9 Best Chargebee Alternatives for SaaS Billing

The quick answer

Quick answer: for most product-led SaaS teams the closest Chargebee alternative is Stripe Billing at 0.7% of billing volume, with Metronome (now part of Stripe) for heavier usage-based pricing at 0.8% of billing volume plus $0.04 per 1,000 events. Recurly starts at $249 a month plus 0.9% of billing volume, with the first $40K of billings each month included and a 90-day free trial. If you want someone else to handle global sales tax, Paddle is a merchant of record at 5% + 50¢ per checkout transaction. Lago is the open-source option, Schematic is free up to $5K a month in billing volume, and Maxio, Orb and Zuora fit finance-led or enterprise teams. Prices are as of October 2026, checked on each vendor's own site.

Chargebee today, and why teams look elsewhere

Chargebee Billing has two plans. Flow is pay as you go: either $0 a month plus 0.80% of monthly invoicing volume, or $99 a month plus 0.65%. It includes 100M usage events a month, pricing tables, usage limits and alerts, and plugs into 40+ payment gateways. Enterprise is sold by demo and adds multi-entity management, account hierarchies, contract terms and up to 500M usage events a month. Chargebee also sells CPQ (CPQ Lite is free for the first 50 quotes), RevRec and Growth (billing-based growth and retention experiments), whose Starter plan is $0 for Chargebee Billing customers.

Teams look for alternatives for a few recurring reasons:

• Cost grows with revenue. A percentage of invoicing volume is cheap early and adds up later, so teams compare it with flat or negotiated pricing.
• Tax liability. Chargebee connects to your own payment gateways, and its pricing page lists tax calculation and tax integrations, not merchant of record services. Teams that want another company to be the seller, and to carry the VAT and sales tax work, look at a merchant of record.
• Deeper usage billing. AI and API products with very high event volumes or complex contracts often evaluate dedicated usage engines.
• Self-hosting. Teams that must keep billing data in their own infrastructure look at open-source billing.
• Enterprise features. NetSuite, Salesforce and Avalara AvaTax integrations are not included in Flow.

Chargebee alternatives compared

1. Stripe Billing

Who it is for: teams that already take payments on Stripe and want the simplest replacement.

Pricing: 0.7% of Billing volume, pay as you go, covering Billing transactions processed on and off Stripe. A custom portal domain is US$10 a month; payment processing is separate.

Strengths: subscriptions, trials, discounts, quotes, Smart Retries, up to three recovery automations and a hosted customer portal. Basic metering through the Meters API includes up to 100M events a month.

Limits: payment processing is a separate Stripe fee, and Stripe's docs point new usage-based integrations to Metronome rather than the native meters.

2. Recurly

Who it is for: subscription businesses, especially consumer and direct-to-consumer, that want churn tools built into billing.

Pricing: Starter is $249 a month plus 0.9% of billing volume, with the first $40K of billings each month included at no charge, and a 90-day free trial. All-Access has a $1M billing volume minimum and is priced as low as under 1% of billing volume, billed annually. Source: Recurly pricing.

Strengths: automated global subscription billing, dunning campaigns, 20+ payment gateways and churn-prevention tools. Engage (retention offers and A/B testing) and RevRec are add-ons.

Limits: Starter includes one dunning campaign and static churn tools; multicurrency and SSO sit on All-Access.

3. Maxio

Who it is for: B2B SaaS finance teams that want billing, revenue recognition and SaaS metrics in one place.

Pricing: Grow is $599 a month for up to $100k in monthly billings; Scale, for more than $100k, is quote-based. Default agreements are paid annually. Source: Maxio pricing.

Strengths: all plans include usage-based billing, subscription management, collections and dunning and 20+ payment gateways, and its feature list includes self-service signup pages, free trials and a customer portal.

Limits: a fixed monthly fee from day one and annual contracts by default make it a poor fit for very early teams.

4. Paddle

Who it is for: SaaS teams selling globally that want a merchant of record to handle tax, fraud and payment support.

Pricing: 5% + 50¢ per checkout transaction with no monthly fee; custom pricing for high-volume businesses. Source: Paddle pricing.

Strengths: Paddle collects and remits sales tax and VAT, handles chargebacks and buyer support, and includes checkout, subscriptions, fraud protection and reporting. Its ProfitWell Metrics subscription analytics are free.

