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Billing & Invoicing

Recurly

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: 1 of 4 dimensions proven

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Recurly, Inc. · recurly.com

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Add ?theme=dark to the image address for dark backgrounds. The badge shows the category and the month of the latest evaluation, and EU-Made where that is the product’s provenance. It never shows a score.

Recurly at a glance

Vendor
Recurly, Inc.
Headquarters
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 26 Oct 2026
Data hosting
Default not stated; pages mention the US source, captured 26 Oct 2026
Free plan
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 26 Oct 2026
Panel verdict
The AI panel rates Recurly 2/5, the mean of 6 judges. The bench scores Recurly, a subscription management and billing service from Recurly, Inc. how scores are made
As of
Vendor pages captured 26 Oct 2026; evaluated by the panel 28 Oct 2026. all sources

Recurly alternatives, European ones first →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The SaaS Founder

Weighted verdict

Runs a twelve-person SaaS that sells to companies in nine EU countries and is about to add a usage-based tier. Wants plans, trials and price changes without a developer sprint, reverse charge that is right without thinking about it, failed cards retried before they turn into churn, and a billing bill that does not grow faster than revenue.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The SaaS Founder

Panel median The SaaS Founder This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.
Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion Panel median The SaaS Founder
Plans, pricing models & subscription lifecycle 4 of 5 0 of 5
Invoices & e-invoicing compliance 2 of 5 0 of 5
Cross-border VAT & tax handling 3.5 of 5 0 of 5
Payment collection, dunning & portability 3.5 of 5 0 of 5
Revenue reporting & accounting handoff 3.5 of 5 0 of 5
European sovereignty 1.5 of 5 0 of 5
Pricing transparency 2.5 of 5 0 of 5

Plans, pricing models & subscription lifecycle

How this is scored

How the product models what is sold and to whom: plans, add-ons and price points, trials, upgrades and downgrades with proration, usage-based and seat-based pricing, contract terms and renewals, quotes, and a self-service portal where the customer changes or cancels their own subscription.

0 — No subscription model; recurring charges are set up by hand per customer or per invoice.

3 — A recurring invoice or a fixed plan that repeats on a schedule, but no proration, no trials, no add-ons and no usage component.

5 — Plans with add-ons and trials, upgrades and downgrades with proration, renewals and cancellations handled by the system, and a customer portal for viewing and changing the subscription.

8 — Usage-based, tiered, volume and seat-based pricing with metering through an API, contracts with minimum terms, ramps and notice periods, quotes that convert into subscriptions, multiple currencies and price books, and the subscription history kept per customer.

10 — The commercial model lives in the product: hybrid pricing (commitments, prepaid credits, overage) without custom code, price changes rolled out to existing customers with grandfathering, entitlements exposed to the selling application, and every change to a subscription versioned and attributed.

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The SaaS Founder

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. 5 6 2 14 12

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Invoices & e-invoicing compliance

How this is scored

Whether the invoices the product issues are legally valid where the customer is: mandatory invoice content, sequential numbering, credit notes and cancellations instead of edits, retention and archiving to GoBD, and structured e-invoices (XRechnung, ZUGFeRD/Factur-X, Peppol) for business customers and public bodies.

0 — No invoices; the product charges cards or sends payment requests and the seller writes invoices elsewhere.

3 — PDF invoices from a template, but numbering, mandatory content, corrections and retention are not described.

5 — Invoices with sequential numbering and the mandatory content stated, credit notes and cancellations instead of edits, invoices in several languages and currencies, and a documented archive.

8 — Structured e-invoices to EN 16931 issued as XRechnung or ZUGFeRD/Factur-X and sent through Peppol, GoBD-compliant numbering and unalterable archiving stated, invoice data exportable for a tax audit, and the e-invoicing mandates in named EU countries addressed.

10 — Invoicing that stands up in any audit it may face: e-invoicing to public bodies and businesses in several EU countries with the channels named, clearance and reporting models (France, Italy, Poland) supported where they apply, a Verfahrensdokumentation or equivalent offered, and every invoice traceable to the subscription event that produced it.

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The SaaS Founder

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. 7 8 9

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Cross-border VAT & tax handling

How this is scored

How the product gets tax right when the seller sells across borders: VAT rates per country and product type, reverse charge for business customers with VAT ID validation (VIES), the EU One-Stop-Shop, US sales tax — or, for a merchant of record, which tax liability it takes on in its contract and which it leaves with the seller.

0 — No tax handling; the seller types the rate on every invoice.

3 — One configurable VAT rate or a manual rate table, with no customer-location logic and no VAT ID check.

5 — Tax rates applied by customer country and status, reverse charge for business customers with a VAT ID field, and tax shown correctly on invoices and in reports.

8 — Automatic VAT per country and product type, VIES validation of VAT IDs, OSS reporting data, evidence of customer location kept, US sales tax through a named engine — or a merchant-of-record contract that states the tax liability it assumes and in which countries.

10 — Tax is discharged and evidenced: filings or filing data for OSS and the countries sold into, rate changes maintained by the vendor with a stated process, tax decisions per invoice explainable, and the division of liability between seller and vendor written into the terms.

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The SaaS Founder

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. 9 10 5

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Payment collection, dunning & portability

How this is scored

How invoices turn into money: which payment providers and methods the product works with, SEPA direct-debit mandates, automatic retries and dunning sequences, payment reconciliation, collections handover — and whether the seller can move subscriptions and stored payment details to another provider.

