Chargebee vs Recurly vs Stripe Billing: The Real Rate
Chargebee's Flow product charges 0.80% of monthly billing value on its Pay-as-you-go plan, with a $0 platform fee.
Chargebee's Flow pricing calculator shows a 'Recommended' Pay-as-you-go example totaling $400/mo, made up of a $0 fee plus 0.80% of billing volume.
Chargebee's Flow pricing calculator shows a 'Commit monthly' example totaling $424/mo, made up of a $99 fee plus 0.65% of billing volume — a lower percentage rate than Pay-as-you-go in exchange for the fixed fee.
Chargebee's top Flow tier, Enterprise Plus, raises the usage-event ingestion ceiling to 500M events/month (versus 100M included on the base Flow plan).
Chargebee's Growth 'Starter' plan is free, but only for customers who already have a Chargebee Billing subscription.
The most common misreading of a subscription billing platform's price page is assuming the listed rate is the whole cost. In practice, card processing fees come out first, and the billing platform's rate is charged separately on top of that. Until you add both layers together, you cannot tell which platform is cheaper.
The table below includes only what Chargebee, Recurly, and Stripe Billing actually state on their official pricing pages. Every cell is footnoted to show where its number came from, and where a vendor does not disclose a figure, the cell says so instead of being left blank.
Chargebee · Recurly · Stripe Billing — only what is published on official pricing pages (confirmed on 19 August 2026)
Chargebee · Recurly · Stripe Billing — only what is published on official pricing pages (confirmed on 19 August 2026)
$0, but only for existing Chargebee Billing customers5
Not published
Customer portal included; $10 per month for a custom domain15
The number on the pricing page is not the number you pay
Every rate in the table above sits on top of card processing. A subscription billing platform does not replace your payment processor — it orchestrates invoices, proration, dunning, and renewals, and then hands the actual charge to a gateway that takes its own cut. So the real cost of running subscriptions is two rates stacked, not one.
This matters most at the low end. A platform advertising a fraction-of-a-percent rate can still be the more expensive choice once its required monthly floor is included, because that floor is charged whether or not you bill anything that month. Conversely, a pure percentage with no platform fee costs nothing in a slow month and scales linearly in a fast one. Which shape is cheaper depends entirely on your billing volume, not on which number looks smaller.
One thing we could not settle from the public pages: whether Chargebee's platform rate is charged on gross billing value before the gateway's cut, or on what remains after it. The pricing page does not say, and the distinction changes the effective rate. It is listed among the open questions below rather than resolved by guesswork.
Pricing stops being published exactly where it starts to matter
All three vendors publish a rate for the entry tier and stop publishing somewhere above it. Chargebee lists an ingestion ceiling for its top tier without a price. Recurly names a monthly billing-volume minimum for its top tier and describes the rate qualitatively rather than numerically. Stripe Billing states plainly that past a threshold, pricing becomes custom.
This is not an oversight, and it is worth reading as information rather than as an obstacle. It tells you that above a certain size, the rate is negotiated — which means the published rate is a ceiling for a large merchant and a floor for a small one. If your volume is near any of the disclosed thresholds, the useful move is not to compare published rates but to ask all three for a quote and compare those.
Add-ons are priced like separate products, because they are
Revenue recognition, retention tooling, and quote-to-cash are sold alongside the billing platform rather than inside it, and each carries its own floor. A team that assumed revenue recognition came bundled can find the add-on costing more than the billing platform it attaches to — and the add-on floors we could verify are billed annually, so the commitment is a year, not a month.
When comparing platforms, compare the set of modules you will actually turn on. A lower headline rate on the core platform tells you very little if the module you need is priced separately on one vendor and included on another.
What these providers do not publish
Blank cells in the table above
Billing volume included before overage — Chargebee
Rate above the included volume — Chargebee
Rate above the included volume — Recurly
Revenue recognition sold separately — Chargebee
Revenue recognition sold separately — Stripe Billing
Free entry point — Recurly
Limits of this page
These are things we did not verify, listed so you can judge the rest.
Chargebee's classic tiered 'Starter/Performance/Enterprise' legacy Billing pricing (historically marketed as a flat percent-of-revenue schedule) is not shown on the current /pricing/ page; the page instead surfaces its newer 'Growth Flow' product's usage-based calculator as the primary billing-platform pricing shown to visitors on first load, so all Chargebee evidence here reflects Flow, not a separately-priced legacy Billing SKU.
Chargebee does not disclose numeric pricing for its RevRec Performance/Enterprise tiers, its full CPQ tier, or its Flow Enterprise Plus tier — all four are gated behind 'Talk to sales' / 'Book a demo' / 'Schedule a demo' with no listed dollar figure, so no verified number could be captured for them.
