Best Usage-Based Billing Software for B2B SaaS in 2026: 11 Platforms Compared

Usage-based billing software measures customer consumption, applies pricing rules, and turns rated usage into invoices. The strongest platforms also support hybrid subscription-plus-usage contracts, credits and commitments, invoice controls, and a reliable handoff to revenue recognition — and in 2026, the fastest-growing requirement is an AI layer that reconciles what was metered against what the signed contract actually says.

Updated September 12, 2026: this comparison now covers 11 platforms, adding Chargebee, Maxio, Zuora, and m3ter with their published pricing where it exists, rates every platform on Stripe fit (the most common question we hear is which usage-based billing platform to run on Stripe), reflects the current Stripe usage-billing stack, and evaluates each option against ASC 606 and IFRS 15 requirements instead of treating revenue recognition as an afterthought. New to the model itself? Start with the primer on how usage-based billing works, and if your pricing runs on prepaid credit packs, see the guide to credits-based billing and drawdown.

How we evaluated

LedgerUp meters, rates, and invoices usage-based contracts in production every day, on its own metering pipeline and alongside Stripe, Orb, and Metronome where customers already run them. That gives us a working view of where each platform's metering, rating, and revenue handoff holds up and where finance teams end up compensating manually. We scored each option on six dimensions: event and metering integrity, hybrid contract support, invoice controls, ASC 606 / IFRS 15 workflow, Stripe fit, and implementation burden. Where we name a customer result, it is a real, attributed number, not an illustration.

Quick picks

• Best usage-based billing platform on Stripe for B2B contracts: LedgerUp. It installs from the Stripe App Marketplace, meters usage from your product or warehouse, rates it against the signed contract, creates the Stripe invoice, then reconciles the payout and recognizes the revenue.
• Best AI billing platform for usage-based pricing: LedgerUp. The only agent-first platform on this list: it reads the contract, catches unbilled overages, and runs invoicing, collections, and rev rec on the stack you already have.
• Best for self-serve usage billing kept entirely inside Stripe: Stripe Billing and Metronome
• Best enterprise usage and revenue platform: BillingPlatform
• Best for high-volume, developer-led metering: Orb
• Best subscription-first platform with usage included and published pricing: Chargebee
• Best finance-led billing and revenue recognition in one vendor: Maxio
• Best for large enterprises with heavy compliance requirements: Zuora
• Best open-source or composable starting point: Lago
• Best for product entitlements tied to Stripe billing: Schematic
• Best for greenfield pricing infrastructure: Alguna
• Best dedicated metering and rating layer: m3ter

Usage-based billing software comparison

No single benchmark determines the winner. Evaluate the entire path from raw event to rated charge, invoice, recognized revenue, collections status, and ERP record.

The 11 platforms in detail

1. LedgerUp: the AI usage-based billing platform for contract-heavy B2B SaaS

LedgerUp is a usage-based billing platform with its own metering pipeline and an AI agent, Ari, that runs the finance side of the workflow. It ingests raw usage events from your product, data warehouse, or an existing billing engine through the API, a warehouse sync, or a native integration; deduplicates them by idempotency key and applies late-arriving events to the period they belong to; aggregates them per customer, metric, and period using the method the contract specifies; and rates them against the terms in the signed contract rather than a billing configuration: rate cards, graduated or volume tiers, included allowances, committed minimums, overage rates, caps, and prepaid credits. It then creates the invoice in Stripe, NetSuite, QuickBooks, or Sage Intacct, routes it for approval in Slack, reconciles the payment back to the invoice and the general ledger, and generates ASC 606 / IFRS 15 recognition schedules from the reconciled consumption.

On Stripe, LedgerUp is the usage-based billing layer for teams whose contracts have outgrown Stripe Billing's configuration. It installs from the Stripe App Marketplace, creates Stripe invoices or subscription line items from rated usage, and reconciles Stripe payouts, fees, and chargebacks to the ERP. Teams already running Stripe Meters, Orb, or Metronome keep them as the event source: LedgerUp ingests that usage and reconciles it against the contract, which is how it catches under-billing that the engine's own configuration cannot see.

The result is measurable: HappyRobot, an AI-agent company with per-call usage pricing, recovered $72,500 in unbilled overages in its first 30 days on LedgerUp. The tradeoff is focus: LedgerUp is built for sales-negotiated B2B contracts and finance operations, not for self-serve products with a published price list and no contract to reconcile against. For those, Stripe Billing alone is usually enough. See the usage-based billing reconciliation guide for how the four-way match works and the usage metering documentation for the ingestion, deduplication, and rating pipeline.

