How do I track Paddle revenue alongside my other apps?

From the SoleOS answers series — written about our own product space; grounded in published definitions and documented behavior, never invented numbers.

Right now, the honest answer is: manually, via CSV export, or by routing Paddle's net payout number into a spreadsheet alongside your other sources — Paddle isn't a native SoleOS connector today. The harder answer is that Paddle's merchant-of-record structure means you can't just drop its numbers next to Stripe or RevenueCat and expect them to mean the same thing, so the real work is deciding which number represents "revenue" in your portfolio before you even open a spreadsheet.

If you run a mix of products — some billed through Stripe, some through Paddle, some monetized via mobile stores — this mismatch is the single biggest source of "my dashboard doesn't add up" frustration. Let's fix the mental model first, then the mechanics.

Why Paddle numbers don't slot in cleanly

Paddle (and Lemon Squeezy, and Polar) act as merchant of record. That means they collect the sale, handle VAT/sales tax remittance, and pay you out net of their fee and net of taxes they've already remitted on your behalf. Stripe, by contrast, is a payment processor — you're the merchant of record, you collect gross, and you remit your own taxes separately.

Practically, this means:

• Paddle's "payout" figure is already tax-adjusted. Comparing it directly to Stripe gross revenue overstates how comparable the two are.
• Paddle's fee is baked into net revenue per transaction, not a separate line you apply after the fact like a payment processor fee.
• Refunds and chargebacks route differently. Paddle handles dispute resolution on your behalf in ways that can lag your dashboard by days.

So the first decision isn't "how do I pipe Paddle into a chart" — it's "am I tracking gross, net-of-fees, or net-of-everything revenue across my whole portfolio, and is every source reporting the same definition?" Get that wrong and every per-app comparison you make is apples to oranges. If you want the exact formulas SoleOS uses for MRR, gross vs. net, and how it labels each, the metrics dictionary spells out the caveats explicitly rather than hiding them.

The practical workaround today

Until there's a native connector, here's the approach that keeps your numbers honest without burning a weekend every month:

1. Export Paddle's monthly payout report as CSV. Paddle gives you transaction-level data including gross, fee, tax, and net — pull net revenue per billing period.
2. Normalize to a single revenue definition. Decide whether your portfolio view tracks gross or net, and convert Paddle's export to match whatever your Stripe and RevenueCat numbers represent. If your Stripe apps report gross and your Paddle apps report net, note it in a column rather than pretending they're equivalent.
3. Log it as a manual metric entry, updated monthly. This won't give you the daily granularity your webhook-connected sources have, but monthly is usually enough to catch trend breaks for a single-product line in a 10-app portfolio.
4. Flag the app in your own notes as "manual/lagging." When you're doing a portfolio review and a Paddle-billed app looks flat, you want to remember that its number is 30 days stale by design, not a sign something broke.

This is tedious but it's the same category of problem as reconciling Stripe and RevenueCat together — different sources report different things, and the fix is a consistent conversion layer, not a magic unified API.

What this looks like day to day

If you're running, say, six Stripe-billed SaaS products, two mobile apps on RevenueCat, and one Paddle-billed tool for EU customers, your monthly routine might be:

• Daily/automated: Stripe and RevenueCat revenue flow in via OAuth, updating continuously.
• Monthly manual step: pull the Paddle CSV, convert net payout to your chosen baseline, drop it into whatever tool aggregates your portfolio.
• Quarterly: double-check your conversion assumptions still hold — Paddle's fee structure and tax handling can shift, and a stale assumption compounds over a year.

The goal isn't precision to the dollar. It's catching the trend — is this app's revenue climbing, flat, or sliding — without accidentally comparing it on an incompatible basis to your Stripe apps and concluding something is wrong when it's just a reporting artifact.

When manual tracking is genuinely fine

If Paddle is your only revenue source, or one of two, a spreadsheet is not a limitation — it's the right tool. You don't need portfolio software to track one payout number a month. The complexity only bites when Paddle is one source among five or ten and you're trying to answer "which three apps should I spend my limited hours on this month" — that's when manual reconciliation starts eating real time and introducing real errors. If you're earlier than that, the spreadsheet comparison is worth reading honestly before you pay for anything.

Disclosure

SoleOS is portfolio intelligence built by a solo founder running 10+ apps, and this post is written by the team behind it — so take the "add it manually for now" advice with the obvious grain of salt that we'd rather you didn't have to. Stripe, RevenueCat, GA4, Search Console, Bing Webmaster, App Store Connect, Google Play, Firebase, and Supabase connect natively today; see what SoleOS connects to for exact scopes and how to revoke access. Paddle isn't on that list yet.

Frequently asked questions

Will SoleOS add a native Paddle connector?

There's no committed timeline to share here, and we won't promise a date we can't guarantee. The connector list in the product facts above reflects what's live today: RevenueCat, Stripe, PostHog, GA4, Search Console, Bing Webmaster, App Store Connect, Google Play, Firebase, and Supabase, with AdMob planned. Paddle demand is something to track, not something to assume is coming.

Should I track Paddle revenue as gross or net?

Track net-of-fees-and-tax if you're trying to understand actual cash you'll see in your bank account, and track it consistently against whichever basis your other sources use. If your Stripe apps report gross revenue, your Paddle net figure will look artificially lower per dollar of sale — not because the app is underperforming, but because the definitions differ. Label the column clearly so future-you doesn't misread it.

Can I use Paddle's webhooks instead of manual CSV exports?

Yes, if you're comfortable building a small ingestion script — Paddle does support webhooks for subscription and transaction events, and routing those into your own database (Supabase, for instance) gives you near-real-time data instead of monthly CSV pulls. This is more setup work upfront but removes the manual step long-term. It's the same tradeoff as any build-vs-buy decision for a solo founder: worth it if you're technical and have more than one Paddle-billed product, probably not worth it for a single app.

How do I compare a Paddle app's growth rate to a Stripe app's growth rate fairly?

Compare percentage month-over-month growth on net revenue for both, rather than comparing absolute dollar figures. Growth rate is less sensitive to the gross-vs-net discrepancy than raw revenue comparisons are, since the fee/tax overhead is usually a roughly stable percentage per transaction (though VAT rates do vary by customer country, which adds noise for EU-heavy Paddle apps).

Is there a real downside to just estimating Paddle revenue instead of exact figures?

For portfolio-level decisions — which app to invest more hours in, which to sunset — a reasonably accurate monthly estimate is usually enough; you're looking for trend direction, not audit-grade precision. The downside shows up if you're using the number for tax filing or investor reporting, where you need Paddle's actual remittance records, not an approximation. Keep those two use cases separate.