Chargebee
Subscription and usage billing for SaaS and AI companies, with invoicing, dunning and 40+ payment gateways.
Best for growing SaaS and AI companies that bill subscriptions, usage or both through their own payment gateway
Facts checked November 4, 2026
The short answer
Chargebee handles the billing side of a subscription business: the price book, invoices, usage metering, dunning, tax calculation and SaaS reports, on top of any of 40+ payment gateways. The Flow plan has no base fee and takes 0.8% of what you invoice each month, or $99 a month plus 0.65% once you bill more than about $66,000. It suits a company that has outgrown hand-built billing and wants finance staff to change plans and prices without a developer. Salesforce, NetSuite and warehouse exports sit on the quote-only Enterprise plan, and Chargebee does not say how long its free trial lasts.
Choose it if
- You charge for usage, seats or credits as well as flat subscriptions and want the meters, limits and invoices in one system
- You take payments through more than one gateway, or expect to add a second one when you sell in a new region
- You want customers to sign up, upgrade and cancel through hosted pages and a self-serve portal that come free with Billing
- You are a startup in a partner accelerator or VC network that has raised under $5 million, which can qualify you for free Billing until your first $1 million in cumulative billing
- You use Xero or QuickBooks, which connect on the Flow plan
Skip it if
- You sell a few plans in one country and take cards only; a percentage of every invoice buys tools you won't use
- You want a company to act as seller of record and handle sales tax and VAT filing for you
- You need the Salesforce CRM sync, NetSuite or Sage Intacct, which are paid add-ons on the quote-only Enterprise plan
- You want every price published before you talk to sales; Enterprise, RevRec, full CPQ and Growth Enterprise are all quoted
Main features
Price book and pricing models
You set up plans as flat fee, tiered, stairstep, volume, usage or per-seat prices, with multi-decimal price points for small per-unit charges. Coupons, gift subscriptions, credit notes and Net-D payment terms are on both plans.
Usage-based and hybrid billing
Chargebee takes raw or pre-aggregated usage events through its API, CSV uploads or Amazon S3, and you can define meters with filters and custom SQL. Flow includes 100 million events a month, with usage limits, alerts and overage charges per plan; Enterprise can buy up to 500 million.
Payment gateways and methods
Billing connects to 40+ gateways, including Stripe, Adyen, Braintree, GoCardless, PayPal Commerce, Checkout.com and Mollie. Through supported gateways you can take cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Venmo, ACH, SEPA and BACS direct debit, Boleto and open banking payments.
Checkout and customer portal
Payment pages come hosted or embedded in an iframe, and you can run them on your own domain. The free Growth Starter add-on gives Billing customers pricing tables, hosted checkout, a self-serve portal and cancel pages you build without code.
Dunning and lifecycle emails
Both plans include basic and smart dunning for failed online and offline payments, plus lifecycle email templates with segmentation and several reminders. Chargebee's site describes machine-learning retries for failed payments in its Payments product.
Taxes
Chargebee calculates US sales tax, EU VAT and other global taxes, with several tax profiles and tax-inclusive prices. Anrok connects on Flow; Avalara AvaTax is a paid add-on on Enterprise.
SaaS reports
Flow includes SaaS metrics, flexible MRR calculations, A/R aging, tax reports, abandoned and recovered cart reports and a basic report builder. Exports to Google Cloud Storage, Amazon S3, Snowflake or your BI tool are a paid Enterprise add-on.
Retention with Chargebee Growth
Growth Enterprise runs cancel flows that offer each subscriber a save offer, in-app offers and pricing experiments, with a person approving each launch. Chargebee prices it by your number of active subscribers.
CPQ and revenue recognition
CPQ Lite lets sales staff create quotes and amend existing subscriptions, free for the first 50 quotes, and the full CPQ adds multi-year ramped deals and approval rules. RevRec automates revenue schedules and journal entries for finance teams, priced on request.
MCP server for AI clients
Chargebee's MCP server lets you ask Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Codex or Notion AI about live subscriptions, invoices, usage and credit balances. Chargebee says write actions are coming, so for now it reads data only.
Pricing
Prices from Chargebee's pricing page, checked November 4, 2026, shown in US dollars. The two Flow prices are two ways to pay for the same plan: they cost the same at about $66,000 of monthly invoicing, and the $99 option is cheaper above that. Your payment gateway charges its own processing fees on top.
