Can I vibe code Lemon Squeezy?
Sell software and digital products with tax handled for you.
You can build a checkout page in an afternoon, and that is exactly why it misses the point of Lemon Squeezy. Its entire pitch — the reason people choose it over raw Stripe — is that it is the merchant of record: it becomes the legal seller, so it calculates, collects, and remits sales tax and VAT in every jurisdiction on your behalf. That is a compliance operation with tax registrations in dozens of countries, not a feature you code. Since the tax handling is the whole product, this is a no.
Build the buildable mechanics of a Lemon Squeezy alternative for selling my own software, and be explicit up front about what you cannot replicate. Include product pages, Stripe Checkout for one-time and subscription payments, license-key generation stored in a database, a license-validation API endpoint my app can call, and post-purchase file delivery via signed URLs. Add a customer-facing license lookup and a seller dashboard for revenue. Use Next.js App Router with a hosted Postgres, deployable to Vercel. State clearly in the README that Lemon Squeezy's real value is being merchant of record — collecting and remitting global VAT and sales tax as the legal seller — which this does not and cannot do; you would remain responsible for your own tax compliance.
A Stripe-powered checkout with license-key generation and file delivery — the mechanics, but with you, not a platform, as the seller of record.
- Merchant-of-record status — the core value, and legally not something you can self-provision
- Automatic global sales-tax and VAT calculation, collection, and remittance
- Compliant invoicing and the paperwork for every region
- Built-in subscriptions, license keys, and affiliate tooling
- Fraud, refund, and chargeback handling absorbed for you
Being merchant of record is a legal and operational service, not software — Lemon Squeezy files and remits tax worldwide so a solo dev never has to register abroad. That responsibility is the product, and you cannot vibe-code your way into being someone else's tax authority. The fee buys you out of a compliance nightmare.
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