Airbyte’s in-house billing infrastructure couldn’t keep up with the rate they were scaling, and they didn’t want to build a new system. They needed a billing partner, but legacy providers gave them little reassurance.

Airbyte chose Orb as its billing partner. Today, Orb powers Airbyte’s billing process and revenue recognition reporting. Through Airbyte’s growth and evolution, Orb has powered top-priority monetization initiatives, removed the engineering bottleneck in billing, and empowered existing employees with data. The month-end close process is now automatic, and teams are freed up to work on higher-priority initiatives.

• Airbyte needed a billing partner that could scale and evolve with its business and needs. 
• After a rapid implementation following data validation, Orb became Airbyte’s source of billing truth.
• With valuable data and reporting, the team can continue evolving pricing as the business changes.

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Airbyte Cloud’s pricing model is based on usage-based credits consumed based on the amount of data a user runs through Airbyte. When they launched Airbyte Cloud, they knew their pricing model was right, but their in-house billing infrastructure wouldn’t work with the rate at which they were scaling. They also knew they didn’t want to build a new system themselves. Finding a billing partner was critical to trying out new pricing models and staying flexible as their business changed. 

Finding a billing partner, not just a vendor 

They began looking for a solution that would act as a source of truth for customer usage and credits at Airbyte, handle all business logic and a massive number of events, and accurately keep track of prepaid credit balances. They also needed to give autonomy and data accessibility to finance, engineering, and other teams. 

But the more they talked to legacy billing infrastructure providers, the less they felt reassured, wondering if vendors would be able to support their business model. When the team met Orb, they saw an opportunity for a partnership.

They implemented Orb quickly, de-risking the project by running their existing system and Orb in parallel. With the data validated, they started only pushing to Orb, which became their source of truth. 

Saving time, delivering flexibility, and achieving goals with Orb

Orb now manages the entire billing process and provides revenue recognition reporting for Airbyte. It facilitates the month-close process by making reports automatically available—something that used to take two days.

As Airbyte has grown and evolved its business model, Orb has powered several top-priority monetization initiatives for its go-to-market teams, helping them implement price changes, adjust billing metrics, and launch their Free Connector Program—all with minimal engineering effort. 

Removing the engineering bottleneck

With Orb, the Engineering team fields fewer billing requests, which used to siphon time and energy away from their products. Orb has also helped non-engineers self-serve and make changes to billing. 

Saving headcount and empowering existing employees

Using Orb has also saved Airbyte from hiring two to three additional employees to build and maintain their billing system. It’s provided an understanding of how billing works, including adding credits and extending trials for anyone across the company, helping all teams feel empowered by Airbyte’s billing system. 

Further, Orb meets the needs of both engineering and finance—helping Airbyte streamline cross-functional processes and encourage collaboration.

Flexibility and velocity because billing is unlocked

Running the month-end close process used to take up to two days—with Orb, it’s automatic. What’s more, the team can continue evolving Airbyte’s pricing because they have data available to experiment with. 

Achieving financial goals faster 

Airbyte credits its partnership with Orb for allowing its finance team to reach their OKRs faster, thanks to flexibility and building the many features they need. Every team at Airbyte can work on higher-priority projects because billing is taken care of. 

As Airbyte continues to move quickly and constantly evolve both its products and how it sells them, it will do so without worrying about billing.