Best Subscription & Billing APIs

Best overall: Chargebee

████████░░ 82 / 100 data score

Chargebee is a subscription and usage-based billing platform built for SaaS and AI companies, handling the full subscription lifecycle from creation and metering through dunning, revenue recognition (ASC 606/IFRS 15), and CPQ. It offers a free Starter tier up to $250K cumulative billing, with paid plans from $599/month and an enterprise tier priced on request. The REST API ships with SDKs for seven languages, supports webhooks and idempotency, and holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR certifications.

From $599 month · free tier available.

How it stacks up

• ✓ On compliance, Chargebee additionally documents HIPAA.
• ✓ Recurly starts lower at $249 per month vs $599 for Chargebee.
• ✓ Stigg starts lower at $448 per month vs $599 for Chargebee.

Best for: Prototypes and side projects - free to start, no sales call; Regulated or enterprise workloads - compliance attestations and an enterprise plan; AI agents and automation - an agent-ready surface (MCP / llms.txt).

Chargebee profile → · Chargebee vs Maxio →

At a glance

Quick pick by use case

If you only have thirty seconds, find your situation:

• If you want the strongest all-round pick, pick Chargebee - our default pick: strongest across pricing, trust and breadth.
• If you want to start free, pick Chargebee - free tier: Starter plan: free for the first $250K cumulative billing, then 0.75% per month on billin….
• If you're buying for a regulated or large team, pick Chargebee - for regulated or large teams: SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, published SLA.
• If you want the lowest published entry price, pick Kill Bill - from $40 month to start; compare on your real usage, not the entry price.
• If you're wiring this into coding agents or AI workflows, pick Chargebee - easiest to wire up programmatically: MCP server + llms.txt.
• If you want the broadest documented surface, pick Stripe - 304 documented actions; breadth isn't quality, but it's the most to build on.

The picks in depth

• #1 Chargebee

  ████████░░ 82 / 100
  • Best overall
  • Best free pick
  • Best for enterprise
  • Best for agents

  Chargebee is a subscription and usage-based billing platform built for SaaS and AI companies, handling the full subscription lifecycle from creation and metering through dunning, revenue recognition (ASC 606/IFRS 15), and CPQ. It offers a free Starter tier up to $250K cumulative billing, with paid plans from $599/month and an enterprise tier priced on request. The REST API ships with SDKs for seven languages, supports webhooks and idempotency, and holds SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR certifications.

  PricingHybrid · from $599 month · free tier ✓

  TrustSOC 2 Type II · HIPAA · GDPR · ISO 27001 · PCI DSS

  Does

  • Usage-based billing
  • Dunning / recovery
  • Revenue recognition
  • Tax / VAT handling
  • Entitlements

  Used byZapier, Typeform, Pret A Manger, Condé Nast

  Strengthstransparent public pricing · a free tier · self-serve signup

  ScoresAgent 65 · Pricing 100 · Setup 100 · Docs 25 · Procurement 100 · Trust 100

  Chargebee profile →

• #2 Maxio

  ████████░░ 81 / 100

  Maxio is a subscription billing and revenue management API built for SaaS companies, handling usage-based metering, tiered and hybrid pricing, invoicing, dunning, and GAAP/IFRS revenue recognition. Pricing starts at $599/month (Grow plan, capped at $100k/month in billings), with a free developer sandbox for testing; production tiers above that threshold require a custom sales quote. The REST API ships with official SDKs in seven languages including Python, TypeScript, Java, and Ruby, and supports webhooks and a self-service billing portal. Compliance certifications include SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and GDPR, with a 10,000 requests/hour rate limit per site subdomain.

  PricingSubscription · from $599 month · free tier ✓

  TrustSOC 2 Type II · GDPR · ISO 27001 · PCI DSS

  Does

  • Usage-based billing
  • Dunning / recovery
  • Revenue recognition

  Used byRetool, SolarWinds, Boomi, Extensiv

  Strengthstransparent public pricing · a free tier · self-serve signup

  ScoresAgent 75 · Pricing 100 · Setup 100 · Docs 25 · Procurement 100 · Trust 85

  Maxio profile →

• #3 Recurly

  ██████▓░░░ 68 / 100

  Recurly is a subscription management and recurring billing platform targeting SaaS, media, and e-commerce businesses that need to automate billing, handle dunning, support usage-based pricing, and manage revenue recognition under ASC-606/IFRS-15. It operates in 195+ countries and offers official SDKs for seven languages alongside a REST API with webhook and idempotency support. Pricing starts at $249 per month plus 0.9% of billing volume on the Starter plan, with a 90-day free trial available; an All-Access plan requires a $1M annual billing minimum. The platform holds SOC 2 Type II, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and GDPR certifications.

  PricingHybrid · from $249 month · free tier ✗

  TrustSOC 2 Type II · HIPAA · GDPR · PCI DSS

  Does

  • Usage-based billing
  • Dunning / recovery
  • Revenue recognition
  • Tax / VAT handling
  • Entitlements

  Used bySling, Twitch, BarkBox, FabFitFun

  Strengthstransparent public pricing · self-serve signup · SOC 2 Type II

  Avoid ifYou want to try it free before paying

  ScoresAgent 40 · Pricing 85 · Setup 75 · Docs 35 · Procurement 85 · Trust 85

  Recurly profile →

• #4 Stigg

  ███████░░░ 73 / 100

  Stigg is a monetization control layer for SaaS and AI products, providing usage-based billing, subscription management, entitlements, and feature access control via a REST API with SDKs for TypeScript, Python, Go, Java, Ruby, C#, and React. Paid plans start at $448 per month with self-serve signup, a free sandbox tier for non-production use, and an enterprise tier from $60,000 per month. The platform holds SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 certifications, is GDPR compliant, and deploys across a global multi-region AWS infrastructure with 300-plus CDN edge points. Customers include Webflow, Miro, PagerDuty, and Cloudinary.

