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Index › Receivables and billing › Merchants of record › Enterprise › October 2026 Edition

Merchants of record for enterprise buyers

Asked as “merchant of record”, and as “reseller that handles global sales tax and payments”, on behalf of an enterprise B2B company. 57 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, fourteen models each. Added to the October 2026 Edition on October 4, 2026; its answers are read by the distilled judge (ai-indexes-judge-qwen3-14b-run3), not the claude-opus-5 judge of the earlier categories: how the two compare.
Standing · first-choice share
33%
Contested · Cleverbridge 32%
33Paddle32Cleverbridge11PayPro Global25others

33% of first choices, contested.

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.

The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all fourteen models, for an enterprise B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01Paddle33%19%54endorsed leader
02Cleverbridge32%0%45endorsed leader
03PayPro Global11%3%31accepted challenger
04FastSpring7%12%48accepted challenger
05Digital River2%41%27criticized challenger
Show the two products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
07Lemon Squeezy0%67%15criticized challenger
062Checkout0%11%19accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its product page.
All twenty-eight head-to-head pages: the top eight products, each against each

Recommended versus criticized

Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.

Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03
04
D05
06
07
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative50%
Key
01Paddle33%
02Cleverbridge32%
03PayPro Global11%
04FastSpring7%
05Digital River2%
062Checkout0%
07Lemon Squeezy0%

What they warned about

Two of fourteen models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Perplexity Sonar, Grok 4.1 Fast, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Llama 4 Maverick, Qwen 3.7 Flash, Kimi K2, GLM 4.7 FlashX, MiniMax M2.5 and Muse Glimmer 30B changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Lemon Squeezy
67%
10 of 15 labels negative · 8 of 14 models · 3 hard negative
“Payments platforms doubling as MoRs (e.g., **Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy, Whop**) - **Why avoid:** These are primarily consumer/creator marketplaces” DeepSeek V4 Flash, negative prompt
Paddle
19%
10 of 54 labels negative · 7 of 14 models · 1 hard negative
“Limited B2B support ... Best suited for: Startups and SMB B2C SaaS, not complex enterprise needs” Kimi K2, negative prompt
FastSpring
12%
6 of 48 labels negative · 6 of 14 models · 1 hard negative
“Limited enterprise depth ... Best suited for: Digital products and mid-market, not large-scale enterprise operations” Kimi K2, negative prompt
Digital River
41%
11 of 27 labels negative · 5 of 14 models · 10 hard negative
“The Ultimate Cautionary Tale: The Collapse of Digital River ... Digital River had laid off its staff, suspended operations, and filed for insolvency/bankruptcy” Gemini 3.5 Flash, negative prompt

What they cite

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: fourteen of the fourteen in this edition, and all six flagship models on the expanded tier.

Sites the answers cite

76 of 84 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 14 of 14 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 1029 links across 256 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page. None of the 252 answers across every segment cited this index's own page for the category.

vendor site · Cleverbridge52 answers · 79 citations · 14 models
vendor site · Paddle45 answers · 65 citations · 14 models
vendor site · Freemius40 answers · 59 citations · 12 models
vendor site · Guideflow37 answers · 37 citations · 12 models
vendor site · Dodo Payments33 answers · 51 citations · 12 models
30 answers · 37 citations · 12 models
vendor site · PayPro Global19 answers · 52 citations · 13 models
vendor site · FastSpring16 answers · 25 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Stripe15 answers · 22 citations · 9 models
15 answers · 21 citations · 9 models
14 answers · 14 citations · 10 models
14 answers · 14 citations · 8 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

