Chargebee

Chargebee's Rise program is free until you process $250,000 in cumulative billing. There are no monthly platform fees during this period. Once you exceed $250K in total revenue processed, you transition to Chargebee's standard pricing, which starts at $599/month for the Performance plan.

Stripe is a payment processor — it handles the mechanics of charging cards and ACH. Chargebee is a subscription billing platform that sits on top of Stripe (or other gateways) and handles the business logic: subscription lifecycle, proration, dunning, tax calculation, revenue recognition, and customer self-service. Most SaaS businesses need both.

Chargebee supports 28 payment gateways including Stripe, Braintree, PayPal, Adyen, Worldpay, Square, and many regional gateways. You can configure multiple gateways simultaneously and route transactions by currency or geography. Stripe is the most common first gateway for startups.

Yes — Chargebee supports metered billing based on usage data you report via API. Customers are charged at the end of each billing period for the usage they incurred. This model is common for SaaS products that charge per API call, per seat, or per unit of consumption.

A basic Chargebee integration — create subscription, handle webhook events, basic plan management — typically takes 3–5 days for an experienced developer. Full integration including hosted payment pages, self-service portal, and dunning configuration takes 1–2 weeks. Chargebee provides documentation, SDKs, and integration guides for all major frameworks.

Yes — Chargebee supports multiple billing frequencies per plan (monthly and annual simultaneously). You can offer annual plans at a discount (e.g., 2 months free), handle proration when customers switch between frequencies, and configure invoicing timing for annual contracts. Annual billing management is one of Chargebee's strongest features.