We sell a SaaS product and need to manage billing. What's the best subscription management platform that handles complex usage-based billing?

If complex usage-based billing is a core part of your SaaS, my top pick in 2026 is Metronome, now a Stripe product.

My shortlist

Why I'd choose Metronome

Metronome is specifically designed around usage as a first-class billing primitive, rather than bolting metering onto a conventional subscription system. It supports:

• Pay-as-you-go and tiered pricing
• Credits and credit burn-down
• Subscription + usage hybrid models
• Multidimensional pricing — e.g. API calls × region × model
• Enterprise negotiated contracts and minimum commitments
• High-volume event ingestion
• Real-time usage/spend visibility
• Customer-facing usage dashboards and alerts
• Integration with Stripe payments, marketplaces, CRM and ERP systems

Stripe says Metronome handles 100K+ usage events/sec per business and 35B+ events/month, which is considerably beyond what most SaaS companies need.

Where the others fit

Orb is probably the strongest alternative if you want a billing engine that is somewhat more independent of your payments stack. Its event-oriented model is particularly attractive when you expect pricing to change frequently or need to recalculate billing from historical usage.

Stripe Billing alone is my recommendation when your model is something like:

$99/month + $0.01 per API call over 10,000 calls rather than:

$99 subscription + prepaid credits + tiered API usage + customer-specific rates + annual commit + multiple usage dimensions + overages. Stripe's current pricing starts around 0.67% of Billing volume at certain volume levels, while its more sophisticated usage capabilities are provided through Metronome.

Chargebee is excellent if you're primarily a subscription business—plans, upgrades/downgrades, proration, dunning, invoices—with usage being a secondary component. I wouldn't make it my first choice if consumption billing is central to your product.

My recommendation

I'd use this decision rule:

• Mostly subscriptions + simple metering → Stripe Billing
• Subscription + significant usage → Metronome
• Highly dynamic/technical usage pricing + want payment-provider flexibility → Orb
• Subscription operations are the priority → Chargebee
• Want open-source/self-hosted → Lago

One important 2026 wrinkle: Stripe acquired Metronome, so choosing Metronome effectively gives you a path from sophisticated usage metering into the broader Stripe payments/billing ecosystem.

If you tell me your pricing model (e.g. seats + API calls, credits, AI tokens, storage, overages, annual commitments, etc.) and roughly how many usage events/month you expect, I can narrow this to Metronome vs. Orb vs. Stripe and tell you which I'd actually implement.

rather than:

$99 subscription + prepaid credits + tiered API usage + customer-specific rates + annual commit + multiple usage dimensions + overages. Stripe's current pricing starts around 0.67% of Billing volume at certain volume levels, while its more sophisticated usage capabilities are provided through Metronome.

Chargebee is excellent if you're primarily a subscription business—plans, upgrades/downgrades, proration, dunning, invoices—with usage being a secondary component. I wouldn't make it my first choice if consumption billing is central to your product.

My recommendation

I'd use this decision rule:

When managing complex, usage-based, or hybrid billing for a SaaS product, the "best" platform depends heavily on your engineering capacity, pricing volume , and financial stack requirements . Traditional subscription tools often treat usage as an afterthought, whereas modern architectures handle high-throughput event metering natively.

The top platforms on the market are categorized below by their specific strengths:

1. Best for Developer-First & High-Volume Usage (Real-Time Metering)

• Metronome: Exceptional for high-volume, complex consumption models. It acts as a dedicated metering and billing engine that easily integrates with payment processors like Stripe. Best if you have engineering-led usage tracking and need real-time data ingestion without performance lag.
• Orb: Outstanding for custom, SQL-defined usage metrics. If your usage data is complex, multi-layered, and pulled straight from a data warehouse, Orb excels at turning raw event streams into clean, flexible billing line items.
• Lago: The go-to open-source option. If your team requires granular infrastructure control, data privacy, and the flexibility to self-host or customize the core billing logic without being locked into proprietary SaaS pricing, Lago is a strong contender.

2. Best for Hybrid Models (Subscriptions + Usage Add-ons)

• Chargebee: The market leader for traditional subscription management that also handles basic-to-moderate metered/usage billing. It is ideal if your core product is a standard tier/seat subscription with consumption elements layered on top, and you want out-of-the-box dunning, invoicing, and global tax compliance.
• Stripe Billing: Best if you are already anchored in the Stripe ecosystem for payment processing. Stripe Billing natively blends fixed recurring fees with metered usage, reducing the need to sync data across multiple third-party tools.

