Best Subscription Billing Software for SaaS (2026): 8 Platforms Compared on Fees, Usage Billing, and ASC 606

1. Chargebee

• Flow: 0.80% or $99 + 0.65%
• 100M usage events/mo
• 40+ gateways
• RevRec: quote

Chargebee has rebuilt its pricing around a single self-serve plan, Flow. As of September 30, 2026, Flow costs $0 + 0.80% of monthly invoicing volume. Once you pass a $66K/month breakeven, switching to $99 + 0.65% is cheaper. Flow includes usage-based billing with up to 100 million usage events a month and real-time usage limits and alerts. It also includes integrations with Xero, QuickBooks, and Anrok for sales tax. Enterprise (custom pricing) adds multi-entity management, parent-child account hierarchies, contract terms, NetSuite and Intacct integrations, and up to 500M usage events a month as a paid add-on.

Revenue recognition is a separate product line. RevRec Performance covers point-in-time and ratable recognition, multi-currency, GAAP reports, and journal entry mapping. RevRec Enterprise adds multi-entity support, advanced revenue rules, and usage-based and contract-based recognition. Both are quote-only. Chargebee also bundles CPQ Lite (first 50 quotes free) and a free Growth Starter tier for retention experiments.

The strongest argument for Chargebee is gateway independence. It connects to 40+ payment gateways, so you aren't tied to one processor's rates as you expand internationally. If you're selling agent- or credit-based pricing, Chargebee now markets usage ingestion through an MCP server as well. We covered how agent platforms meter their own bills in our AI agent automation platforms comparison.

2. Stripe Billing + Stripe Revenue Recognition

• Billing: 0.7% PAYG
• Plans $620–$5,750/mo
• RevRec from $25/mo
• Metronome for usage

Stripe Billing's pay-as-you-go rate is 0.7% of billing volume, covering Billing transactions processed on and off Stripe but excluding one-off invoices. If your volume is predictable, the 1-year plans lower the effective rate: $620/month covers up to $100K in monthly volume, $1,500 up to $250K, $2,950 up to $500K, and $5,750 up to $1M, with 0.67% on volume above each tier. Smart Retries and automatic reminder emails are included. The hosted customer portal is too, with a custom domain for $10/month.

Stripe Revenue Recognition is priced separately by payment volume. It's $25/month on a monthly subscription (up to $10K in volume, 0.25% above that), then annual plans at $190, $450, $860, and $1,650 per month for up to $100K, $250K, $500K, and $1M, with 0.2% on additional volume. It includes pro-rata or point-in-time treatment, reopening closed periods, credit note adjustments, 4-4-5 calendars, chart-of-accounts mapping, and waterfall reports. A 30-day free trial is available.

For complex usage pricing, Stripe completed its acquisition of Metronome in January 2026. Metronome is now the engine behind Stripe's advanced usage-based billing and is still sold standalone through metronome.com. It's contact-sales only.

3. Maxio

• Grow: $599/mo ≤ $100K billings
• Scale: quote
• Rev rec included
• Annual by default

Maxio is the product of the Chargify and SaaSOptics merger. It has the most finance-oriented feature set in the mid-market. The Grow plan is $599/month for businesses billing up to $100K a month. It includes automated invoicing, subscription management, payment processing, usage-based billing, A/R management, and standard revenue recognition with scheduled, recognized, and deferred revenue. Scale (over $100K in monthly billings, quote only) upgrades financial reports, A/R, and revenue recognition to "advanced" tiers. It also adds advanced revenue management, expense amortization, metering and rating, and multi-entity support.

The reporting is the reason controllers choose Maxio. It includes contract-level deferred revenue waterfalls, deferred revenue and A/R roll-forwards, deferred revenue by transaction, and unbilled A/R. Revenue features include performance obligations, SSPs, carve-outs, and multiple revenue books. These are the reports an auditor asks for, and they'd otherwise be built by hand.