Search against answers

Each company's standing in the answers beside its site's footprint in Google search, one row a site: the products the models named on it with their shares, and the share they add up to; monthly searches on Google, and DataForSEO's estimate of AI search demand (modeled from search signals, directional, not a count of queries to any assistant), for the most-searched of the company's and its products' names (the name is in each row's hover text); estimated monthly organic visits to the site; and its best position in Google's top ten for “best merchant of record”, “merchant of record”, “merchants of record”. US estimates from DataForSEO and Google's Ads Transparency Center. A small company's site, or a mid-sized company's site for its flagship, is marked company; a product on a large parent's site (Google, Microsoft) has no site figures. A column with no figures for this category is left out, and an empty cell means none were seen, not none exist. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
Company and productsShareOwn site citedName searches, GoogleAI search demand, est.Organic visitsPaid search a month, est.Google ads, last 30 daysBest Google position
Paddle paddle.com33%20660,50069,116172,079312
Cleverbridge cleverbridge.com32%886,6002469,4930
PayPro Global payproglobal.com11%772,9005714,4167
FastSpring fastspring.com7%1453,6002358,511$29,868153
Creem creem.io5%162,4001691,126$6321
Stripe stripe.com4%361823,000102,7413,226,782$3,6211021
Vertex vertexinc.com2%226110,00013,80732,080$3,97569
Adyen adyen.com2%18022,200890126,446$7,70284
Payrix payrix.com2%172,400601,650
Zamp zamp.com2%322,90026224,260$5888

Google's top ten for the three searches hold 23 sites; 4 of them are among the sites the models cited here (dodopayments.com, fastspring.com, paddle.com, stripe.com). The first result for “best merchant of record” is connectpay.com.