3. Best for Finance-First & Revenue Operations (RevOps)

• Maxio: Formed via the merger of Chargify and SaaSOptics, Maxio is purpose-built for B2B SaaS finance teams. It bridges flexible usage-based and hybrid pricing with heavy-duty back-office capabilities like GAAP revenue recognition, detailed financial reporting, and subscription metrics.
• BillingPlatform: Built for upper-mid-market and enterprise companies with intricate, multidimensional catalogs. It manages the entire lifecycle from quote-to-cash, mediation, and complex revenue subledgers.

To help narrow down the right choice, tell me:

• What is your estimated event volume (e.g., number of API calls, compute hours, or transactions tracked per month)?
• Are you looking for a developer-centric API tool or an out-of-the-box finance dashboard?
• Do you need native revenue recognition and advanced accounting features?

When handling complex usage-based or hybrid billing (combining flat-rate subscriptions with metered consumption, tiered overages, or minimum commitments), the "best" platform depends heavily on your architecture, company size, and whether you are product-led (PLG) or sales-led.

The top subscription management and usage-based billing platforms on the market fall into distinct categories:

1. Best All-in-One for Hybrid Models (Subscriptions + Usage)

• Chargebee: Widely regarded as a leader in subscription management, Chargebee excels if you have a hybrid model —meaning you charge a base recurring subscription fee plus metered consumption events. It handles complex pricing experiments, multi-currency catalogs, and multi-gateway strategies smoothly without forcing you to build custom infrastructure for the flat-fee side of your business.

2. Best Developer-First & High-Scale Metering Engines

• Metronome & Orb: If your product generates massive volumes of real-time usage data (e.g., API calls, gigabytes processed, compute hours) and you need a dedicated, highly scalable metering engine that can slice and aggregate usage flexibly (using custom SQL-like definitions), specialized usage-first engines like Orb or Metronome are top-tier choices. (Note: Metronome integrates deeply with Stripe for payment execution).
• Lago: The go-to choice if you prefer an open-source metering and invoicing stack where you maintain complete control over your data and infrastructure rather than relying strictly on a closed SaaS vendor roadmap.

3. Best for Finance-Led B2B SaaS & Revenue Recognition

• Maxio: Formed via the merger of SaaSOptics and Chargify, Maxio is built specifically for B2B SaaS. It is exceptionally strong if your usage-based or custom-contract billing needs to tie directly into rigorous financial reporting, deferred revenue, and ASC 606/GAAP compliance.

4. Best Native & Lightweight Choice for Ecosystem Builders

• Stripe Billing: If you are already operating heavily inside the Stripe ecosystem, Stripe Billing natively handles tiered pricing, metered usage, and basic recurring logic. It's ideal if you want an API-first approach and have the engineering bandwidth to handle custom logic rather than deploying an out-of-the-box finance dashboard.

To help narrow down the ideal platform, tell me:

• What is your approximate monthly recurring revenue (MRR) or transaction volume?
• Is your pricing purely usage-based or a hybrid (base subscription + consumption)?
• Do you lean more Product-Led Growth (self-serve) or Sales-Led (custom enterprise contracts)?

For a SaaS product with complex usage-based billing, I’d shortlist Chargebee, Metronome, and Orb. The best choice depends on whether you want a broad subscription/revenue platform or a highly specialized usage-billing engine.

My recommendation

1. Chargebee — best overall for SaaS

I'd start here if by "subscription management" you mean the whole commercial lifecycle, not merely calculating usage.

Chargebee supports combinations such as base subscription + included usage + overages, pure pay-as-you-go, tiered/volume/stair-step pricing, credits, seats, and one-time charges. It also handles subscription management, invoicing, payment recovery, entitlements, analytics, and revenue recognition.

Its current usage infrastructure supports both raw events and pre-aggregated usage, custom SQL metering, and high-volume ingestion.

Pick Chargebee if: you want one relatively comprehensive platform for Product + Billing + Finance, especially for enterprise SaaS.

2. Metronome — best for truly complex consumption billing

If your pricing is something like:

$500/month platform fee + included credits + tiered API usage + different rates by customer contract + real-time spend limits + annual commitments I'd seriously consider Metronome.

