Once your SaaS has tiers, trials, proration, dunning and revenue recognition to manage, raw Stripe Payments isn't enough — you need a billing layer. Three options, and they converge in price around $100k MRR but diverge sharply below and above.
| Model | At ~$20k MRR | At ~$100k MRR | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stripe Billing | 0.5% of recurring revenue (+ payment processing) | ~$100/mo + processing | ~$500–620/mo + processing |
| Chargebee | Starter $299/mo; Performance ~$599–699/mo; then 0.75% overage | $299/mo | ~$599/mo |
| Recurly | Core $249/mo (after trial); Professional $1,000+/mo | $249/mo | $249/mo+ |
Stripe Billing is the cheapest for early-stage SaaS — 0.5% of recurring revenue on top of normal Stripe processing, no platform minimum. Under ~$200k ARR it's almost always the right call: it's integrated with the payments you're already using, the API is excellent, and there's nothing new to procure. It gets pricier as a pure percentage as you scale, and its dunning and revenue-recognition tooling, while much improved, is less deep than the specialists'.
Chargebee is built for pricing complexity — many plans, add-ons, usage components, multiple currencies, entitlement management, and strong revenue recognition. The $299/month Starter floor means it's not for pre-revenue companies, but for mid-market SaaS with genuinely complicated pricing it removes a lot of custom billing code.
Recurly is strongest for retail and B2C subscriptions — box services, streaming, media — where the priorities are churn reduction, sophisticated dunning (its recovery rates are a selling point), and high transaction volume. Core is a flat $249/month.
Early-stage SaaS: Stripe Billing, until the 0.5% starts to sting. Complex B2B pricing: Chargebee. High-volume consumer subscriptions focused on retention: Recurly.