Feature comparison: Paddle Classic and Paddle Billing
Paddle Billing has parity with features in Paddle Classic for the most part, with improvements across the board. You'll need to handle order fulfillment yourself.
Porting subscription data from Paddle Classic to Paddle Billing is in early access.
Built on the same world-class merchant of record foundations as Paddle Classic, Paddle Billing comes with everything you need for payments and tax.
| Classic | Billing + Retain | |
|---|---|---|
| Set product prices in over 25 currencies. | ||
| Sell in over 200 countries. | ||
| Intelligent payment routing for the best chance of success. | ||
| Turn on digital wallets like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal in minutes. | ||
| No third-party merchant accounts required. | ||
| Accept local payment methods. | ||
| Accept payment by wire transfer — no local bank account required. | ||
| Fraud and illegitimate chargeback protection. | ||
| Automatic global tax collection and remittance. | ||
| Paddle takes on full liability for sales tax for all payments. | ||
| Fully SOC 2 compliant. | ||
Hold your balance in USD, EUR, and GBP. | ||
Get payouts in over ten currencies, including USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, CAD, CNY and others. |
Paddle Billing is a complete reimagining of Paddle as a developer-first platform for SaaS businesses.
| Classic | Billing + Retain | |
|---|---|---|
| Access to a sandbox account for testing. | ||
| API accepts and responds with JSON data. | ||
| API returns standard HTTP success and error responses. | ||
| API conforms to REST principles. | ||
| Complete access to your data via the API. | ||
| Store custom data against all entities. | ||
| Webhook payloads mirror API responses. | ||
| Standardized webhook signature verification, with SDK helper methods. | ||
| Consistent, performant pagination across list endpoints. | ||
Supports sideloading entities in GET requests. | ||
| Comprehensive reference documentation. | ||
| Real world examples for all API operations, webhooks, and Paddle.js events. | ||
| Public Postman collection. | ||
| Public OpenAPI specification file. | ||
| Hand-crafted SDKs for web platforms. | ||
| Desktop SDKs. |
Customer information is centralized in a single, lightweight customer entity that's specific to your Paddle Billing account and can be related to multiple subscriptions and transactions.
| Classic | Billing + Retain | |
|---|---|---|
| Collect and store customer, address, and business information. | ||
| Automatic handling of internationally sanctioned countries. | ||
| Access to all customer, address, and business information via the API. | ||
| Collect customer marketing consent at checkout. | ||
| Paddle Audience functionality in Paddle.js. | ||
| Store multiple addresses and businesses per customer. | ||
| Team discovery highlights customers across the same company. | ||
| Set business contacts to receive copies of invoices and emails from Paddle. |
Paddle Billing comes with a product catalog that's designed to give you flexible ways to sell digital products and subscriptions.
| Classic | Billing + Retain | |
|---|---|---|
| Sell one-time products. | ||
| Sell recurring subscriptions. | ||
| Override prices for a product. | ||
| Create multiple prices per product. | ||
| Set trial periods for subscriptions. | ||
| Automatic currency conversion. | ||
| Localize prices by country. | ||
| Model basic recurring, good-better-best, per-seat and metered billing plans. | ||
| Bill for products that aren't in your catalog. | ||
| Offer recurring and non-recurring discounts. | ||
| Discount by percentage or flat amount per transaction. | ||
| Discount per-unit on a transaction. | ||
| Restrict the number of redemptions for a discount. | ||
| Set discount expiry dates. | ||
| Set a discount to recur for a limited number of billing periods. | ||
| Create discounts without coupon codes. |
We brought everything you liked about Paddle Checkout in Paddle Classic to Paddle Billing, including fully optimized payment workflows, intelligent payment routing, and field validation.
| Classic | Billing + Retain | |
|---|---|---|
| Easy-to-implement JavaScript library (Paddle.js). | ||
| Import Paddle.js as a module and work with TypeScript definitions. | ||
| Build custom workflows with events for all parts of the checkout lifecycle. | ||
| Supports authentication using client-side tokens. | ||
| Use HTML data attributes to open checkouts. | ||
| Dynamically update items and apply discounts to opened checkouts. | ||
| Checkout translated into 17 languages. | ||
| Short purchase journey, optimized for conversion. | ||
| Prefill customer, address, and business information for a one-page checkout. | ||
| Real-time card and email address verification. | ||
| Supports browser or password manager autofill. | ||
| Create a fully responsive overlay checkout with a few lines of HTML and JavaScript. | ||
| Includes support for dark mode. | ||
| Build embedded checkout experiences using inline checkout. | ||
| Present multi-product subscriptions and complex billing scenarios. | ||
| Supports 3DS2, with data stored in a fully PCI-1-compliant vault. |
Conquer upmarket and downmarket with Paddle Billing, with integrated invoicing that lets you draft and send invoices to customers with no data duplication.