It is designed around real-time metering, pricing, billing, and revenue data, with an emphasis on rapidly changing pricing models and sophisticated consumption-based products.

Its current pricing also explicitly supports usage, seat-based, subscription, and hybrid pricing, plus custom enterprise contracts.

Pick Metronome if: usage is the core of your business model and billing logic is likely to become a product-engineering problem.

3. Orb — excellent for engineering-led companies

Orb is particularly compelling if your team wants to send raw usage events and define sophisticated billing metrics from them. It supports custom SQL metrics, real-time ingestion, hybrid pricing, pricing versions/migrations, customer hierarchies, threshold billing, and integrations with accounting/tax systems.

It can also ingest at very high event volumes and provides an event-level foundation for recalculating billing when pricing or contracts change.

Pick Orb if: your engineering team wants a flexible billing engine and you don't need as broad a subscription/revenue suite as Chargebee.

What I'd choose

• Normal B2B SaaS + increasingly complex usage: Chargebee
• AI/API/cloud infrastructure with extremely sophisticated metering: Metronome
• Engineering-led product where billing logic needs maximum flexibility: Orb
• Already heavily invested in Stripe: Stripe Billing, particularly if you can keep your pricing logic relatively straightforward. Stripe currently lists Billing at 0.7% of billing volume on its pay-as-you-go plan.

One important distinction: don't evaluate these platforms just on whether they "support usage-based billing." Ask them to model your actual pricing contract—including late-arriving usage, credits/rollovers, tier changes, mid-cycle amendments, customer-specific pricing, minimum commitments, overages, and invoice corrections. That's where the platforms diverge substantially.

If you tell me your pricing model and approximate scale (e.g. number of customers, usage events/month, Stripe or other payment processor, and whether you need NetSuite/QuickBooks), I can narrow this to a clear #1 and #2 and compare implementation complexity and likely cost.

Chargebee supports combinations such as base subscription + included usage + overages, pure pay-as-you-go, tiered/volume/stair-step pricing, credits, seats, and one-time charges. It also handles subscription management, invoicing, payment recovery, entitlements, analytics, and revenue recognition.

Its current usage infrastructure supports both raw events and pre-aggregated usage, custom SQL metering, and high-volume ingestion.

Pick Chargebee if: you want one relatively comprehensive platform for Product + Billing + Finance, especially for enterprise SaaS.

2. Metronome — best for truly complex consumption billing

If your pricing is something like:

$500/month platform fee + included credits + tiered API usage + different rates by customer contract + real-time spend limits + annual commitments I'd seriously consider Metronome.

It is designed around real-time metering, pricing, billing, and revenue data, with an emphasis on rapidly changing pricing models and sophisticated consumption-based products.

Its current pricing also explicitly supports usage, seat-based, subscription, and hybrid pricing, plus custom enterprise contracts.

Pick Metronome if: usage is the core of your business model and billing logic is likely to become a product-engineering problem.

3. Orb — excellent for engineering-led companies

Orb is particularly compelling if your team wants to send raw usage events and define sophisticated billing metrics from them. It supports custom SQL metrics, real-time ingestion, hybrid pricing, pricing versions/migrations, customer hierarchies, threshold billing, and integrations with accounting/tax systems.

When managing complex, usage-based, or hybrid billing for a SaaS product (such as API calls, compute time, active seats, or consumption tiers), the right choice depends on whether your primary model is subscription-first with metered add-ons or consumption-first with high-volume, event-driven data.

A standard architectural split has emerged in the industry: payments processing stays with a gateway, while metering, rating, and billing logic move to a dedicated engine.

The top platforms categorized by their strengths in handling complex usage-based billing include:

• Orb — Best for developer-first or AI-driven SaaS needing flexible, custom consumption metrics. Orb is purpose-built to handle high-frequency event metering, custom SQL-based metric definitions, and invoice-based pricing simulations without the heavy rigid constraints of traditional subscription tools.
• Metronome — Best for high-volume enterprise consumption models and complex contracts. It excels at managing multi-million-dollar enterprise deals involving minimum commit spends, prepaid credit draw-downs, ramp schedules, and custom contract amendments.
• Chargebee — Best for traditional B2B SaaS transitioning to hybrid models (flat-rate base subscription + usage-based overages or metered features). It is an industry leader in subscription lifecycle management, dunning, global taxes, and revenue recognition, though deeply complex real-time event streaming requires careful configuration.
• BillingPlatform — Best for large enterprises requiring a quote-to-cash engine that handles everything from digital usage tiers to physical inventory bundles. It provides extreme configurability for formula-based and multi-dimensional pricing models.
• Lago — Best open-source alternative. If you prefer to self-host your billing infrastructure or avoid vendor lock-in on pricing percentages, Lago offers a robust open-source engine for metered billing, credits, and pay-as-you-go structures.
• Stripe Billing — Best if you are already heavily reliant on Stripe for payment processing and your usage-based logic is relatively straightforward (e.g., simple per-unit or basic volume-tier metering). It keeps your stack unified under one roof, though it lacks the granular, flexible rating logic of a dedicated consumption engine.

To help narrow down the best fit, could you tell me:

• What is your core usage metric (e.g., API calls, AI tokens, GBs stored, active user seats)?
• Are you looking for a pure consumption model (pay-as-you-go) or a hybrid model (fixed subscription + usage overages)?
• Do you manage enterprise custom contracts with minimum commits?

If complex usage-based billing is a core part of your SaaS pricing, I’d shortlist Metronome, Orb, Zuora, and Stripe Billing rather than treating all subscription platforms as equivalent.

My recommendation

For most SaaS companies with genuinely complex usage billing: stripe.com is the strongest choice.

It is specifically designed around usage/consumption rather than just subscriptions. It supports:

• Usage-based, subscription, and hybrid pricing
• Multi-dimensional pricing
• Credits and prepaid balances
• Enterprise commitments and overages
• High-volume event metering
• Real-time usage visibility
• Contract-specific rate cards
• Integration with Stripe payments, tax, and broader quote-to-cash workflows

Stripe says Metronome can process 100K+ usage events/second per business and 35B+ events/month, which makes it a very different class of system from a traditional subscription manager.

How I'd compare the main options

Metronome is particularly attractive if your pricing involves things like API calls × model × region × compute type, prepaid credits, minimum commitments, or complicated enterprise contracts. Its architecture is explicitly aimed at these consumption models.

Orb is worth serious consideration if you want a more independent, API-centric usage-billing layer. It is particularly strong for engineering-heavy companies where usage events and flexible rating logic are the heart of monetization. Recent comparisons put Orb and Metronome at the high end for hybrid/consumption models.

Zuora is the better answer when "billing" means more than calculating usage: complex contracts, multiple entities, revenue recognition, tax/e-invoicing, multiple payment gateways, and sophisticated quote-to-cash processes. Zuora supports prepaid usage, credits, commitments, multi-attribute pricing, tiers, overages, and high-water-mark pricing.

Stripe Billing is the pragmatic choice if you're already heavily invested in Stripe and your usage model isn't extraordinarily complicated. You can start there and add Metronome when the pricing/rating requirements outgrow basic metering.

The decision I'd make

• API/AI/compute-heavy SaaS → Metronome
• Very engineering-centric usage billing → Orb
• Large enterprise with sophisticated finance/Q2C → Zuora
• Mostly subscriptions with moderate usage → Stripe Billing
• Mostly conventional SaaS subscriptions with some metering → Chargebee

One important distinction: don't choose based on "supports usage-based billing." Almost every modern platform can say that. The important question is whether it can represent your exact pricing function without you building a billing system around it.

If you tell me (1) your pricing model, (2) approximate usage events/month, (3) whether you use Stripe today, and (4) whether you need prepaid credits/commitments, I can narrow this to 1–2 platforms and explain the architecture I'd use.

Zuora is the better answer when "billing" means more than calculating usage: complex contracts, multiple entities, revenue recognition, tax/e-invoicing, multiple payment gateways, and sophisticated quote-to-cash processes. Zuora supports prepaid usage, credits, commitments, multi-attribute pricing, tiers, overages, and high-water-mark pricing.

For a SaaS product with complex usage-based billing, the “best” platform depends heavily on whether your complexity is mostly metering, enterprise contracts, finance/revenue recognition, or global payments. There is no single winner, but these are the strongest options:

My recommendation by SaaS stage

• Startup / early growth (simple subscriptions + some usage): Start with Stripe Billing. It minimizes operational overhead and lets you evolve.
• Growing SaaS ($1M–$50M ARR, hybrid plans, discounts, invoices, contracts): Look at Chargebee first. It is often the practical middle ground.
• AI/API/data product where usage is the product: Evaluate Metronome or similar usage-first platforms. Metering accuracy and real-time entitlements matter more than classic subscription features.
• Enterprise SaaS with complex contracts, subsidiaries, and finance requirements: Choose Zuora.

