Chargebee vs Recurly

Chargebee

Tiered, usage-based, flat-fee and hybrid models with prepaid credits, a multi-currency price book, CPQ quotes with approval workflows, scheduled subscription changes, proration with API-level override controls, trials and a customizable self-service customer portal are all documented. The enterprise tier adds contract terms, account hierarchies up to 30 levels and up to 100 business entities. We found no public information on grandfathering for price rollouts or on subscription changes being versioned and attributed, which is what the top of this scale asks for.

Recurly

Five pricing models (fixed, tiered, volume, stairstep, ramp) with usage metered through the Usage API, free trials whose usage is logged but not billed, 140+ currencies, entitlements exposed via an API endpoint, and hosted subscriber portals are all documented. We found no public information on quotes that convert into subscriptions or on grandfathering of price changes, and the pricing model itself cannot be changed after a plan is created.

Chargebee

Structured e-invoices delivered through Peppol, Italy's SDI and India's IRP, coverage across 20+ countries with Germany and Denmark named, real-time status tracking, recurring e-invoicing when subscriptions change, credit notes and multilingual invoices are documented. We found no public information on XRechnung, ZUGFeRD or EN 16931 formats, on sequential numbering, on GoBD-compliant unalterable archiving or on a Verfahrensdokumentation, so the audit-hard parts of invoicing rest on the delivery networks rather than documented retention.

Recurly

Credit invoices in three types with automatic write-off pairing, an invoice origin attribute that traces each invoice to the event that created it, and edits limited to metadata that preserve the original record are documented. We found no public information on sequential numbering, mandatory invoice content, retention or GoBD archiving, or any structured e-invoice format such as XRechnung, ZUGFeRD/Factur-X or Peppol — for a European buyer that decides it.

Chargebee

Real-time tax rates with multiple tax profiles and regions, US, EU and global sales tax, a VAT number stored on the customer and configurable VAT validation that blocks invalid numbers at customer creation are documented, alongside a reverse-charge mechanism. But the product's own help text says reverse charge is triggered only by the buyer and supplier being in different countries and is not checked against the buyer's tax registration number, and domestic reverse charge is unsupported on manual taxation. We found no public information on VIES validation by that name, on OSS reporting data, or on a named US sales-tax engine.

Recurly

Default VAT/GST rates auto-applied per country, reverse charge for valid EU VAT numbers, and VIES validation that blocks invalid numbers at signup, revalidates at billing events and falls back to the last stored status during downtime, plus the named engines Avalara and Vertex, give real cross-border machinery. We found no public information on One-Stop-Shop reporting data, and the tax documentation warns that rates 'may change' and points merchants to their local tax authorities.

Chargebee

Collection is strong: 40+ gateways with routing by market, currency and method, SEPA/ACH/BACS and other direct debit, tokenization, smart retries reading 200+ signals under a 12-retry ceiling, configurable dunning final actions and a dashboard reporting recovery rates and revenue recovered by method and gateway. The portability half of the top level is not: we found no public information on importing or exporting subscriptions and payment tokens with a documented migration path, and the terms make the customer solely responsible for export, allow a reasonable fee for export assistance and destroy all service data 120 days after termination.

Recurly

SEPA with the mandatory pre-debit notification handled automatically, named gateways Adyen, Stripe, GoCardless and Worldpay, intelligent retries, Account Updater running continuously on overdue accounts, and versioned dunning campaigns with analytics are documented. We found no public information on bank-transfer reconciliation or a collection-agency handover, and the terms condition any release of payment information on demonstrated PCI compliance — no migration path for stored payment details is documented.

Chargebee

Recognition to ASC 606 and IFRS 15 via the five-step model, a controlled revenue subledger with recognition schedules and deferred-revenue waterfalls, AR aging and roll-forward reports, period locking, a complete audit trail from signed contract to journal entry, summarized postings to the general ledger, live ARR and NRR dashboards, native CRM and accounting syncs, data-warehouse export and a documented REST API with webhooks are all evidenced. The one gap is exit: warehouse export sits in the enterprise tier's paid add-ons, and the terms put the export burden on the customer with a possible fee for help rather than documenting a successor-importable export.

Recurly

A separate revenue-recognition module with multi-GAAP compliance, automated monthly close and an immutable audit trail, native syncs to Salesforce, QuickBooks, NetSuite and Xero, and a documented API with webhooks on all plans are on the pages. We found no public information on a DATEV export, data-warehouse sync, or MRR movements explained per customer, and the MRR report states usage-based add-on revenue is not counted in MRR.

Chargebee

The contracting entity is Chargebee Inc., a US company in North Bethesda, Maryland, with an EU representative in Amsterdam; personal information may be processed in the United States, European Union, India and Australia, with transfers resting on the Data Privacy Framework and standard contractual clauses. A data processing addendum is published and incorporated into the terms. We found no public information on a subprocessor list with locations or on security certifications — the privacy text names Google Analytics and third-party AI providers, and the only stated commitment is "commercially reasonable security measures".

Recurly

Recurly, Inc. of San Francisco is the contracting entity, the services are stated to be hosted and operated in the United States, and the subprocessor disclosure lists categories — including ad networks and analytics — rather than named providers, with chat running through Zendesk and Google Gemini. The DPA includes standard contractual clauses, an EU representative is named in Hamburg and EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework certification is claimed; we found no public information on EU hosting, named infrastructure, or ISO 27001 or SOC 2 certifications.

Chargebee

Two tiers are public with exact scaling rules — "$0 + 0.80%" and "$99 + 0.65%" — plus 100 million usage events per month included, with month-to-month terms for Billing Starter and Flow while other subscriptions run twelve months, auto-renew, need ninety days' notice to exit and are non-refundable and exclusive of taxes. But the enterprise tier and its paid add-ons carry no public prices, and we found no public information on what CPQ, RevRec, Growth or the e-invoicing capability cost, so a buyer cannot compute the real annual total from public pages alone.

Recurly

Starter is published exactly as '$249 per month + 0.9% of billing volume (first $40K of billings included at no charge each month)' with a 90-day free trial, and modules carry published floors such as 'As low as $850 Per month, billed annually' for revenue recognition and 'As low as <1% of billing volume, billed annually' for All-Access. The percentage above those floors, overage beyond the Total Payment Volume allowance, and the App Management add-on all sit with sales or the Order Form, so a buyer cannot compute the real annual cost from public pages.