How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
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ModelDirect“What is the best merchant of record for an enterprise B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which reseller that handles global sales tax and payments would you recommend to a large B2B company with thousands of employees?”Comparative“What are the top enterprise-grade merchants of record and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best merchant of record for a large company that needs predictable total cost across thousands of users?”Scale-constrained“We are a 5,000 person company with SSO, SOC 2 and procurement review requirements evaluating a merchant of record. What should we look at?”Negative“Which merchants of record should a large enterprise avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Adyen, Stripe
One alternative2Checkout
PayPro Global, ZampChanged
Three alternativesAvalara, Taxually, Vertex
2Checkout, Cleverbridge
Three alternativesMaxio, Paddle, PayPro Global
Cleverbridge, Digital River, PayPro Globalagainst: FastSpringno first choicenothing named
GPT-5.4 miniCleverbridge, PaddlePaddleChanged
Two alternativesDigital River, FastSpring
Paddle
Two alternativesFastSpring, Stripe Managed Payments
against: 2Checkout / Verifone, Chargebee
Paddle
One alternativeFastSpring
no first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 FlashCleverbridge
Four alternativesFastSpring, Paddle, PayPro Global, Stripe Managed Payments
against: Digital River
CleverbridgeHeld
Two alternatives2Checkout, FastSpring
against: Digital River, Paddle
Cleverbridge
Seven alternativesFastSpring, Gapp Group, Global-e, Paddle, PayPro Global, Reach, Xsolla
against: Digital River
Cleverbridge, Stripe
Five alternativesAdyen, Anrok, Digital River, Paddle, Sphere
against: Lemon Squeezy
no first choiceagainst: Digital River, FastSpring, Lemon Squeezy, Paddle
Perplexity SonarCleverbridge
Two alternativesDigital River, FastSpring
against: PayPro Global
PaddleChanged
Three alternativesCleverbridge, FastSpring, PayPro Global
Cleverbridge
Four alternativesDigital River, FastSpring, Paddle, PayPro Global
Cleverbridge
One alternativeDigital River
against: Paddle
no first choicenothing named
Grok 4.1 FastCleverbridge
Three alternatives2Checkout, FastSpring, Paddle
against: Stripe Managed Payments
PayPro GlobalChanged
Three alternativesCleverbridge, FastSpring, Paddle
against: Avnet, Ingram Micro
Cleverbridge
Four alternatives2Checkout, Digital River, FastSpring, PayPro Global
against: Adyen, Checkout.com, PayPal, Stripe
Paddle
Five alternatives2Checkout, Cleverbridge, Digital River, FastSpring, PayPro Global
against: Dodo, Lemon Squeezy, Stripe
Cleverbridge, FastSpring, Paddleagainst: Adyen, Authorize.net, Square, Stripe
Mistral SmallCleverbridgePaddleChanged
Two alternatives2Checkout, PayPro Global
FastSpring
Two alternativesCleverbridge, PayPro Global
Creem, Paddle
Two alternatives2Checkout, Digital River
no first choiceagainst: CCBill, Digital River, Flurly, Segpay
DeepSeek V4 FlashCleverbridge
Two alternativesFastSpring, Paddle
against: 2Checkout, Digital River
PayPro Global, VertexChangedCleverbridge
Four alternatives2Checkout, FastSpring, Paddle, PayPro Global
against: Digital River
Cleverbridge, Paddleagainst: Digital Riverno first choiceagainst: FastSpring, Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy, Paddle, Whop
Llama 4 MaverickCleverbridgePayPro GlobalChanged
One alternativeFastSpring
no first choiceCreem, Paddle
Three alternativesDodo Payments, Freemius, Lemon Squeezy
no first choicenothing named
Qwen 3.7 FlashPayrix
Five alternativesAdyen, Checkout.com, FastSpring, Paddle, Thunes
CleverbridgeChanged
One alternativeFastSpring
against: Paddle
Paddle
Three alternativesCleverbridge, FastSpring, PayPro Global
FastSpring, Paddle
One alternativeStripe
against: Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy
no first choiceagainst: Eduflow, FastSpring, Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy, Paddle, PayPal
Kimi K2Cleverbridge
Two alternativesFastSpring, Paddle
against: Stripe Managed Payments
FastSpringChanged
Two alternativesPaddle, PayPro Global
against: Avalara
Paddle
Four alternativesChargebee, Cleverbridge, FastSpring, PayPro Global
FastSpring
Two alternativesDigital River, Polar
against: Lemon Squeezy, Paddle
no first choiceagainst: 2Checkout, FastSpring, Paddle
GLM 4.7 FlashXCleverbridge
Three alternatives2Checkout, FastSpring, Paddle
PaddleChanged
Three alternativesFastSpring, Nexway, PayPro Global
Cleverbridge, FastSpring, Paddle
Five alternatives2Checkout, Digital River, Lemon Squeezy, PayPro Global, Stripe Managed Payments
Paddle
Two alternativesCleverbridge, FastSpring
against: Adyen
no first choiceagainst: Digital River, Flurly, Nuvei
MiniMax M2.5Cleverbridge
Two alternativesDigital River, FastSpring
against: Paddle
PaddleChanged
Four alternativesAvalara, FastSpring, PayPro Global, Stripe Managed Payments
Cleverbridge
Four alternatives2Checkout, FastSpring, Global-e, Nexway
Paddle
Two alternativesCleverbridge, Polar
no first choiceagainst: Gumroad, Lemon Squeezy
GPT-6 LunaPaddle
Two alternativesCleverbridge, FastSpring
against: Stripe Managed Payments
PaddleHeldPaddle
Six alternativesCleverbridge, ESW, FastSpring, Global-e, PayPro Global, Xsolla
against: Digital River
Paddle
One alternativeFastSpring
against: Stripe Managed Payments
no first choiceagainst: Digital River, Lemon Squeezy, Stripe Managed Payments
Muse Glimmer 30BCleverbridge
Three alternatives2Checkout / Verifone, FastSpring, PayPro Global
PayPro GlobalChanged
One alternativePaddle
Cleverbridge
Four alternativesDigital River, FastSpring, Paddle, PayPro Global
Creem, Paddle
Three alternativesCleverbridge, Digital River, Suby
no first choiceagainst: Creem, Dodo Payments, FastSpring, Freemius, Fungies, Lemon Squeezy, Paddle, Polar
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency. Full answer text is in the free responses file. Download the record
