and binding on existing accounts from 16 September 2026. Lemon Squeezy's agreement is with Sold through Link, LLC f/k/a Lemon Squeezy LLC, which the agreement itself calls a Utah limited liability company and its own end user exhibit calls a Delaware one.

Which one fits you

If your buyers are mostly outside the US and your bank is too, Lemon Squeezy's real rate is 5% plus 1.5% plus 1% on the way out, not 5%. Gumroad's is 10% plus 2.9%, plus another 2% if it has to pay you by PayPal because it cannot deposit to your bank. Lemon Squeezy still wins a normal sale on price alone, and it wins by less than the headline numbers claim.

If you are moving more than $20,000 a month through your own Gumroad links, the automatic drop to 5% + $0.50 closes the gap, and Gumroad's 7-day hold gets you the money sooner than a 13-day hold ending on a fixed release date.

Before you move anything, take your last 30 sales, run them through both fee tables using your actual buyer countries and payment methods, and add the transfer fee at the end. That number, not the one on either pricing page, is the comparison.