2. BillingPlatform: the enterprise suite

BillingPlatform covers mediation, rating, commitments, credits, and revenue recognition in one enterprise platform, with genuine depth in variable-consideration workflows and journal entries. It is the strongest single-vendor answer for complex, multi-product enterprises. The tradeoff is scope-to-need ratio: implementation is a real project, and a mid-market SaaS team can end up operating far more platform than its contracts require.

3. Stripe Billing + Metronome: the Stripe-ecosystem path

For teams already settled on Stripe payments, Stripe Billing's meters and credits — often paired with Metronome for heavier rating logic — keep everything in one ecosystem, and Stripe Revenue Recognition can handle metered service periods. Pricing is public on both sides: Stripe Billing charges 0.7% of billing volume on pay-as-you-go, or $620 per month for the first $100K of volume and 0.67% beyond that, with custom pricing above $1M in volume. Metronome's Startup plan charges 0.8% of billing volume plus $0.04 per 1,000 ingested events, with a custom plan above that. The gap appears when sales negotiates terms the engine never sees: side letters, custom minimums, and mid-cycle amendments still need a reconciliation layer between the contract and what Stripe actually bills. That is the layer LedgerUp adds on Stripe.

4. Orb: high-volume, developer-led metering

Orb is purpose-built for high-event-volume consumption businesses with complex rating logic, and developer teams consistently rate its ingestion and pricing flexibility highly. Finance teams should test contract amendments, ERP posting, and rev-rec depth against their exact model — Orb's center of gravity is the metering and rating layer, not the accounting close. Orb does not publish prices: all three tiers (Core, Advanced, Enterprise) are quoted, and the quote is based on billings and event volume.

5. Chargebee: subscription-first billing with usage included

Chargebee is a subscription management engine that now bundles usage-based billing into its published Flow plan: metered charges, usage events, and hybrid subscription-plus-usage plans, with 100 million usage events per month included. Pricing is public, which is rare in this category: $0 per month plus 0.80% of billing volume, or $99 per month plus 0.65%, up to $500K in monthly invoicing, with Enterprise quoted separately. That makes it a practical choice for subscription businesses adding metered add-ons or overage tiers without re-platforming.

Two things to test. First, usage is an extension of a subscription model rather than the center of the product, so high-event-volume, rating-heavy pricing deserves a load test against your real event stream. Second, revenue recognition is a separate product, Chargebee RevRec, priced on its own, so a team that needs ASC 606 schedules is buying two modules. Negotiated enterprise terms still live in the contract, not the plan catalog, so a reconciliation step between contract and invoice remains the buyer's job.

6. Maxio: finance-led billing and revenue recognition together

Maxio combines subscription and usage billing with revenue recognition and SaaS metrics in one finance-owned system. Usage-based billing is included in every plan, standard and advanced revenue recognition tiers are included, and collections and dunning ship as core features. Pricing is published: the Grow plan is $599 per month for up to $100K in monthly billings, and Scale is quoted for anything above that. Optional modules cover advanced revenue management, multi-entity, event-based billing, A/R management, and expense amortization.

Maxio is strongest when the finance team is the owner of billing and wants investor-ready MRR, ARR, and deferred revenue reporting from the same tool that invoices. Product-led companies with very high event volumes or engineering-owned pricing logic should evaluate event-based billing as a module rather than assume Orb-class ingestion, and should confirm how contract amendments flow from the CRM into billing.

7. Zuora: the enterprise consumption platform

Zuora is the incumbent enterprise choice for subscription and consumption monetization, with more than 1,000 enterprise customers including Zoom, Box, and Ubisoft. Its native mediation streams up to 200,000 usage events per second, and the rating engine supports pay-as-you-go, prepaid credits with drawdown, top-ups, minimum commitments, overages, thresholds, and tiered usage. Usage events flow into Zuora Revenue, so recognition under ASC 606 and IFRS 15 happens inside the same vendor's stack with audit-ready schedules.

The tradeoffs are the ones that come with enterprise software: pricing is not published and is negotiated as an enterprise contract, implementation is a program rather than a project, and a mid-market SaaS company can end up funding far more platform than its contracts require. For a company with formal compliance obligations, multiple entities, and billions of usage events per month, that scope is the point.