0 — No collection; invoices are sent and payment is chased by hand.

3 — One built-in payment provider with card payments, and failed payments reported but not retried or chased.

5 — Several payment providers or methods including SEPA direct debit with mandates, automatic retries of failed payments, dunning emails with configurable steps, and payments matched to invoices.

8 — Gateway-agnostic collection across named providers, smart retries and card updaters, dunning with escalation and service suspension rules, bank-transfer reconciliation, a handover to a collection agency, and recovery reported.

10 — Collection is portable and measurable: subscriptions and payment tokens importable and exportable with a documented migration path, routing across providers per country or method, recovered revenue reported per dunning step, and no lock-in to the vendor's own payment service stated in the terms.

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The SaaS Founder

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. 12 11 2 4

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Revenue reporting & accounting handoff

How this is scored

What finance gets out of billing: MRR, ARR, churn and cohort reporting, revenue recognition and deferred revenue, the export or sync to the accounting system and to DATEV, CRM and data-warehouse integrations, an API and webhooks, and a complete export of customer and subscription data.

0 — No reporting and no export beyond downloading individual invoices.

3 — A revenue overview and a CSV export of invoices, with no subscription metrics and no accounting integration.

5 — Subscription metrics (MRR, churn) on a dashboard, an export or sync to at least one named accounting tool, and a documented API with webhooks.

8 — Revenue recognition with deferred revenue schedules, a DATEV export or booking-ready journal for the ledger, native CRM and accounting integrations named, MRR movements explainable per customer, and a full data export documented.

10 — Billing is the system of record for revenue: recognition to IFRS 15 / ASC 606 stated, month-end close supported with reconciled reports, data-warehouse sync, audit trail of every financial event, and a complete export of customers, subscriptions and invoices that a successor system can import.

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The SaaS Founder

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. 2 5 8 13

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Who the contracting entity and the parent company are, where customer, invoice and payment data are hosted, and who the subprocessors are (hosting, payment providers, tax engines, email delivery). Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; billing data is personal and financial at once, so the whole chain counts, not only the database.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated, subprocessors unnamed, and no data processing agreement offered.

3 — A privacy policy and a data processing agreement exist, but hosting location is unstated or non-EU and the subprocessors are not listed.

5 — EU hosting available and an EU contracting entity or EU representative, but parts of the chain (tax engine, email, analytics, support) run through non-EU providers without a stated safeguard.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, subprocessors listed with their locations, a data processing agreement published, and security certifications (ISO 27001, SOC 2) stated.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: European ownership, entity, hosting and every subprocessor, data export and deletion documented, and certifications published with their scope rather than implied.

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The SaaS Founder

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. 3 4

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the real annual cost from public pages alone: platform fee, percentage of billed revenue or per-invoice fees, which modules (revenue recognition, e-invoicing, tax, extra gateways) cost extra, overage above a revenue band, setup and minimum term, and the merchant-of-record fee where it applies.

0 — No public prices at all; every customer is a sales call.

3 — A starting price or a free tier exists, but how cost scales with billed revenue, invoices or modules is unclear.

5 — Tiers are public with their main inclusions and revenue bands, but at least one commonly needed piece (e-invoicing, revenue recognition, extra gateways, overage) is unpriced or "on request".

8 — Every tier priced publicly with its scaling rule (revenue percentage, per invoice, per subscriber), overage and add-ons listed, minimum term and VAT treatment stated.

10 — Complete price computability: annual cost derivable for a given billed revenue, invoice volume and module set, with every add-on, setup, support and payment or merchant-of-record fee and the cancellation and data-return terms published.

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The SaaS Founder

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. 2 4

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European sovereignty — proven facts

1 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors US CLOUD Act reach ⚠ unverified 0/2 pts 3 Report an error

Questions about Recurly

Is Recurly European?

No. whats-best.ai classifies Recurly as Rest of world.

Where does Recurly store data?

The default storage location for customer data is not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 26 Oct 2026. The vendor’s pages mention the US as hosting location, per the vendor’s page captured 26 Oct 2026.

Does Recurly have a free plan?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 26 Oct 2026.

What are the best alternatives to Recurly?

As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates Chargebee (3.5/5), Younium (3.5/5) and Stripe Billing (3.5/5) highest among the other 12 Billing & Invoicing products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is Younium (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: Recurly alternatives.

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (14)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage recurly.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing page recurly.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Privacy policy recurly.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Terms of service recurly.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Plans, pricing models & subscription lifecycle — found from sitemap docs.recurly.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Plans, pricing models & subscription lifecycle — found from sitemap docs.recurly.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Invoices & e-invoicing compliance — found from sitemap docs.recurly.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Invoices & e-invoicing compliance — found from sitemap docs.recurly.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Cross-border VAT & tax handling — found from sitemap docs.recurly.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Cross-border VAT & tax handling — found from sitemap docs.recurly.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Payment collection, dunning & portability — found from sitemap docs.recurly.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Payment collection, dunning & portability — found from sitemap docs.recurly.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Revenue reporting & accounting handoff — found from sitemap docs.recurly.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  14. 14 Revenue reporting & accounting handoff — found from sitemap docs.recurly.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →