Chargebee vs Recurly

Chargebee

Usage ingestion, tiered and hybrid pricing with prepaid credits in a no-code price book, proration choices in both the interface and the API, scheduled future changes, and quotes with approval workflows mean the commercial model really does live in the product. The open-source portal handles plan, add-on and card changes in-app. We found no public information on rolling price changes out to existing customers with grandfathering, which is the one gap between this and the top level.

Recurly

This is exactly the usage tier I'm planning: metering through a non-rate-limited Usage API, five pricing models (fixed, tiered, volume, stairstep, ramp up to twelve intervals), charge by price-per-unit or percentage, and a recurring plan fee that can be set to $0 for a strictly usage-based plan. Trials, renewals, expiry through dunning and a hosted account-management page for billing updates are all handled by the system, and an entitlements endpoint exposes grants to my application. Two caveats: the pricing model is locked at plan creation, and usage can only be logged via API, so structural changes mean new plans rather than edits.

Chargebee

Structured e-invoices go out through Peppol, Italy's SDI and India's IRP across 20+ countries, with real-time status tracking, recurring e-invoicing, a no-code template builder, credit notes and custom invoice fields. We found no public information on sequential numbering, retention or audit export, and the captured pages do not name XRechnung, ZUGFeRD or EN 16931 — strong on delivery channels, quieter on the German audit specifics I would be asked about.

Recurly

Corrections are properly modeled: credit invoices in three types (credit, refund, write-off), auto-paired with failed invoices, credits capped at the original charge, and every invoice carries an origin naming the event that created it; editing is limited to administrative fields with an activity log and no retroactive changes to issued invoices. But we found no public information on sequential numbering, mandatory invoice content, retention or archiving, or structured e-invoices (XRechnung, ZUGFeRD, Peppol) — as a seller into Germany and France that is precisely the part I would be audited on. Registration numbers do print on invoices, which earns it a point above template-only.

Chargebee

Real-time tax rates and US, EU and global tax profiles are included in both plans, and a configurable VAT validation setting blocks invalid VAT numbers at customer creation. But the documentation states reverse charge is applied on the buyer-versus-supplier country difference alone — even when a tax registration number exists — must be enabled per country, and is supported only for cross-border transactions; we found no public information on VIES, OSS reporting data or a named sales-tax engine. For my nine-country setup this is closer to right-with-attention than right-without-thinking.

Recurly

Reverse charge really does look right without thinking about it: EU VAT validation is on by default for all production sites, registry lookups cover VIES, HMRC, Australia's ABR, Belarus, the Dominican Republic and 40+ format-checked countries, invalid numbers block signup, IDs re-validate at each billing event after six months, and there is a documented VIES-downtime fallback so renewals proceed rather than stall. Default rates apply per enabled country, registration numbers display on invoices, and Vertex and Avalara appear as named tax partners. We found no public information on OSS reporting data or rates maintained per product type, and the tax documentation itself tells merchants to stay up to date with their local tax authorities, which keeps me from going higher.

Chargebee

SEPA sits among 50+ methods across 40+ gateways routed by market, currency or method; smart dunning retries soft declines up to twelve times with configurable cadence, and a machine-learned retry model reads 200+ signals with a dashboard reporting recovery rates and revenue recovered by method and gateway. Automated reminder workflows and configurable final actions on both the subscription and the invoice complete the picture. We found no public information on card-account updaters, a collection-agency handover or exportable payment tokens, and the terms make exporting my data my responsibility before termination.

Recurly

This is Recurly's home ground: intelligent retries with a recommended 27-day window, hard declines and bad billing details skip the schedule, Account Updater runs continuously on overdue accounts, and any billing-info update retriggers collection on every overdue invoice — exactly the retry-before-churn behavior I need. Dunning runs up to 50 versioned campaigns with cohort tracking through exports and analytics (automatic-payment invoices only), and SEPA direct debit is available on all plans via named gateways (Adyen, Stripe Third Party Checkout, GoCardless, Worldpay) with the mandatory pre-debit notification handled automatically. We found no public information on bank-transfer reconciliation or a handover to a collection agency, and exporting stored payment details requires demonstrating PCI compliance to Recurly's satisfaction first.

Chargebee

Recognition runs on the ASC 606 and IFRS 15 five-step model with a drillable revenue subledger, deferred-revenue waterfall, period locking, automated journal entries to the general ledger, and live ARR and NRR dashboards, plus warehouse exports to Snowflake and S3 at the enterprise tier and an audit trail from signed contract to journal entry. Native CRM and accounting integrations propagate modified invoices and credit notes immediately. We found no public information on a DATEV export, and a successor-importable full export is not fully documented: the terms put export on me, assistance may cost a fee, and data is retained 120 days after termination.

Recurly

RevRec is a separately priced module (as low as $850 per month, billed annually) covering multi-GAAP recognition, rules-driven allocations, automated monthly close and an immutable audit trail, and invoice data syncs natively to Salesforce, QuickBooks and NetSuite, with Xero manual. The API and webhooks are genuinely well documented — signatures, automatic retries with backoff, six client libraries. But the MRR report excludes usage-based add-on revenue, which understates my numbers the moment the usage tier ships, and we found no public information on a DATEV export, data-warehouse sync, or a complete documented export of customers, subscriptions and invoices.

Chargebee

The contract is with Chargebee Inc. of North Bethesda, Maryland, processing may occur in the United States, European Union, India or Australia, and we found no public information on an EU hosting commitment, a subprocessor list, or ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certifications — a data processing addendum is incorporated by reference, an Amsterdam entity serves as EU representative, and Data Privacy Framework participation plus standard contractual clauses are stated. For billing data that is personal and financial at once, the chain beyond the database is not evidenced, which sits just above the policy-and-DPA-exist level.

Recurly

Recurly, Inc. of San Francisco is the contracting entity, the services are hosted and operated in the United States, the governing law is California (England and London courts for EMEA merchants), and the subprocessor disclosure lists categories — payment processors, fraud, analytics, chat, hosting, co-location — rather than named providers with locations. There is a published DPA including standard contractual clauses, EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework certification, and an EU representative in Hamburg, which are real safeguards. For my billing data across nine EU countries that still means US jurisdiction and CLOUD Act exposure with no EU hosting evidenced, and we found no public information on ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certifications for the platform.

Chargebee

The public rates are "$0 + 0.80%" and "$99 + 0.65%", with 100M usage events a month, tax profiles and multi-currency included in both plans, and the terms state a twelve-month auto-renewing term, taxes excluded, a 90-day non-renewal notice and no downgrades. But the RevRec, CPQ and Growth modules and the enterprise add-ons carry no public prices, and the captured pricing page does not state what the percentage applies to — so I cannot compute my real annual cost from public pages alone.

Recurly

Starter is genuinely computable — $249 per month + 0.9% of billing volume with the first $40K of billings included at no charge each month — so I can price a real first year from the pricing page. Everything above it blurs: All-Access is "as low as <1% of billing volume, billed annually" behind a $1M billing volume minimum, RevRec is "as low as $850" and Engage "as low as $1,600" per month, App Management requires contacting sales, and overage fees above the TPV allowance live in the Order Form rather than on any public page. VAT treatment and the one-year auto-renewing term with 30-day notice are stated in the terms, which is more than many publish.