Recurly's All-Access and All-Access-for-Shopify tiers only disclose a qualitative 'as low as under 1% of billing volume, billed annually' rate with 'More volume, better rate!' — the exact rate schedule by volume tier is gated behind a sales conversation ('Speak with an expert') and was not found published on the page.
Stripe's usage-based billing capability (powered by Metronome, a separate Stripe-owned product) has no pricing disclosed on stripe.com/billing/pricing — the page routes that inquiry to 'Contact Metronome' rather than listing a rate.
None of the three pricing pages were checked for region- or currency-specific variants (e.g., EU/UK/APAC pricing pages); all figures captured here are the USD amounts shown on the default page load, which is presumed US-locale but was not explicitly confirmed via a locale switcher.
Whether Chargebee's Flow 0.80%/0.65% platform rates are charged in addition to, or already net of, the underlying payment gateway's own processing fee is not stated in a single explicit sentence on the pricing page — the page describes Flow as working 'plug-n-play with 40+ payment gateways,' which implies the gateway's own processing fee is a separate line item, but this inference is not backed by a direct quote and is recorded as an inference rather than a verified fact.
Free SaaS Subscription Billing & Margin Model
Compare revenue thresholds, recurring charge overhead, and dunning success rates across major billing platforms.
How much does Chargebee's billing platform charge per month?
Chargebee's Flow product (its current primary billing-platform offering) has no base platform fee on Pay-as-you-go — it charges 0.80% of monthly billing value. Its calculator's own worked example puts a Pay-as-you-go account at roughly $400/mo total, versus $424/mo on the Commit-monthly option, which trades a $99 fixed fee for a lower 0.65% rate.
Does Chargebee offer a free subscription billing plan?
Chargebee's core Flow/Billing platform is not free, but two adjacent products are free under conditions: the Growth 'Starter' tier is $0 but only for customers who already pay for Chargebee Billing, and CPQ Lite is free for a company's first 50 quotes.
How much does Recurly charge for subscription billing?
Recurly's entry-level Starter plan costs $249/month plus 0.9% of billing volume, with the first $40,000 of monthly billings excluded from that percentage charge.
What do Recurly's Engage and RevRec add-ons cost on top of the base billing platform?
Both are priced separately from Recurly's core subscription plans: Recurly Engage (churn prediction/retention) starts at $1,600/month billed annually, and Recurly RevRec (revenue recognition) starts at $850/month — neither figure is included in the Starter or All-Access base price.
Is Stripe Billing a separate fee from Stripe's payment processing fees?
Yes. Stripe Billing's Pay-as-you-go rate of 0.7% of Billing volume is charged in addition to Stripe's standard card-processing fee (2.9% + 30 cents per transaction) — Billing and payment processing appear as two separate line items, which is the double-charging structure this whole category can obscure.
What billing volume does Stripe Billing's cheapest flat-rate 'Pay monthly' tier cover?
The lowest 'Pay monthly' tier costs $620/month (an 11% discount versus Pay-as-you-go at that volume) and covers up to $100,000 of Billing volume per month, with any volume above that charged an extra 0.67%.
At what point do these subscription billing platforms switch from published percentage pricing to custom enterprise pricing?
Each vendor has its own undisclosed-rate ceiling: Chargebee's top published Flow tier (Enterprise Plus) requires a custom quote once a business needs more than 500M usage events/month, Recurly's All-Access plan already requires a $1M/month billing-volume minimum with only a vague 'as low as under 1%' rate disclosed, and Stripe Billing explicitly moves to custom, sales-negotiated pricing above $1,000,000/month in Billing volume.
What we could not verify
Chargebee's classic tiered 'Starter/Performance/Enterprise' legacy Billing pricing (historically marketed as a flat percent-of-revenue schedule) is not shown on the current /pricing/ page; the page instead surfaces its newer 'Growth Flow' product's usage-based calculator as the primary billing-platform pricing shown to visitors on first load, so all Chargebee evidence here reflects Flow, not a separately-priced legacy Billing SKU.
Chargebee does not disclose numeric pricing for its RevRec Performance/Enterprise tiers, its full CPQ tier, or its Flow Enterprise Plus tier — all four are gated behind 'Talk to sales' / 'Book a demo' / 'Schedule a demo' with no listed dollar figure, so no verified number could be captured for them.
Recurly's All-Access and All-Access-for-Shopify tiers only disclose a qualitative 'as low as under 1% of billing volume, billed annually' rate with 'More volume, better rate!' — the exact rate schedule by volume tier is gated behind a sales conversation ('Speak with an expert') and was not found published on the page.