| Classic | Billing + Retain | |
|---|---|---|
| Accept payment by wire transfer. | ||
| Draft and send invoices. | ||
| No data duplication — bill any customer for any product. | ||
| Automatically create subscriptions for issued invoices. | ||
| Automatically generate invoices for subscription renewals, upgrades, and other changes. | ||
| Offer a hybrid billing motion, moving customers between payment by checkout to billing by invoice. | ||
| Paddle handles invoice reconciliation for you. | ||
| Generate internationally compliant invoice documents. | ||
| Set purchase order number, payment terms, and other billing information. | ||
| Add billing contacts who automatically receive invoices for a business. | ||
| Offer payment by checkout for smaller charges, like adding users mid cycle. |
Subscriptions are a first-class entity in Paddle Billing, holding all the details of a recurring billing relationship for a customer.
| Classic | Billing + Retain | |
|---|---|---|
| Create subscriptions that recur weekly, monthly, annually, or a custom period. | ||
| Create subscriptions with a trial period. | ||
| Create card not present free trials. | ||
| Bill for multiple recurring products on a subscription. | ||
| Collect for subscriptions automatically by card, digital wallet, or local payment methods. | ||
| Bill subscriptions by invoice (wire transfer). | ||
| Extend or cut short a trial. | ||
| Upgrade, downgrade, and add or remove recurring items on a trial. | ||
| Change subscription currency. | ||
| Change billing dates for a subscription. | ||
| Upgrade or downgrade a subscription term length (e.g. monthly to annual). | ||
| Upgrade or downgrade a subscription plan (e.g. basic to pro). | ||
| Bill for one-time and recurring addons. | ||
| Update payment details for a subscription. | ||
| Switch a subscription to billing by invoice. | ||
| Pause and resume a subscription. | ||
| Set a resume date against a paused subscription. | ||
| Cancel a subscription. | ||
| Bill products that aren't in your catalog to a subscription. | ||
| Automatic calculation of prorated charges or credits for subscription changes. | ||
| Bill for subscription changes now or on the next billing period. | ||
| Choose to make changes to a subscription without billing for them. | ||
| Preview updates to subscriptions. | ||
| Reminder emails before subscriptions renew. |
Paddle Billing includes webhooks, a unified event stream, and comprehensive documentation that you can use to build your own fulfilment workflows. Paddle-led fulfilment — including product delivery and licence key generation — has been deprecated.
| Classic | Billing + Retain | |
|---|---|---|
| Webhooks for all parts of the subscription lifecycle. | ||
| Unified event stream that you can poll. | ||
| Product delivery by Paddle. | ||
| Licence key generation and activation. | ||
| Full access to your transaction data. | ||
| Webhook simulator. |
Paddle Billing seamlessly integrates with Paddle Retain, taking care of payment recovery for you. Retain includes retention tools like Cancellation Flows and Term Optimization that help you reduce churn and increase customer lifetime value.
| Classic | Billing + Retain | |
|---|---|---|
| Payment recovery emails when payment fails. | ||
| Automatic payment retries (dunning). | ||
| Automatically optimized retry schedule | * | |
| Pause or cancel past due subscriptions where dunning exhausted. | ||
| In-app payment recovery notifications, powered by Paddle Retain. | * | |
| Payment recovery by SMS, powered by Paddle Retain. | * | |
| In-app notifications before payment methods expire, powered by Paddle Retain. | * | |
| One-click form to update payment details on your website, powered by Paddle Retain. | * | |
| Build cancellation workflows and salvage offers that reduce churn, powered by Paddle Retain Cancellation Flows. | ||
| Proactively upgrade engaged customers on monthly plans to annual plans, powered by Paddle Retain Term Optimization. |
Paddle Retain payment recovery is also available for Paddle Classic. Features with an asterisk are available for Classic when integrated with Retain. Cancellation Flows and Term Optimization are only available for Paddle Billing.
Paddle Billing includes six reports for your transactions, refunds and chargebacks, and product catalog. For subscription data, it's fully integrated with ProfitWell Metrics, which includes key performance information and powerful benchmarking tools to see how well your business compares to others in your industry.
| Classic | Billing + Retain | |
|---|---|---|
| Complete access to your data via the API. | ||
| Pull reports for refunds and chargebacks. | ||
| Pull reports on your sales data. | ||
| Pull reports on your product catalog. | ||
| Pull reports on your subscription data. | ||
| Use ProfitWell Metrics to report on delinquent churn, customer lifetime value, and revenue per customer. | ||
| View cash flow data from one-time payments alongside recurring revenue in ProfitWell Metrics. |
