Building Subscription Billing Systems for SaaS

Subscription billing — plans, upgrades, usage-based, invoicing. Stripe Billing handles most. When to customize. Here's the guide.

Table of Contents

• Stripe Billing
• Plans & Upgrades
• Usage-Based
• When to Customize
• Frequently Asked Questions

Stripe Billing

Products, prices, subscriptions. Checkout, Customer Portal. Invoicing for B2B. Covers 90% of SaaS. Use it unless you have a reason not to.

Plans & Upgrades

Define products and prices. Proration on upgrade/downgrade. Feature gating based on subscription. See our SaaS Pricing guide.

Usage-Based

Stripe Metering for usage. Report usage, bill at period end. For API calls, storage, etc.

When to Customize

Complex pricing (tiers + usage + discounts). Enterprise contracts. Multi-currency, multi-entity. Then custom layer on top of Stripe or different provider.

Frequently Asked Questions