Recurly
Free trialSubscription billing with dunning, gateway routing and churn tools, plus an edition for Shopify Plus stores.
Best for subscription businesses billing well over $40,000 a month that lose revenue to failed card payments
Facts checked November 4, 2026
The short answer
Recurly, founded in 2009, puts most of its product into keeping the subscribers you already have: dunning emails, payment retries, cancel-save flows and routing across more than 20 payment gateways. Starter costs $249 a month and includes the first $40,000 of monthly billings, with a 90-day free trial that gives you time to run real renewal cycles. The recovery tools people buy Recurly for, such as machine-learning retries, Account Updater and multiple dunning campaigns, sit on All-Access, though, and that plan needs $1 million in billing volume and a yearly contract. A young business billing a few thousand dollars a month will pay far less elsewhere.
Choose it if
- You bill more than $40,000 a month in subscriptions, so the included volume on Starter covers a real share of your revenue
- You are heading toward $1 million a year in billings and want machine-learning retries, Account Updater and several dunning campaigns for different customer groups
- You already have a merchant account and want to keep your own gateway, or route payments across two or more of them
- You sell physical subscriptions on Shopify Plus and want subscribe-and-save, bundles, prepaid and gift subscriptions in one app
- You sell through the App Store and Google Play as well as the web and want those subscriptions reported in one place
Skip it if
- You bill under about $25,000 a month, where the $249 base fee comes to more than 1% of your billings
- You want someone else to be the seller of record and file sales tax and VAT for you; Recurly bills through your own gateway
- You need the advanced recovery tools but bill well under $1 million a year, since those sit on All-Access
- You want exact published prices for every plan before talking to sales; only Starter has a fixed price on the page
Main features
Dunning campaigns
Recurly emails customers whose payments fail and retries the charge on a schedule you set. Starter gives you one default campaign for every overdue invoice; on All-Access you can build up to 50, so annual and monthly customers, say, get different messages.
Payment retries and Account Updater
Every plan retries soft declines using the gateway's decline codes, stopping after 7 declines, 20 attempts or 60 days. All-Access adds Intelligent Retries, which use machine learning to pick the retry time, and Account Updater, which picks up new card numbers and expiry dates from Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express.
Flexible plans and pricing
You can mix recurring, per-seat, usage-based and one-time charges on a single invoice, run free trials, issue bulk unique coupon codes and sell gift subscriptions. Subscribers can pause for a set number of billing cycles instead of canceling.
Payment gateways and methods
Starter connects to more than 20 gateways, including Stripe, Adyen, Braintree, Checkout.com, GoCardless and PayPal, and takes Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay and Venmo through supported gateways. All-Access adds routing across gateways and automatic failover to a backup gateway when your main one goes down.
Checkout and hosted pages
Recurly Checkout and its hosted account pages let customers sign up, update cards and manage subscriptions without your team building those screens. Developers who want their own forms can use Recurly.js to keep card data off their servers.
Sales tax, VAT and GST
A built-in tax tool powered by Avalara calculates and collects tax at checkout and on renewals. Recurly's own docs say it does not guarantee tax compliance, so you still register and file yourself.
Subscription analytics and benchmarks
Dashboards cover MRR, churn, retention, trial conversion and how much your dunning recovers. You can compare your churn and recovery rates with benchmarks Recurly draws from more than 58 million subscribers and 2,200 brands.
Accounting and CRM connections
Recurly's help center documents integrations with QuickBooks Online, Xero, Oracle NetSuite and Salesforce, and its partner directory adds HubSpot and Mailchimp. With Xero, each Recurly invoice line syncs across with a link back to the original invoice.
App store subscriptions
App Management pulls App Store and Google Play subscription data into Recurly so web and in-app subscribers appear in the same reports. It costs a yearly platform fee plus a share of app store revenue, and Recurly doesn't publish the amounts.
Recurly Commerce for Shopify Plus
A separate Shopify app for product subscriptions, with subscribe-and-save, custom bundles, prepaid and gift subscriptions, a no-code storefront editor and a passwordless customer portal. It's sold as All-Access for Shopify.
Pricing
Prices from Recurly's pricing page, checked November 4, 2026. The rate on All-Access drops as volume rises, and Recurly gives the exact figure only through sales. Payment gateway fees are charged by your gateway, not Recurly.
Starter
$249 + 0.9% of billing volume / month
First $40,000 of billings each month at no percentage fee, one dunning campaign, static retries, 20+ payment gateways, 10+ payment methods, 90-day free trial
All-Access
Under 1% of billing volume / year, billed annually
$1 million billing volume minimum; adds intelligent retries, multiple dunning campaigns, gateway routing, multicurrency, ACH, custom reporting and single sign-on
All-Access for Shopify
Under 1% of billing volume / year, billed annually
Bundles, subscribe-and-save, prepaid and gift subscriptions, cancel-save flows and surveys, and a passwordless subscriber portal
Engage (add-on)
From $1,600 / month, billed annually
Personalized retention and upsell offers, a churn-propensity model, A/B testing and segmentation
RevRec (add-on)
From $850 / month, billed annually
Automated revenue recognition, monthly close, forecasting and an audit trail; price depends on billing volume
Reviews
Write a reviewNo reviews yet. If you use Recurly, yours would be the first.