Stripe's usage-based billing capability (powered by Metronome, a separate Stripe-owned product) has no pricing disclosed on stripe.com/billing/pricing — the page routes that inquiry to 'Contact Metronome' rather than listing a rate.
None of the three pricing pages were checked for region- or currency-specific variants (e.g., EU/UK/APAC pricing pages); all figures captured here are the USD amounts shown on the default page load, which is presumed US-locale but was not explicitly confirmed via a locale switcher.
Whether Chargebee's Flow 0.80%/0.65% platform rates are charged in addition to, or already net of, the underlying payment gateway's own processing fee is not stated in a single explicit sentence on the pricing page — the page describes Flow as working 'plug-n-play with 40+ payment gateways,' which implies the gateway's own processing fee is a separate line item, but this inference is not backed by a direct quote and is recorded as an inference rather than a verified fact.
Sources
Chargebee's Flow product charges 0.80% of monthly billing value on its Pay-as-you-go plan, with a $0 platform fee. — https://www.chargebee.com/pricing/ (verified on: 2026-08-19, confidence: verified)
Chargebee's Flow pricing calculator shows a 'Recommended' Pay-as-you-go example totaling $400/mo, made up of a $0 fee plus 0.80% of billing volume. — https://www.chargebee.com/pricing/ (verified on: 2026-08-19, confidence: verified)
Chargebee's Flow pricing calculator shows a 'Commit monthly' example totaling $424/mo, made up of a $99 fee plus 0.65% of billing volume — a lower percentage rate than Pay-as-you-go in exchange for the fixed fee. — https://www.chargebee.com/pricing/ (verified on: 2026-08-19, confidence: verified)
Chargebee's top Flow tier, Enterprise Plus, raises the usage-event ingestion ceiling to 500M events/month (versus 100M included on the base Flow plan). — https://www.chargebee.com/pricing/ (verified on: 2026-08-19, confidence: verified)
Chargebee's Growth 'Starter' plan is free, but only for customers who already have a Chargebee Billing subscription. — https://www.chargebee.com/pricing/ (verified on: 2026-08-19, confidence: verified)
Chargebee's CPQ Lite tier is free for a company's first 50 quotes. — https://www.chargebee.com/pricing/ (verified on: 2026-08-19, confidence: verified)
Recurly's Starter plan costs $249 per month plus 0.9% of billing volume, with the first $40,000 of monthly billings excluded from that percentage fee. — https://recurly.com/pricing/ (verified on: 2026-08-19, confidence: verified)
Recurly's All-Access plan requires a $1M/month billing-volume minimum and charges a rate described only as 'as low as under 1% of billing volume,' billed annually, with the exact rate undisclosed and dependent on volume. — https://recurly.com/pricing/ (verified on: 2026-08-19, confidence: verified)
Recurly Engage, a retention/upsell add-on sold separately from the core subscription-billing platform, starts at $1,600 per month, billed annually, based on prompt volume. — https://recurly.com/pricing/ (verified on: 2026-08-19, confidence: verified)
Recurly RevRec, a revenue-recognition add-on sold separately from the core subscription-billing platform, starts at $850 per month — but that floor is billed annually and scales with the merchant's billing volume, so it is not a flat monthly price. — https://recurly.com/pricing/ (verified on: 2026-08-19, confidence: verified)
Stripe Billing's Pay-as-you-go plan charges 0.7% of Billing volume, with no separate recurring monthly fee — and this 0.7% is charged in addition to Stripe's underlying card-processing fee (2.9% + 30 cents), since Billing volume and payment processing are billed as distinct line items. — https://stripe.com/billing/pricing (verified on: 2026-08-19, confidence: verified)
Stripe Billing's four annual-commitment 'Pay monthly' tiers cost $620, $1,500, $2,950, and $5,750 per month respectively, each described as a discount (11%, 14%, 16%, 18%) versus paying the 0.7% Pay-as-you-go rate at that volume. — https://stripe.com/billing/pricing (verified on: 2026-08-19, confidence: verified)
Stripe Billing's lowest 'Pay monthly' tier ($620/mo) covers up to $100,000 of Billing volume per month, after which an additional 0.67% is charged on any overage volume. — https://stripe.com/billing/pricing (verified on: 2026-08-19, confidence: verified)
Once a merchant's Billing volume exceeds $1,000,000 per month, Stripe Billing switches from its published flat-tier pricing to custom, sales-negotiated pricing. — https://stripe.com/billing/pricing (verified on: 2026-08-19, confidence: verified)
Stripe Billing includes a self-serve customer portal at no extra cost, but charges an additional $10 per month if the merchant wants that portal on a custom domain. — https://stripe.com/billing/pricing (verified on: 2026-08-19, confidence: verified)
