Polar is a digital product monetization engine and subscription management system. It serves as a merchant of record platform that handles global sales tax and VAT compliance, providing the infrastructure for selling subscriptions and one-time digital goods via hosted checkouts and embedded payment flows.
The project functions as an entitlement and access manager, automating the granting and restriction of digital benefits, license keys, and third-party platform roles. It includes a dedicated usage-based billing infrastructure that tracks customer activity through meters to apply aggregation rules for consumption-based pricing.
The platform covers broad capability areas including software license management, automated invoicing, and seat-based subscription allocation. It also provides tools for customer relationship management, business profitability tracking, and event-driven notifications via webhooks to synchronize external workflows.