September 30, 2026Business
The subscription tax nobody puts on the invoice
Kris Marut
Recharge charges 1.49% of your recurring revenue plus $0.19 per order, forever. Here is the full fee math at $80k/mo GMV and why Medusa + Reorder charges 0%.
Recharge is a great product. It also charges 1.49% of your recurring revenue, every month, forever, on top of its platform fee and a $0.19 per-order cut. The amount compounds as you grow. Medusa + Reorder charges none of that.
Same subscriptions, two very different bills
| What you pay | Shopify + Recharge | Medusa + Reorder |
|---|---|---|
| Cut of subscription GMV | 1.49% + $0.19/order | 0% |
| Platform fee | $99–$499/mo | Infrastructure only |
| You own the code | No | Yes · MIT licensed |
| If they raise prices | You are stuck | You can walk |
Worked example: $80k/mo on Recharge Standard
At $80k monthly GMV with a $45 average order value, the annual Recharge Standard bill lands around $19,545 per year: $1,188 platform fee, ~$14,304 GMV cut, and ~$4,053 in per-order fees. The $0.19 per-order charge is easy to miss on the pricing page, but at scale it rivals the percentage fee.
Reorder is not free. It is yours.
There are real costs to running Reorder: hosting infrastructure, any build or migration work, and your team's time. Past roughly $50k/mo, the eliminated Recharge fees alone typically pay back a migration budget in months, then keep saving, forever. Below that, the case is ownership: code you control, pricing you set, a platform you can leave.
You will never wake up to an email saying per-transaction fees are going up next quarter. You can fork, modify, and deploy every part of the stack.