Freemius Review

Freemius is a merchant of record for software makers: SaaS products, desktop and mobile apps, browser extensions and, its original market, WordPress plugins and themes. Freemius, Inc., a Delaware company, buys each licence from you at a wholesale price and resells it to your customer, so it collects and remits US sales tax and EU and UK VAT, handles refunds and disputes, and is the seller your buyer pays. As of November 2026 the published price is 3.8% + 50¢ per transaction plus gateway fees, calculated on the full amount the buyer pays including any sales tax or VAT. Its vendor terms list the gateway fees as maximums Freemius uses best efforts not to exceed: 2.9% + 30¢ for a US card through Stripe, with 1.5% more for non-US cards and 0.5% more for subscription payments. WordPress plugins and themes pay an extra 2.3% for licensing, updates and WordPress-specific tools. There are no setup or monthly fees, its documentation says the percentage share falls in steps above $50,000 a month in sales, and you can leave on 30 days' notice. The catch is cash flow: earnings are paid once a month, on or around the 10th, for sales made in the month before last, so a sale can take roughly 40 to 70 days to reach you, with a $100 minimum payout.

Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using Freemius’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.

What Freemius is

Freemius is a sales platform and merchant of record for software makers. It started in the WordPress ecosystem as a way to sell and license premium plugins and themes, began expanding beyond WordPress in 2024 and in 2025 pushed into SaaS, desktop and mobile apps and browser extensions. The founding year depends on the source: its founder and CEO, Vova Feldman, said in a 2023 Post Status interview that he opened the company at the beginning of 2015 after starting work on it at the end of 2014, but Freemius's 2024 year in review describes celebrating its 10th anniversary that year, and an archived copy of freemius.com from December 2014 shows the site in stealth mode with a 2014 copyright. The operating company is Freemius, Inc.; its terms and privacy policy give a registered address at 4023 Kennett Pike, Wilmington, Delaware, and its about page describes a fully remote team in more than ten countries. Feldman has said he raised a small amount from angel investors early on and has taken no institutional funding, describing the company as bootstrapped and profitable; we found no record of an acquisition. In its 2024 year in review Freemius said a software maker on the platform earned an average of $43,000 a year; that is the company's own figure.

Why we list Freemius as a merchant of record

The vendor terms are explicit about the model. For each sale, Freemius buys the licence from you at a wholesale price, which is your list price minus Freemius's discount, the gateway fees, and any refunds and chargebacks, and resells it to your customer. Freemius sets the final transaction amount, collects and remits sales tax and VAT from it, and pays you your earnings once a month. Payments run on Freemius's own Stripe and PayPal accounts, so you never open a merchant account, and its FAQ says you do not need a company or a VAT registration to start. That is the merchant-of-record position in the payments chain, not a payment facilitator, which would leave you as the seller.

What it costs

• Freemius's share: 3.8% + 50¢ per transaction (€0.45 on EUR sales, £0.40 on GBP), with no setup or monthly fee, as of November 2026. It is calculated on the full transaction amount, including any sales tax or VAT.
• WordPress plugins, themes, add-ons and templates: an extra 2.3%, which Freemius says covers the WordPress SDK, licensing and update delivery, and compliance with WordPress.org guidelines.
• Gateway fees, passed through on top. Freemius says its current average effective gateway rate is 3.5% and that it takes no part of these fees. Exhibit A of the vendor terms lists them as maximums: 2.9% + 30¢ for a US-issued card via Stripe, plus 1.5% for a non-US card and 0.5% for subscription payments; 3.49% + 30¢ for a US PayPal account, plus 1.5% for a non-US account.
• Volume: Freemius's pricing documentation says its percentage share falls automatically in bands of monthly gross sales, to 3.7% between $50,000 and $60,000, 3.5% to $70,000, 3.0% to $80,000, 2.0% to $90,000, 1.0% to $100,000 and 0.5% above $100,000. Its pricing FAQ instead says it offers Growth pricing tailored to your volume rather than a fixed tier table.
• Chargebacks: up to $15 via Stripe or $20 via PayPal, deducted from your balance.
• No extra charge for cart abandonment recovery or failed-payment recovery, according to the pricing page.

The headline figure is Freemius's cut, not your total cost. Take a $100 monthly SaaS subscription with no sales tax and gateway fees at the Exhibit A ceilings. Paid by a US card, Freemius's share is $4.30 and Stripe's maximum is $3.70 (2.9% + 30¢ plus 0.5% for a subscription), so you keep at least $92.00, a total cost of up to 8%. Paid by a card from outside the US, the gateway fee rises by $1.50 and you keep $90.50. Sell the same thing as a renewing WordPress plugin licence to a European business buyer with a VAT number (so no VAT is added) and the WordPress 2.3% brings the cost to up to $11.80, or 11.8%. Both Freemius's fee and the gateway fees are charged on the full amount the customer pays, including any tax, so a taxed sale costs more. Exhibit A says the gateway figures are ceilings that Freemius uses best efforts not to exceed, and Freemius puts its average effective gateway rate at 3.5%, so the real figure is usually lower. The fixed fees bite on cheap products: on a $5 monthly subscription paid by US card, fees come to about $1.16, or 23%. Freemius's own FAQ recommends a minimum price of $3.99 for that reason.

Freemius moved to this pricing in 2025, which its year-in-review called the biggest pricing update in its history, with a lower revenue share and published growth tiers. The pricing page says existing sellers can keep their current plan or ask support to switch, and the vendor terms say a change to the wholesale discount applies only to sellers who join after it. Check which plan your account is on before comparing costs.