Alternatives to Recurly
| Product | Choose it instead if | Starts at |
|---|---|---|
| Chargebee | You want a like-for-like billing platform with published usage-based pricing that starts without a fixed monthly fee | 0.8% of monthly invoicin... |
| Stripe Billing | Stripe already takes your payments and you'd rather pay a share of billing volume with no monthly platform fee | 0.7% of Billing volume,... |
| Paddle | You sell software and want a merchant of record to collect and file sales tax and VAT for you | 5% + 50¢ per checkout tr... |
| Zoho Billing | You bill a few thousand dollars a month and want a fixed monthly price instead of a percentage | $39 a month billed yearl... |
Questions people ask
How much does Recurly cost?
Starter costs $249 a month plus 0.9% of billing volume, with the first $40,000 of billings each month included. At $100,000 a month in billings, that comes to $789 a month by our arithmetic. All-Access is priced at under 1% of billing volume, billed annually, with a $1 million volume minimum, and you get the exact rate from Recurly's sales team.
Does Recurly have a free plan or free trial?
There is no free plan. Starter comes with a 90-day free trial, and All-Access buyers can test the product in a free sandbox account. Recurly's pricing page doesn't say whether the trial needs a card.
Does Recurly work with Stripe?
Yes. Stripe is one of Recurly's supported gateways, along with Adyen, Braintree, Checkout.com, Cybersource, GoCardless, PayPal and others. You keep your Stripe account and Recurly handles the subscriptions, invoices and retries on top of it. All-Access lets you add a second gateway as a backup or route payments between them.
Is Recurly a merchant of record?
No. Recurly bills through your own payment gateway and merchant account, and you remain the seller. Its Avalara-powered tax tool calculates and collects sales tax and VAT, but Recurly's docs say it does not guarantee compliance. If you want a company to take on tax filing as the seller, look at Paddle.
Does Recurly work with Shopify?
Yes, through Recurly Commerce, a Shopify app that Recurly describes as built for Shopify Plus. It's priced as All-Access for Shopify, at under 1% of billing volume billed annually. It handles subscribe-and-save, bundles, prepaid and gift subscriptions.
Which Recurly plan includes intelligent retries?
Intelligent Retries and Account Updater are not on Starter, according to Recurly's docs; they come with All-Access. Starter includes static retries based on decline codes and one dunning campaign, which still recover some failed payments but with less control.
Can Recurly handle usage-based billing?
Yes, on every plan. You can bill customers at the end of each cycle for what they used, combine that with a fixed subscription fee, and price per unit to as many as nine decimal places.
Sources we checked 19
- recurly.com/pricing for Starter, All-Access, All-Access for Shopify, Engage and RevRec prices and features, 90-day trial, $1 million minimum, 140+ currencies checked November 4, 2026
- recurly.com for product description and product names checked November 4, 2026
- recurly.com/company for founded 2009, San Francisco headquarters checked November 4, 2026
- recurly.com/integrations for 40+ gateways and platforms, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Avalara and gateway partners checked November 4, 2026
- recurly.com/partners-integrations for integration count and partner list checked November 4, 2026
- recurly.com/product/commerce for Recurly Commerce for Shopify Plus features checked November 4, 2026
- recurly.com/product/support-and-services for chat, email and phone support, seven-day support, CSM and premium tiers checked November 4, 2026
- recurly.com/product/integration-methods for API, Recurly.js, hosted pages, mobile SDKs, webhooks checked November 4, 2026
- recurly.com/product/app-management for App Store and Google Play sync and its fee structure checked November 4, 2026
- docs.recurly.com/recurly-subscriptions/docs/llms.txt for documented gateways, payment methods, 141 currencies, 30 email languages, benchmarks, QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite and Salesforce integrations checked November 4, 2026
- docs.recurly.com/recurly-subscriptions/docs/do-you-need-help.md for live chat, support tickets and email checked November 4, 2026
- docs.recurly.com/recurly-subscriptions/docs/dunning-management.md for one dunning campaign on Starter, up to 50 on higher plans checked November 4, 2026
- docs.recurly.com/recurly-subscriptions/docs/retry-logic.md for Intelligent Retries not included in Starter checked November 4, 2026
- docs.recurly.com/recurly-subscriptions/docs/account-updater.md for Account Updater not included in Starter, card networks covered checked November 4, 2026
- docs.recurly.com/recurly-subscriptions/docs/static-retries.md for static retries on all plans and their limits checked November 4, 2026
- docs.recurly.com/recurly-subscriptions/docs/gateway-failover.md for gateway failover not included in Starter checked November 4, 2026
- docs.recurly.com/recurly-subscriptions/docs/tax.md for Avalara-powered tax on all plans and the compliance disclaimer checked November 4, 2026
- docs.recurly.com/recurly-subscriptions/docs/usage-based-billing.md for usage-based billing on all plans checked November 4, 2026
- docs.recurly.com/recurly-subscriptions/docs/pause-subscription.md for subscription pause on all plans checked November 4, 2026