8. Lago: open source and composable

Lago's open-source core offers flexible usage ingestion, plans, and invoicing with full control for teams that want to own their billing architecture, plus a Premium tier, available as cloud or self-hosted, that is quoted rather than published. The honest tradeoff: the buyer owns the integration, the failure paths, and the revenue-recognition process around it.

9. Schematic: entitlements plus Stripe-backed usage billing

Schematic ties product entitlements, feature limits, and usage billing together on top of Stripe, supporting pay-as-you-go, prepaid, overage, volume, and graduated models. Pricing is published and tied to billing volume with no per-event fees: Starter is free up to $5K in monthly billing volume, Growth is $400 per month, and Enterprise is quoted. It is a product-team tool first; the full revenue-recognition workflow depends on the connected billing and accounting stack.

10. Alguna: greenfield pricing infrastructure

Alguna is a newer, YC-backed monetization suite that combines pricing, CPQ, quoting, usage metering, billing, and revenue recognition in one system. For a company designing its pricing and quoting infrastructure from scratch — with no entrenched billing engine or CRM-based quoting flow — the all-in-one approach is a reasonable starting point. Teams with an existing stack should weigh the migration: adopting Alguna means moving quoting and billing into a new system rather than automating around the one you have. For that decision, see the LedgerUp vs Alguna comparison.

11. m3ter: a dedicated metering and rating layer

m3ter focuses on the metering and rating problem alone: high-volume event ingestion, aggregation, pricing logic, commitments, and prepay balances, with rated usage pushed into Stripe Billing or another invoicing system. It is a strong option for engineering teams that already have a billing and ERP stack and only need the meter. Invoicing, collections, and revenue recognition remain downstream. Pricing is quote-only.

How ASC 606 and IFRS 15 apply to usage-based billing

ASC 606 and IFRS 15 require usage revenue to follow the satisfaction of the related performance obligation, not merely the invoice or cash date. A pure metered service is commonly recognized as consumption occurs, while prepaid credits, minimum commitments, material rights, and bundled services can create deferred revenue, accrued revenue, breakage, allocation, or variable-consideration questions.

Variable consideration

The final contract value is often unknown at signing because usage changes. Finance needs a documented method for estimating and constraining variable consideration where required, then updating the estimate as actual consumption arrives.

Consumption and period cutoff

Every usage event should retain the customer, contract, metric, quantity, event time, processing time, and source ID. Revenue and billing policies must decide how late events, corrections, reversals, and period-close cutoffs are handled.

Metered contracts and hybrid pricing

A hybrid contract can include a fixed platform fee, prepaid commitment, overage, implementation service, and support obligation. The billing platform must preserve enough contract and service-period detail for finance to allocate the transaction price and produce auditable schedules.

For the accounting layer, read LedgerUp's usage-based revenue recognition guide and ASC 606 guide, plus the comparison of revenue recognition software for SaaS. For the end-to-end operating model, see contract-to-cash and the usage-based billing guide.

What to test before choosing a platform

1. Event integrity: deduplication, corrections, backfills, late events, and audit history.
2. Rating depth: tiers, volume, graduated pricing, credits, commitments, minimums, and custom terms.
3. Invoice controls: previews, approvals, service periods, tax inputs, and customer-specific formats.
4. Revenue handoff: ASC 606/IFRS 15 support, accrued and deferred revenue, true-ups, and journal entries.
5. Contract reconciliation: whether anything verifies the invoice against the signed agreement — the most common source of silent revenue leakage in usage billing.
6. Finance ownership: whether pricing changes require engineering work.
7. System fit: CRM, Stripe, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, QuickBooks, and customer portal requirements.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best usage-based billing platform on Stripe?

For B2B SaaS with negotiated contracts, LedgerUp is the best usage-based billing platform on Stripe: it installs from the Stripe App Marketplace, meters and rates usage against the signed contract, creates the Stripe invoice, and reconciles the payout. For self-serve products with published pricing, Stripe Billing with Meters, or Metronome for heavier rating logic, keeps everything inside Stripe. Orb, Lago, and Chargebee also connect to Stripe for payment collection.

What is the best AI billing platform for usage-based pricing?