Flow (no base fee)
$0 + 0.80% of invoicing volume / month
Price book, invoicing, usage billing with 100 million usage events a month, usage limits and alerts, analytics, pricing tables with one growth experiment, Xero and QuickBooks
Flow (base fee)
$99 + 0.65% of invoicing volume / month
The same Flow features; costs less than the no-base-fee option above about $66,000 of monthly invoicing
Enterprise
Custom / quote
Everything in Flow plus multi-entity management, account hierarchy, contract terms and on-demand discounting; paid add-ons for 500 million usage events, SSO controls and data export
Growth Starter
$0
For Billing customers: pricing tables, hosted checkout, self-serve portal and no-code cancel pages
Growth Enterprise
Custom, based on active subscribers / quote
Multi-brand growth experiments, an AI offer builder, trial conversion and upsell experiments
CPQ Lite
$0 for the first 50 quotes / one-off
For Billing customers: quote creation and immediate amendments for existing customers
CPQ
Custom / quote
Multi-product quotes, multi-year ramped quotes and rule-based approval workflows
RevRec Performance and Enterprise
Custom / quote
Automated revenue recognition and GAAP reports for up to 5 users (Performance) or 10 users with multi-entity support (Enterprise)
Reviews
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Alternatives to Chargebee
| Product | Choose it instead if | Starts at |
|---|---|---|
| Recurly | Recovering failed card payments is your main concern and a $249 monthly platform fee with the first $40,000 of billings included suits your volume | $249 a month (Starter) |
| Stripe Billing | You take all your payments through Stripe and want billing in the same account | 0.7% of Billing volume,... |
| Paddle | You sell software worldwide and want a merchant of record to handle sales tax and VAT for you | 5% + 50¢ per checkout tr... |
| Zoho Billing | You want a fixed monthly price instead of a share of your invoicing, and already use Zoho | $39 a month billed yearl... |
| Pabbly Subscription Billing | You are a small seller with a few plans and want checkout pages without a percentage fee | Free |
Questions people ask
How much does Chargebee cost?
Chargebee's Flow plan costs 0.8% of your monthly invoicing volume with no base fee, or $99 a month plus 0.65%. The second option is cheaper once you invoice more than about $66,000 a month. Enterprise, full CPQ, RevRec and Growth Enterprise are priced by quote. Prices checked November 4, 2026.
Does Chargebee have a free plan?
There is no free Billing plan for most businesses. Billing customers get Growth Starter at no cost and CPQ Lite free for the first 50 quotes. Startups in a partner accelerator or VC portfolio that have raised under $5 million can apply to use Billing free until they have billed $1 million in total, then move to pay-as-you-go.
Is there a Chargebee free trial?
Chargebee offers a free trial and a sandbox from its sign-up page, but it does not say how long the trial lasts or whether you need a card. Ask Chargebee before you start migrating real customer data.
Do I need my own payment gateway to use Chargebee?
Chargebee Billing runs on top of a gateway you connect, such as Stripe, Adyen, Braintree or GoCardless, and that gateway charges its own processing fees. Chargebee also sells a Payments product with an embedded payments option, but it does not publish prices for it. Chargebee calculates sales tax and VAT on invoices; its pricing page does not offer to act as seller of record.
Which integrations come with the Flow plan?
Flow includes Xero, QuickBooks, Anrok, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, HubSpot and Klaviyo for marketing, Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom, Slack and Zapier. The Salesforce CRM integration, NetSuite, Sage Intacct and Avalara AvaTax are paid add-ons on Enterprise, and the HubSpot CRM integration is a paid add-on on both plans.
Can Chargebee bill for AI and usage-based products?
Yes. Flow includes usage ingestion through the API, CSV or Amazon S3, custom meters, usage limits and alerts, and 100 million usage events a month. You can mix usage charges with recurring and one-time fees on the same plan.
Chargebee or Stripe Billing?
If you take every payment through Stripe and want the lowest percentage, Stripe Billing is the simpler setup. Chargebee makes more sense when you use or plan to use more than one gateway, or want finance staff to manage plans, dunning and cancel pages without code.
Sources we checked 11
- chargebee.com/pricing for Flow and Enterprise pricing, $66K breakeven, usage events, add-on plans, feature comparison, integrations by plan, support hours checked November 4, 2026
- chargebee.com for Product scope, 40+ gateways, 50+ payment methods, 100+ currencies, ML-based retries checked November 4, 2026
- chargebee.com/company for Founders, founding year and San Francisco headquarters (page structured data) checked November 4, 2026
- chargebee.com/careers for Founded in 2011 checked November 4, 2026
- chargebee.com/privacy for Company name (Chargebee Inc) checked November 4, 2026
- chargebee.com/startups for Startup offer terms checked November 4, 2026
- chargebee.com/trial-signup for Free trial and sandbox (no length stated) checked November 4, 2026
- chargebee.com/integrations for Integration listing (no total count stated) checked November 4, 2026
- chargebee.com/growth for Growth cancel flows, offers and experiments checked November 4, 2026
- chargebee.com/mcp for MCP server clients and read-only status checked November 4, 2026
- chargebee.com/receivables for Receivables product (early access, no price) checked November 4, 2026