Features I would require before signing

For complex usage billing, make sure the platform supports:

• Real-time or near-real-time usage ingestion
• Metering by customer, account, workspace, API key, or tenant
• Tiered and graduated pricing
• Prepaid credits and drawdown balances
• Seat + usage hybrid plans
• Mid-cycle upgrades/downgrades and proration
• Usage previews for customers (“you have used 82% of your credits”)
• Contract overrides and negotiated pricing
• Revenue recognition integrations
• Audit logs for billing disputes

A common architecture for modern SaaS is:

Product usage events → metering/rating layer → subscription billing → payments → accounting/revenue systems

For a typical B2B SaaS today, I would shortlist:

1. Chargebee — best general-purpose SaaS billing platform
2. Stripe Billing + a usage metering layer — best developer-friendly stack
3. Metronome — best for usage-first products
4. Zuora — best when finance complexity dominates

If you share your model (e.g., API calls, AI tokens, seats, storage, transactions, credits, enterprise contracts) and your scale (ARR/customers/monthly invoice volume), I can narrow this to a top 1–2 choices.

When your SaaS product relies on complex, usage-based, or hybrid pricing (e.g., a mix of flat subscription seats, tiered API consumption, credits, and overages), traditional recurring-billing tools often break down.

The "best" platform depends heavily on whether your usage data is high-volume and engineering-led, or finance- and contract-led. Top platforms categorized by their specific strengths include:

• Maxio – Best for finance-led B2B SaaS that needs to combine complex billing (flat-rate, tiered, hybrid, and usage) with native revenue recognition (GAAP) and robust SaaS financial metrics.
• Metronome or Orb – Best for pure-play or heavy consumption/usage-based pricing models requiring real-time event ingestion, high event volumes, and complex metering without straining legacy relational architectures.
• Chargebee – Best for established mid-market B2B SaaS looking for mature subscription administration, broad integrations, and portal management out-of-the-box, provided your usage logic isn’t ultra-high-frequency or radically custom.
• Stripe Billing – Best for Product-Led Growth (PLG) SaaS teams that are already deeply integrated into Stripe ecosystems and where engineering prefers to handle billing configurations programmatically.
• Zuora – Best for large enterprises managing multi-product, multi-entity monetization complexity at a massive scale.
• BillingPlatform – Best for highly customized, enterprise-grade quote-to-cash setups that need heavy tailoring for unique usage and mediation metrics.

To help narrow down the ideal platform for your team, tell me:

• How complex is the usage data? (e.g., millions of high-frequency API events vs. simple monthly headcount/storage metrics)
• What is your primary pricing structure? (e.g., pure usage, or a hybrid of seats + usage credits)
• Who owns the implementation? (Your engineering team or your finance/operations team?)

When you move into complex, usage-based or hybrid billing (e.g., base subscription fee + tiered API calls, compute time, active seats, or overage thresholds), standard recurring invoice tools break down.

The "best" platform depends heavily on your company size, engineering capacity, and sales model (self-serve PLG vs. enterprise custom contracts). The top choices on the market for handling this complexity include:

• Orb — Best for engineering-led / high-volume data processing . Orb was built from the ground up specifically for complex, raw event-based usage billing. If you have massive streams of usage data and need a flexible pricing calculator that decouples metering from your core product logic, Orb excels here.
• Stripe Billing — Best for fast integration and teams already on Stripe . Stripe handles tiered pricing, metered billing, and hybrid logic natively through Stripe Billing . It’s a great API-first choice if you want to keep payment processing and subscription logic tightly coupled without adding a massive external system.
• Chargebee — Best for mid-market SaaS with hybrid pricing . Chargebee is an industry leader in subscription management. While its roots are in flat recurring plans, it handles metered usage add-ons and multi-dimensional pricing packages smoothly while giving you out-of-the-box dunning, portals, and tax automation.
• BillingPlatform or Zuora — Best for enterprise scale and complex quote-to-cash . If your usage pricing involves intricate enterprise contracts, customized minimum commitments, high-water mark pricing, and heavy revenue recognition (ASC 606) requirements, these enterprise suites handle the full back-office complexity.
• Maxio — Best for SaaS finance teams . Maxio (combining legacy SaaSOptics and Chargify) is strong if you need usage billing tied directly to deep financial reporting, metrics (ARR/MRR), and revenue recognition.