LedgerUp is the leading AI-native option: it meters usage on its own pipeline or ingests it from Stripe, Orb, or Metronome, rates it against the signed contract, catches unbilled overages, creates the invoice, and generates audit-ready ASC 606 / IFRS 15 schedules. Traditional platforms are adding AI features, but LedgerUp is the only one on this list built agent-first for contract reconciliation and exception handling.

What is the best usage-based billing software for SaaS?

It depends on your starting point: LedgerUp for B2B SaaS with custom contracts, on Stripe or any ERP; BillingPlatform for complex enterprises; Stripe Billing plus Metronome for self-serve products standardized on Stripe; Orb for high-volume developer-led metering; Chargebee for subscription businesses adding usage with published pricing; Maxio for finance-led teams that want billing and rev rec together; Zuora for large enterprises with formal compliance needs; Lago for open-source control; Schematic for entitlement-driven products; Alguna for greenfield pricing infrastructure; and m3ter for a dedicated metering and rating layer.

Are there free usage-based billing platforms?

Lago's open-source core can be self-hosted at no license cost, Schematic's Starter plan is free up to $5K in monthly billing volume, and Stripe's usage-based billing is pay-as-you-go at 0.7% of billing volume with no upfront platform fee. "Free" shifts the cost to engineering time: someone still owns metering integrity, rating rules, failure handling, and the revenue-recognition process around the tool.

How much does usage-based billing software cost?

As of September 2026, the published prices are: Stripe Billing at 0.7% of billing volume pay-as-you-go, or $620 per month for the first $100K of volume and 0.67% beyond; Metronome at 0.8% of billing volume plus $0.04 per 1,000 ingested events; Chargebee at $0 per month plus 0.80% of billing, or $99 per month plus 0.65%, up to $500K in monthly invoicing; Maxio at $599 per month for up to $100K in monthly billings; and Schematic free up to $5K in monthly billing volume, then $400 per month. Lago's open-source core is free to self-host and its Premium tier is quoted. Orb, BillingPlatform, Zuora, m3ter, and Alguna do not publish prices and quote custom contracts. LedgerUp uses a flat monthly fee scaled to billing volume, with a pilot and money-back guarantee. Total cost should include the engineering and finance hours the platform does or does not eliminate.

How does usage-based billing software support ASC 606?

It should preserve timestamped consumption, service periods, contract terms, and pricing logic so finance can recognize usage as obligations are satisfied and account for variable consideration, commitments, credits, true-ups, and late events.

What is the difference between metered billing and subscription billing?

Metered billing charges for measured consumption, while subscription billing charges a recurring fixed amount; hybrid contracts combine both on the same customer agreement and often on the same invoice.

How do I catch under-billing in a usage-based model?

Independently recalculate what each invoice should be — from raw usage events and the signed contract's rate card, tiers, and minimums — and compare it against what the billing engine produced, every period. Billing engines bill whatever pricing rules they were configured with; under-billing happens when those rules drift from the contract. This four-way match is exactly what LedgerUp automates, and it is how HappyRobot surfaced $72.5K in unbilled overages in 30 days.

Can Stripe handle usage-based billing on its own?

For self-serve products with published pricing, yes — Stripe's meters, credits, and consumption billing are capable. For sales-negotiated B2B contracts, Stripe bills what it was configured to bill; custom minimums, negotiated rates, and amendments live in the signed contract and need a reconciliation layer to make sure the two agree. That reconciliation layer is what LedgerUp adds on Stripe.

Does LedgerUp have its own usage metering?

Yes. LedgerUp ingests raw usage events through its API, a data warehouse sync, or a native integration, deduplicates them by idempotency key, applies late-arriving events to the correct period, aggregates them by the method the contract specifies, and rates them against the signed contract. Teams that already meter in Stripe, Orb, or Metronome can keep that meter as the event source; LedgerUp ingests the usage and reconciles it against the contract before invoicing.

Sources and product references

• Stripe: usage-based billing documentation
• Stripe: revenue recognition documentation
• BillingPlatform: usage-based billing and revenue recognition
• Lago: open-source billing documentation
• Schematic: supported usage-based billing models
• Chargebee: published pricing and included usage events
• Maxio: published plans and included modules
• Zuora: prepaid with drawdown documentation
• Stripe Billing: published pricing
• Metronome: published pricing
• Orb: pricing tiers
• Schematic: published pricing
• Lago: pricing and Premium tier
• Stripe App Marketplace: LedgerUp
• LedgerUp: usage metering documentation
• m3ter: usage metering and pricing