Tool directory

A Merchant of Record platform built for Chinese indie devs accepting overseas subscription payments.

Paddle acts as Merchant of Record, handling global sales tax, refunds, and compliance on your behalf—so solo developers can collect subscriptions without an overseas company. Pricing runs roughly 5% plus payment fees, making it a solid fit for validating paid products quickly.

Best for: Solo developers without an overseas entity who want to launch subscription SaaS fast.

The world's most popular payment API—but direct access is tough for China-based entities.

Stripe offers a complete suite of payment, subscription, and billing APIs with a mature ecosystem and excellent docs. Mainland China individuals and companies usually cannot open accounts directly; most Chinese developers use an overseas entity or route through an MoR instead.

Best for: Teams with a Hong Kong, US, Singapore, or other overseas entity that need highly custom payment flows.

A widely known cross-border payout tool—common for platform withdrawals in China.

Payoneer provides USD, EUR, and other receiving accounts widely used for Amazon, Fiverr, and affiliate network payouts. Chinese individuals can register and withdraw to domestic bank cards—a classic payout path for developers going global.

Best for: Individuals and small teams receiving from overseas platforms, affiliate networks, or MoR services who need to settle in China.

The default deployment platform for the Next.js ecosystem—nearly standard for global frontends.

Vercel offers Git-connected deploys, edge functions, preview environments, and Analytics. The free tier covers personal projects; Pro suits small teams. Domestic access speed depends on edge nodes—sensitive workloads need separate compliance and ICP review.

Best for: Indie developers building Next.js/React static sites, marketing pages, and fast CI/CD pipelines.

All-in-one DNS, CDN, and Workers— a core edge option for Chinese developers.

Cloudflare's free tier includes DNS and basic CDN; Pages and Workers run full-stack apps and APIs. D1, R2, and other bindings suit serverless architectures. Easy signup from China—many teams start here, wiring up DNS and CDN first.

Best for: Individuals and small teams needing DNS + CDN + edge compute while controlling cost.

A go-to domain registrar with transparent pricing and a mature affiliate program.

Namecheap offers .com and other mainstream TLDs with free Whois privacy and basic DNS. First-year promos are common—watch renewal pricing. Chinese users can purchase; no Alipay but international cards work widely—solid for global domain buys.

Best for: Developers buying .com/.io domains for global products who want affordable SSL and DNS management.

The open-source Firebase alternative—PostgreSQL, Auth, and Storage in one stack.

Supabase provides managed Postgres, authentication, storage, Realtime, and Edge Functions. Free tier covers prototypes; extremely popular with global indie devs—paired with Next.js it's a mainstream full-stack choice.

Best for: Full-stack indie developers and small teams needing relational data and out-of-the-box Auth.