Eighty-four rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-04 21:41no05 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-04 21:29yes33 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-04 21:21yes2030 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-04 21:23yes154 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-04 21:20yes1410 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-04 21:43yes54 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-04 21:21yes1821 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-04 21:34yes58 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-04 21:38no029 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-04 21:38yes1623 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-04 21:38yes1833 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-04 21:28yes1323 s
Direct recommendationGPT-6 Lunagpt-6-luna2026-10-04 21:26yes416 s
Direct recommendationMuse Glimmer 30Bmeta/muse-glimmer-30b via togetherai2026-10-04 21:32yes915 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-04 21:37yes98 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-04 21:33yes34 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-04 21:20yes1126 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-04 21:24yes193 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-04 21:24yes2312 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-04 21:37yes53 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-04 21:23yes2224 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-04 21:35yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-04 21:28yes1038 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-04 21:29yes2219 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-04 21:24yes2334 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-04 21:25yes938 s
ParaphraseGPT-6 Lunagpt-6-luna2026-10-04 21:40yes219 s
ParaphraseMuse Glimmer 30Bmeta/muse-glimmer-30b via togetherai2026-10-04 21:31yes1526 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-04 21:43yes97 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-04 21:22yes49 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-04 21:24yes3033 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-04 21:25yes154 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-04 21:43yes2011 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-04 21:25yes107 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-04 21:37yes1864 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-04 21:38yes51 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-04 21:21yes1541 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-04 21:31yes2426 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-04 21:36yes2255 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-04 21:36yes722 s
ComparativeGPT-6 Lunagpt-6-luna2026-10-04 21:41yes827 s
ComparativeMuse Glimmer 30Bmeta/muse-glimmer-30b via togetherai2026-10-04 21:34yes2441 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-04 21:40yes168 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-04 21:40yes45 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-04 21:42yes1730 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-04 21:38yes183 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-04 21:44yes1513 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-04 21:33yes53 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-04 21:38yes2129 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-04 21:37yes53 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-04 21:23no027 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-04 21:39yes2144 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-04 21:40yes2224 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-04 21:40yes1939 s
Budget constrainedGPT-6 Lunagpt-6-luna2026-10-04 21:26yes317 s
Budget constrainedMuse Glimmer 30Bmeta/muse-glimmer-30b via togetherai2026-10-04 21:24yes1117 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-04 21:28yes1811 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-04 21:38no09 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-04 21:27no015 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-04 21:39yes166 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-04 21:39yes179 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-04 21:41no010 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-04 21:30yes2143 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-04 21:28yes52 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-04 21:33no028 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-04 21:47yes2133 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-04 21:25yes1124 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-04 21:40yes1019 s
Scale constrainedGPT-6 Lunagpt-6-luna2026-10-04 21:28yes525 s
Scale constrainedMuse Glimmer 30Bmeta/muse-glimmer-30b via togetherai2026-10-04 21:39yes1929 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-04 21:25yes1610 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-04 21:30yes45 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-04 21:43yes1224 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-04 21:39yes203 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-04 21:28yes1611 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-04 21:29yes128 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-04 21:34yes1964 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-04 21:27yes52 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-04 21:33no032 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-04 21:20yes2023 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-04 21:40yes2457 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-04 21:35yes745 s
Negative framingGPT-6 Lunagpt-6-luna2026-10-04 21:37yes522 s
Negative framingMuse Glimmer 30Bmeta/muse-glimmer-30b via togetherai2026-10-04 21:44yes2033 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

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Category-scoped readings
None. Every name in this category resolved on its own.
Unresolved, counted raw
Avnet
CCBill
ESW
Eduflow
Gigapay
Ingram Micro (via Xvantage)
Kelviq
Segpay
Suby
Verifone 2Checkout (2Monetize)
Yapstone
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
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