Understand the market before you buy

Before comparing tools, understand how the market is structured. There are three core categories:

1. Subscription billing tools

Best for simple, recurring charges. Usage-based support is bolted on, not built in—making complex pricing hard to execute and scale.

• Stripe Billing
• Chargebee
• Zuora

2. Metering point solutions

These solutions calculate usage on fixed metrics, but often require significant engineering effort to update pricing logic or integrate with invoicing systems.

• Metronome
• M3ter

3. Full usage-based billing platforms

Purpose-built to support dynamic pricing, revenue simulation, real-time ingestion, and full-stack monetization infrastructure. Minimal engineering required.

• Orb

Why processing architecture matters — batch vs stream vs raw event data

The way a billing platform processes usage data isn’t just technical detail—it defines what’s possible for your pricing strategy, your finance stack, and your customer experience. Whether you’re launching a new product, iterating on pricing, or scaling rapidly, the wrong architecture can slow you down or introduce costly blind spots.

• Batch processing: Usage data is uploaded periodically (e.g., daily), causing delays and limiting real-time insight. Prone to errors and revenue lag.
• Streaming aggregation: Data is summarized before being sent, reducing volume but making pricing changes harder to implement.
• Raw event architecture: Every usage event is ingested in real time, giving you full control to adjust pricing, backfill history, and simulate revenue—without rebuilding infrastructure.

Why it matters: If you’re experimenting with pricing or scaling quickly, raw event processing gives you the agility and auditability modern businesses need.

Orb is the only leading platform built on a raw event architecture—giving you unmatched flexibility without compromising performance.

Key questions to guide your evaluation

Whether you’re migrating off Stripe or comparing Orb to Metronome, there are multiple critical considerations that will help you evaluate usage-based billing solutions that actually fit your needs.

Use the full checklist with 15 key considerations to evaluate usage based billing solutions in the downloadable guide to assess vendors across pricing flexibility, integration, and scalability.

While we recommend to carefully evaluate all 15 key considerations, there are 5 key questions customers always should ask when evaluating usage based billing solutions.

Top 5 Evaluation Questions:

1. Can you support multi-dimensional or hybrid pricing out of the box?
2. Can non-technical teams launch pricing changes?
3. Can you simulate how new pricing will impact revenue?
4. How do you handle usage ingestion: batch, stream, or raw?
5. What does real-time reporting look like across customers?

Stripe vs Metronome vs Orb – what fits your model?

If you’re evaluating usage-based billing solutions, it’s not just about who can track usage—it’s about who can support your current pricing model and your future ones. Different platforms are built for different levels of complexity, flexibility, and scale. Here’s a high-level snapshot to help you orient.

Click below to dive deeper into each option:

Common scenarios and how to choose

Not every company needs the same billing architecture—what matters is how well a platform fits your stage, team, and pricing motion. Below are three common scenarios we see across SaaS and GenAI companies, along with what to prioritize in your evaluation.