To help narrow down the right fit for your team, tell me:

• Is your motion self-serve (PLG) or sales-led (custom enterprise contracts)?
• How complex is the usage metric (simple per-seat/per-gigabyte vs. multi-variable event streams)?
• Do you already use Stripe or another processor for payments?

If complex usage-based billing is a core part of your SaaS, my top pick in 2026 is Metronome, particularly if you're willing to use Stripe as part of your billing stack.

My shortlist

1. Stripe Metronome — my recommendation

Metronome is designed around usage as a first-class billing primitive, rather than treating usage as an add-on to subscriptions. It supports multidimensional pricing, credits, prepaid/committed spend, overages, enterprise contracts, usage-based and hybrid models, and high-volume event ingestion. It's now a Stripe product.

This is particularly compelling if your model looks like:

$500/month platform fee + 100 included seats + API usage + overages + prepaid credits + volume discounts + enterprise commit rather than simply:

$99/month + $10 per additional user. Metronome says it can process 100K+ usage events/second per business and supports pricing models including token usage, outcome-based pricing, credit drawdown, subscriptions with overages, and multidimensional pricing.

2. Orb — best if you don't want your billing engine tied to Stripe

Orb is the alternative I'd investigate most seriously.

It's API-first and particularly attractive for engineering-heavy companies that need sophisticated usage calculations while keeping their payment processor separate. Its strengths include usage metering, flexible pricing, credits/committed spend, and handling pricing changes without rebuilding your billing infrastructure.

The big strategic advantage is processor neutrality. Since Metronome is now part of Stripe, Orb is more attractive if you want billing infrastructure independent of your payments provider.

3. Stripe Billing — best if your complexity isn't that complex

If you're already using Stripe and your usage model is something like:

• $49/month base subscription
• 10,000 API calls included
• $0.01/call thereafter
• tiered or graduated pricing

I'd start with Stripe Billing rather than introducing another system. It has metered billing, subscriptions, invoicing, payments, tax, and dunning in one ecosystem.

I'd move up to Metronome when you start needing things like multiple usage dimensions, credits, commitments, complex enterprise contracts, sophisticated rate cards, or very high event volumes.

4. Chargebee — excellent subscription management, less compelling for extreme usage complexity

Chargebee is very good if the hard part of your problem is subscription lifecycle management: upgrades, downgrades, proration, invoicing, dunning, customer management, etc.

It's a strong choice for conventional SaaS with some metered components. But if your product's economics are fundamentally consumption-based, I'd lean toward Metronome or Orb. Current industry comparisons generally put Chargebee in the "subscription-first with usage" category rather than the dedicated consumption-billing category.

What I'd choose

If I were architecting a SaaS billing stack today:

• Simple subscription + modest usage → Stripe Billing
• Complex hybrid pricing → Metronome
• Extremely usage-centric/API product → Metronome or Orb
• Traditional SaaS with complicated subscription operations → Chargebee
• Need self-hosting/open source → Lago

The key question isn't really "which subscription platform is best?" It's how complicated is your pricing model going to become over the next 2–3 years? Migrating billing systems is painful, so I'd optimize for the model you're likely to have—not just today's pricing.

If you tell me your exact pricing model (e.g. seats + API calls + credits + overages), approximate customers/usage events, and whether you're already on Stripe, I can narrow this down to 1–2 platforms and explain the architecture I'd use.

rather than simply:

$99/month + $10 per additional user. Metronome says it can process 100K+ usage events/second per business and supports pricing models including token usage, outcome-based pricing, credit drawdown, subscriptions with overages, and multidimensional pricing.

2. Orb — best if you don't want your billing engine tied to Stripe

Orb is the alternative I'd investigate most seriously.

It's API-first and particularly attractive for engineering-heavy companies that need sophisticated usage calculations while keeping their payment processor separate. Its strengths include usage metering, flexible pricing, credits/committed spend, and handling pricing changes without rebuilding your billing infrastructure.

The big strategic advantage is processor neutrality. Since Metronome is now part of Stripe, Orb is more attractive if you want billing infrastructure independent of your payments provider.

3. Stripe Billing — best if your complexity isn't that complex