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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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Recurly: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai Recurly: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai (dark)

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 Skeptic

Weighted verdict

Has seen "automated recurring revenue" turn into a tool that takes a percentage of every euro billed and keeps the payment tokens when the customer leaves. Reads "e-invoicing ready" that means a PDF, "global tax compliance" with no word on who is liable, merchant-of-record terms that let the vendor change fees at will, and subprocessor lists that stop at the hosting provider — and asks what leaving would cost.

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

Scored by The Skeptic

Panel median The Skeptic 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 Skeptic
Plans, pricing models & subscription lifecycle 4 of 5 4 of 5
Invoices & e-invoicing compliance 2 of 5 2 of 5
Cross-border VAT & tax handling 3.5 of 5 3.5 of 5
Payment collection, dunning & portability 3.5 of 5 3.5 of 5
Revenue reporting & accounting handoff 3.5 of 5 3.5 of 5
European sovereignty 1.5 of 5 1.5 of 5
Pricing transparency 2.5 of 5 2.5 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 Skeptic

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. 5 6 2 14 1

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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 Skeptic

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. 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 Skeptic

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. 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 Skeptic

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. 11 12 2 4 1

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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 Skeptic

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. 2 5 7 8 13 14

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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 Skeptic

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. 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 Skeptic

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. 2 4 14 12

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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 →