Paymenter vs Polar
Paymenter and Polar are both billing and subscriptions software. Paymenter is open source under MIT, with 2.8k GitHub stars. Polar is open source under Apache-2.0, with 10k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick Paymenter when
- You run a small game or web hosting business and want a free alternative to WHMCS.
- Pick Polar when
- You sell software or digital products internationally and want tax handling and billing done for you.
Side by side
A self-hosted billing and storefront for hosting companies, handling products, invoices, Stripe and PayPal payments and provisioning through Pterodactyl and other panels.
A merchant-of-record billing platform for selling subscriptions, digital products and usage-based plans, handling payments and sales tax.
Smaller ecosystem of provisioning extensions than WHMCS.
Merchant-of-record means a percentage fee on each sale, and the hosted service is the real product even though the code is open.
Usable
Production-ready
Self-hosted server
Cloud service
PHP and Laravel
Python, FastAPI, TypeScript and Next.js
Open source, MIT (permissive)
Open source, Apache-2.0 (permissive)
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice. (both)
2.8k GitHub stars
10k GitHub stars
Established: started 4 years ago, latest release v1.5.9.
Established: started 3 years ago, latest release @polar-sh/better-auth@2.1.3.
Other comparisons
More billing and subscription management systems
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from each project's README and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.