Limits: you pay the percentage on every sale. We cover other options in Paddle alternatives.

5. Lago

Who it is for: engineering teams that want to self-host billing or keep usage data on their own infrastructure.

Pricing: open source under AGPL-3.0 and free to self-host; Lago Premium (cloud or self-hosted) is priced on request. Source: Lago pricing.

Strengths: usage metering, prepaid credits and wallets, entitlements, plan overrides, a customer portal and on-prem or VPC deployment.

Limits: progressive billing, tax integrations and automatic dunning are listed as add-ons.

6. Metronome

Who it is for: usage-heavy and AI products that want metering, credits and contracts on Stripe.

Pricing: Startup bills 0.8% of billing volume plus $0.04 per 1,000 ingested events; Custom is by contact. Source: Metronome pricing.

Strengths: SQL billable metrics, streaming alerts, rate cards, commits and credits, per-customer overrides and embeddable dashboards. Metronome's blog states that Stripe's acquisition of the company is complete.

Limits: two meters to forecast, and Salesforce and NetSuite invoicing integrations are on Custom.

7. Orb

Who it is for: companies with large event volumes and finance teams that need accurate usage invoices.

Pricing: Core, Advanced and Enterprise are all custom pricing, based on billings and events, with a platform fee on Advanced and Enterprise. Source: Orb pricing.

Strengths: custom SQL metrics, threshold billing, prepaid credits, price versioning and migrations, Orb Invoicing and tax integrations on every plan.

Limits: no self-serve start or public prices.

8. Schematic

Who it is for: product-led teams that care most about plan limits, credits and feature access inside the app.

Pricing: Starter is free for the whole platform up to $5K a month in billing volume (two custom plans, email support). Growth is $400 a month. Enterprise is priced on billing volume or a flat rate. Source: Schematic pricing.

Strengths: entitlements enforced by company, user or agent, a credit ledger, plan versioning and in-product usage components, with no extra charge for event ingestion.

Limits: the free plan caps billing volume and custom plans.

9. Zuora

Who it is for: enterprises running complex quote-to-cash across CPQ, billing and revenue.

Pricing: not published; Zuora's site routes buyers to a demo or a conversation with its team. Source: Zuora site.

Strengths: a single pricing catalog that flows to CPQ, e-commerce and self-service portals, with pricing methods such as overage, prepaid drawdown, minimum commitments and multi-attribute pricing.

Limits: more system than most product-led teams need in their first years.

Tools we left out or would use with care

m3ter now says it is part of Salesforce and targets mid-size and large B2B SaaS companies without public prices. Lemon Squeezy was acquired by Stripe in 2024, and its CEO's January 2026 update says the team is building Stripe Managed Payments and wants to help users migrate there, so check its direction before choosing it for a new product.

How to choose a Chargebee alternative

Decide first whether you want to stay the seller of record. If yes, compare Stripe Billing, Recurly and Maxio on cost at your billing volume, and Metronome, Orb or Lago if usage-based pricing is central. If no, compare Paddle with the other merchant of record options. Then check migration: ask each vendor how payment methods and subscription states move over without forcing customers to re-enter cards.

Whatever you pick, billing is only part of monetization. Upgrades, downgrades and cancellations happen inside the product, so pair the billing tool with a good cancellation and upgrade experience. Our cancellation flow examples show common patterns, and our usage-based billing software comparison goes deeper on metering. For in-app prompts around those moments, PLG OS offers onboarding flows and in-app feedback and surveys, with a free tier for 100 MTUs.

FAQs

What is the best alternative to Chargebee?

For teams on Stripe, Stripe Billing at 0.7% of billing volume is the closest match. Recurly suits consumer subscription businesses, Paddle suits teams that want a merchant of record, and Lago suits teams that want open source.

How much does Chargebee cost?

Chargebee Flow costs either $0 a month plus 0.80% of monthly invoicing volume or $99 a month plus 0.65%, and includes 100M usage events a month. Enterprise is priced by demo.

Is there a free Chargebee alternative?

Lago is open source under AGPL-3.0 and free to self-host, and Schematic's Starter plan is free up to $5K a month in billing volume.

Which Chargebee alternative handles sales tax for me?

Paddle acts as merchant of record, so it collects and remits sales tax and VAT for 5% + 50¢ per checkout transaction. Chargebee, Recurly, Maxio and Stripe Billing on its own are billing tools, not merchants of record.