# polarsource/polar

Polar — A billing platform for the intelligence era

Repository: https://github.com/polarsource/polar
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/polar
Homepage: https://polar.sh
Language: Python
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: fastapi, nextjs, python, typescript, react, polar, subscriptions, turborepo, digital-products, payments, saas, merchant-of-record, payments-platform, usage-billing
Last push: 2026-08-26T23:51:04+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 97/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 98, longevity 93
- inputs: {"age_days": 1315, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 14, "gap_med": 5.0, "n_releases_24m": 33}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 10212, forks 767 (observed 2026-08-28T04:10:39.911810+00:00)

## What it is
Polar is an open-source billing and monetization platform that acts as merchant of record, offering usage-based billing, subscriptions, seats, credits, trials, discounts, hosted checkout, and global tax compliance. It is built for AI startups that need to meter and charge for tokens, agent runs, and compute without building billing infrastructure from scratch.

## Use cases
- bill customers per token or API call for an AI product
- sell subscriptions and digital products with global tax handled
- implement usage-based billing with meters and events
- add seat-based team pricing with automatic proration
- sell prepaid credit packs that draw down per event
- offer free trials with automatic card capture and conversion
- track per-customer cost and gross margin for LLM APIs
- avoid building VAT/GST/sales tax compliance for international sales

## When to choose
- you want a Stripe alternative that also handles tax compliance as merchant of record
- you need to meter tokens, agent runs, or GPU seconds and bill them precisely
- you want subscriptions, dunning, proration, and customer portals out of the box
- you are an AI startup that wants to monetize usage without building billing infrastructure

## When to avoid
- you only need raw payment processing without billing, tax, or product management
- you cannot accept a per-transaction fee model (5% + 50¢ on the free tier)
- you need full control over the payment flow and customer data residency
- your product is not software or digital (physical goods are out of scope)

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: active
- function: api-framework, webhook, analytics, self-hosted, sdk
- domain: fintech, e-commerce, developer-tools, apis, large-language-models
- platform: self-hosted, cloud, python
- tags: merchant-of-record, usage-billing, subscriptions, metering, checkout, tax-compliance, credits, seat-based-pricing, monetization, ai-startups, billing, payments, saas, web-server, nodejs, docker

## Member repositories
- polarsource/polar (main) score 97

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:39.911810+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:19:30.615306+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/polarsource/polar (fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:39.911810+00:00, sha 99845600bc1f)
  - homepage: https://polar.sh (fetched 2026-08-29T08:19:08.968865+00:00, sha 2c628d833493)
  - site_page: https://polar.sh/docs (fetched 2026-08-29T08:19:08.977947+00:00, sha 4bef5ed202a2)
  - site_page: https://polar.sh/features/usage-billing (fetched 2026-08-29T08:19:08.979903+00:00, sha aad1510940bf)
  - site_page: https://polar.sh/features/subscriptions (fetched 2026-08-29T08:19:08.981623+00:00, sha 2dd555a970b9)
  - site_page: https://polar.sh/features/seats (fetched 2026-08-29T08:19:08.983344+00:00, sha 2026b0219a12)
  - site_page: https://polar.sh/features/credits (fetched 2026-08-29T08:19:08.985059+00:00, sha f864bd14b307)
  - site_page: https://polar.sh/features/trials (fetched 2026-08-29T08:19:08.986729+00:00, sha 7c2a72ea788a)
  - site_page: https://polar.sh/features/discounts (fetched 2026-08-29T08:19:08.988252+00:00, sha efb4b5b50c59)
  - site_page: https://polar.sh/features/cost-insights (fetched 2026-08-29T08:19:08.989796+00:00, sha 761e814eca5a)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.