4. Recurly

• Subscriptions: quote
• RevRec: $850/mo (annual)
• Engagement: $1,600/mo

Recurly's pricing page no longer lists subscription plan prices. As of September 30, 2026, it offers a demo and a commercial structure "around your volume." The two add-ons it does price publicly are automated revenue recognition at $850/month (billed annually, scaled to billing volume) and an engagement product at $1,600/month (billed annually) for AI churn-propensity prompts. Recurly says it processes $12B in annual payment volume.

Recurly's reputation rests on subscriber retention: dunning, failed-payment recovery, and lifecycle offers. That matters most for businesses with many small subscriptions, like prosumer SaaS, media, and consumer apps. For a B2B SaaS company with 200 annual contracts, the retention tooling is less decisive than contract handling and rev rec.

5. Zuora

• Quote only
• Billing, Revenue, Collect modules
• Private since 2025

Zuora went private in 2025 after agreeing to a $1.7B all-cash acquisition by Silver Lake and GIC. It remains the reference platform for large, multi-product, multi-entity subscription operations. Zuora Billing, Zuora Revenue, and Zuora Collect are priced separately, and none are published. Procurement marketplace Vendr reports a median buyer price of about $170,000 a year across 149 purchases. That's a third-party figure, not a list price, but it tells you where Zuora starts to make sense.

Choose Zuora when you have multiple legal entities, complex ramp deals and amendments, and a revenue team that needs Zuora Revenue's depth, usually alongside an ERP. Choose something lighter if your finance team is three people.

6. Paddle

• 5% + 50¢ per transaction
• Merchant of Record
• Invoicing: custom pricing

Paddle is a different model. As a merchant of record, Paddle is the legal seller to your customer. It handles global sales tax registration, filing, and remittance, plus chargebacks and fraud, and pays out to you. The all-in rate is 5% + 50¢ per transaction with no monthly fees. Paddle contrasts this with roughly 7%+ when you add up a payment processor, billing, tax, and fraud tooling separately.

Two caveats matter for B2B buyers. First, Paddle's pricing page says that if you require invoicing, or sell products under $10, pricing is custom. Sales-led B2B contracts paid by invoice fall outside the headline rate. Second, Paddle is a billing and payments layer, not an ASC 606 engine. You'll still need to recognize revenue in your own books. Paddle fits best for self-serve SaaS selling internationally to many small customers.

7. Zoho Billing

• Standard $39/mo · Premium $79/mo (annual)
• ≤ $1M billed/yr
• 14-day trial

Zoho Billing is the budget option. Standard is $39/month billed annually ($50 monthly), and Premium is $79/month billed annually ($100 monthly). Premium adds usage-based billing. Both plans allow up to 100,000 invoices a year and annual billed revenue up to $1M, with 3 users on Standard and up to 10 on Premium. Revenue recognition configurations and advanced usage controls are in the custom-priced Enterprise edition.

For a seed-stage SaaS company billing well under $1M a year, Zoho Billing plus disciplined spreadsheet deferrals is a defensible choice. Plan the migration before you hit the revenue ceiling, not after.

8. Usage-first engines: Metronome, Orb, Lago

• All quote-based
• Lago: open-source core
• Built for metering

If your product is priced on tokens, API calls, compute, or credits, a usage-first engine may matter more than anything else on this list. Metronome (now a Stripe product) is sold through sales. Orb offers Core, Advanced, and Enterprise tiers, all via sales, and lists Vercel, Replit, and Supabase among its customers. Lago offers an open-source core you can self-host, plus a paid cloud product. These engines excel at ingesting and rating events. Most B2B teams still pair them with a separate revenue recognition tool or ERP for ASC 606.

A good rule: if more than half of revenue comes from metered usage, evaluate a usage-first engine alongside Chargebee and Stripe. If usage is a small overage on top of seats, Chargebee Flow's or Stripe Billing's built-in usage support is usually enough.