  PricingHybrid · from $448 month · free tier ✓

  TrustSOC 2 Type II · GDPR · ISO 27001

  Does

  • Usage-based billing
  • Entitlements

  Used byWebflow, Miro, PagerDuty, AI21

  Strengthstransparent public pricing · a free tier · self-serve signup

  ScoresAgent 50 · Pricing 100 · Setup 100 · Docs 15 · Procurement 100 · Trust 75

  Stigg profile →

• #5 Lago

  ███████▒░░ 76 / 100

  Lago is an open-source, MIT-licensed metering and billing platform built for companies with complex usage-based, subscription, or hybrid billing logic. It handles event ingestion, invoicing, prepaid credits, entitlements, and revenue analytics, with noted adoption by AI infrastructure companies such as Mistral AI and Groq. Lago can be self-hosted at no cost or run on a managed cloud with US and EU endpoints; published pricing exists alongside an enterprise plan. SDKs cover six languages, webhooks are supported, and an MCP server is available.

  PricingSales-led · free tier ✓

  TrustSOC 2 Type II · GDPR

  Does

  • Usage-based billing
  • Dunning / recovery
  • Entitlements

  Used byPayPal, Mistral AI, Groq, Synthesia

  Strengthstransparent public pricing · a free tier · self-serve signup

  ScoresAgent 75 · Pricing 75 · Setup 100 · Docs 55 · Procurement 90 · Trust 60

  Lago profile →

• #6 Stripe

  ██████░░░░ 63 / 100
  • Broadest surface

  Stripe is financial infrastructure for accepting and optimizing payments online and in person, with support for billing models, card issuing, cross-border money movement, and embedded payments for platforms. Pricing is usage-based, published, and self-serve. It offers webhooks, an official MCP server, and seven SDKs, and carries SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, and PCI DSS compliance.

  PricingUsage · free tier ✗

  TrustSOC 2 Type II · GDPR · PCI DSS

  Strengthstransparent public pricing · self-serve signup · SOC 2 Type II

  Avoid ifYou want to try it free before paying

  ScoresAgent 75 · Pricing 60 · Setup 65 · Docs 55 · Procurement 75 · Trust 50

  Stripe profile →

• #7 Paddle

  ██████░░░░ 59 / 100

  Paddle is a Merchant of Record platform built for SaaS and digital product companies, handling subscription billing, global tax calculation and remittance, failed payment recovery, and B2B invoicing across 300+ markets. Pricing is usage-based, charged as a percentage of billing volume, with published rates and self-serve signup available. The REST API supports webhooks and official SDKs for Node.js, Python, Go, PHP, and JavaScript, and an MCP server is available. Paddle holds SOC 2 Type 2 and PCI DSS certifications and is GDPR compliant.

  PricingUsage · free tier ✗

  TrustSOC 2 Type II · GDPR · PCI DSS

  Does

  • Usage-based billing
  • Dunning / recovery
  • Tax / VAT handling
  • Merchant of record

  Used byFortinet, MacPaw, Laravel, Adaptavist

  Strengthstransparent public pricing · self-serve signup · SOC 2 Type II

  Avoid ifYou want to try it free before paying

  ScoresAgent 60 · Pricing 60 · Setup 75 · Docs 35 · Procurement 75 · Trust 50

  Paddle profile →

• #8 Metronome

  ██████▒░░░ 65 / 100

  Metronome is a usage-based and subscription billing infrastructure API built for software companies that need to handle complex pricing models, including hybrid, seat-based, and enterprise contract billing with prepaid commits and cloud marketplace support. It offers a free Starter plan with core features and self-serve signup, with published pricing and an enterprise tier available. The REST API supports Python, Node.js, Ruby, and Go SDKs, includes webhooks and idempotency, and carries SOC 2 Type 2 certification with GDPR compliance. Acquired by Stripe in December 2025, it counts OpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks, and NVIDIA among its customers.

  PricingHybrid · free tier ✓

  TrustSOC 2 Type II · GDPR

  Does

  • Usage-based billing
  • Dunning / recovery
  • Tax / VAT handling
  • Entitlements

  Used byOpenAI, Anthropic, Databricks, Confluent

  Strengthstransparent public pricing · a free tier · self-serve signup

  ScoresAgent 60 · Pricing 75 · Setup 100 · Docs 25 · Procurement 90 · Trust 40

  Metronome profile →

See all 14 Subscription & Billing APIs compared →

How we rank

The headline score is the average of six 0-100 axes computed only from each API’s published, sourced fields: agent-friendliness, pricing transparency, setup speed, docs quality, procurement ease, and trust readiness. An unknown signal scores 0 for its axis - we credit what’s confirmed, never guess. The score is one input, not the verdict: we lead with each pick’s trade-off, and where a job has only one real option we say so rather than crown it. Full method on the methodology page.

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• ✓ Every field cited. Each profile links the source for every claim - check us.
• ✓ Public audit log. Every change to this data is recorded per field, with who changed it and why.
• ✓ Published, deterministic methodology. The score is a formula over the same fields you can see - recompute it yourself.
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• ✓ No reviews yet - and we say so rather than synthesizing them.

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