How selling works

You create an account, add a product and plans, and get a checkout link or an embeddable checkout; Freemius says there is no lengthy approval and you can start selling the same day. The checkout takes Visa, Mastercard and American Express through Stripe, PayPal, and iDEAL for Dutch buyers, and sells in USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, AUD, ILS, PLN, CHF and RSD. It works for buyers in every country not under US sanctions. Monthly and annual subscriptions renew automatically, with trials, proration, renewal reminders and failed-payment recovery built in, and a customer portal lets buyers manage licences, payment methods and cancellations themselves. Buyers see your product name on their card statement, though PayPal emails name Freemius.

The licensing engine gates features by plan and controls activations for any kind of software. For WordPress, the SDK goes further: it adds pricing and checkout inside the WordPress admin, delivers automatic updates for paid versions, supports betas and staged rollouts, collects opt-in usage data and deactivation feedback, and can build the free WordPress.org version from the same codebase. Freemius also includes an affiliate platform, cart abandonment emails, coupons, webhooks and a REST API, along with JavaScript SDKs and starter kits for React and Next.js.

Payouts and holds

Payouts are monthly and slow. Freemius calculates earnings on the 1st of each month for sales made in the month before last and pays them on or around the 10th, so January's sales are paid from 10 March: roughly 40 to 70 days after each sale, plus 3 to 6 business days for the transfer depending on the channel. Refunds made in the meantime are deducted first. The minimum payout is $100, and smaller balances roll over. Freemius explains the lag as protection against sellers who buy their own product, collect the payout, and then dispute the charges, because it does not take a direct debit on your bank account. New AI SaaS products can ask for a faster monthly schedule with a rolling reserve, but Freemius decides that case by case.

You can be paid by PayPal, Payoneer, Wise or bank wire to sellers in more than 190 countries. Freemius says its bank charges nothing on wires, although intermediary banks may. PayPal payouts to non-US accounts cost 2%, capped at $20, and Wise deducts its own conversion fees. EUR and GBP earnings can be paid out separately; other selling currencies are converted to USD when the sale is made. The vendor terms also let Freemius retain some or all of your balance at its discretion to cover expected refunds, chargebacks, suspected fraud or a suspected Acceptable Use Policy breach, telling you how much and why and keeping it for whatever it judges a reasonable time (section 11.7); set off disputed payments against future earnings (section 11.4); and keep a reserve from transactions processed after termination for up to three months (section 16.2).

Refunds, chargebacks and contract terms

Freemius issues refunds, and you can start them from the dashboard, but its own pages disagree on the rules. Its general FAQ says refunds are possible for 30 days after a sale and only in full; its pricing documentation says full or partial refunds are possible; and the vendor terms (section 11.5) allow refunds after 30 days, with you bearing the entire amount. On a refund within 30 days Freemius returns its percentage share but keeps the 50¢, and the gateway fee is not refunded. For a disputed payment Freemius holds the amount and contacts you first; if the customer wins, you bear the full amount, the terms let Freemius also deduct its share of the sale, and the gateway's chargeback fee comes out of your balance. A seller with an excessive chargeback rate can have product sales suspended.

There is no fixed term. Under the vendor terms, last updated 14 October 2026, you can leave on 30 days' written notice and Freemius can end the service on 90 days' notice (section 15.2); either side can terminate immediately for a material breach, which for a seller includes knowingly selling a prohibited product (section 15.3). After you leave, Freemius continues paying what you are owed and runs renewals on existing licences through your dashboard, but takes no new sales. Disputes go to JAMS arbitration under New York law unless you opt out by email within 30 days of signing up. The Acceptable Use Policy, effective 19 August 2026, limits Freemius to software and bars human or professional services, physical goods, adult content and gambling, so it is not an option for high-risk sellers.

Reputation

Among sellers, Freemius has a long record in the WordPress world, and the testimonials on its own site mostly praise its tax handling and support; those are chosen by the company. Independent reviews are thinner and split. As of 15 November 2026 Trustpilot shows a TrustScore of 3.8 from 48 reviews, but the distribution is polarised: 48% five-star and 46% one-star. Freemius claimed the profile in July 2025 and has replied to 81% of negative reviews, though Trustpilot says it usually takes more than a month. The two groups are mostly different people: most of the five-star reviews are from sellers and were posted from August 2026 onward, while most one-star reviews, dating from 2023 to mid-2026, come from buyers of products sold through Freemius rather than from sellers, describing refunds, renewal charges to a saved card and billing after cancellation. The most recent negative review, from October 2026, describes a buyer's refund that was paid only after the review was posted. That is a side effect of being the merchant of record: your customers' complaints land on Freemius's name.

The Freemius WordPress SDK, which is embedded in many plugins, has had security flaws. In March 2022 Freemius published a disclosure of issues in its WordPress SDK, tracked as CVE-2022-4974, the most significant of which let logged-in WordPress users switch on the SDK's debug mode and potentially expose data such as API keys; they were fixed in versions 2.4.3 and 2.5.0.1. Freemius said the issues did not make sites more vulnerable to attack and judged an attack at scale extremely unlikely. The same post refers to an earlier SDK security incident about three years before. Plugin sellers should keep the bundled SDK up to date. We found no lawsuits or regulatory actions naming Freemius.

Who should use Freemius

Freemius suits an independent developer or small team selling WordPress plugins and themes, a micro-SaaS product or downloadable software to buyers around the world who wants tax, VAT, licensing and subscription billing handled without forming a company or opening a merchant account. WordPress sellers get the most from it, since the SDK replaces a separate licensing and update system, though they pay 2.3% more for it. Look elsewhere if you need cash within days of a sale, sell low-priced items where 50¢ plus gateway fixed fees take a large share, or sell anything other than software. Before signing up, work out your all-in cost with the gateway fees included and plan for a payout lag of up to about ten weeks, and check which refund and volume-pricing rules apply to your account.