Billing splits into two purchases people conflate. The money layer — Stripe Billing (the developer default), Paddle and Lemon Squeezy (merchant-of-record, they handle global tax), Chargebee and Recurly (billing ops at scale) — moves the money. The product layer — entitlements, plan gates, usage displays, admin views, the customer's account page — is what your users actually touch, and no billing vendor ships it for your app. That second layer is where Greta fits: describe your plans and what each unlocks, and the app enforcing them gets built around whichever money layer you pick. Small SaaS teams mostly overbuy layer one and underbuild layer two.
Billing is the part of SaaS founders defer until a customer is literally waving a card. Then two decisions arrive at once — who moves the money, and who builds everything around it — and conflating them is how a team ends up paying Chargebee prices for Stripe-sized problems while the actual entitlement logic lives in three if-statements and a prayer.
How we compared
Fit for small SaaS specifically (not enterprise billing ops), tax handling honesty, developer lift, and total cost shape. Pricing checked September 2026 — billing vendors reprice and repackage often; verify live before committing.
At a glance
| Tool | Layer | Best for | Cost shape |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stripe Billing | Money | Developer teams, full control | % + per-invoice fees |
| Paddle | Money (MoR) | Selling globally without a tax team | Higher %, tax included |
| Lemon Squeezy | Money (MoR) | Indie/small SaaS simplicity | Higher %, tax included |
| Chargebee | Billing ops | Plan sprawl, dunning depth | Subscription + % tiers |
| Recurly | Billing ops | Similar tier, enterprise lean | Subscription + % |
| Greta | Product layer | The app around billing | Free tier; $20/mo ($5 welcome) |
The money layer, honestly
Stripe Billing is the default for a reason: best developer experience, deepest ecosystem, and fees that stay reasonable at small scale. What it is not: a tax department. Selling into the EU and beyond means VAT registration questions Stripe mostly leaves to you. Paddle and Lemon Squeezy answer exactly that as merchants of record — they are legally the seller, tax is their problem, and you pay a visibly higher percentage for the privilege. For a two-person SaaS selling worldwide, that trade is usually correct. Chargebee and Recurly earn their subscriptions when billing itself becomes operationally complex — dozens of plans, negotiated contracts, serious dunning — which describes very few small SaaS products and quite a few that bought them anyway.
Got an idea? Build it now!
Just start with a simple prompt. No coding required — Greta.sh turns your idea into a working app in minutes.
The product layer nobody ships you
Pick any money layer above; your user still hits a wall the vendor never sees: what does the Pro plan actually unlock, what happens in your UI when a trial ends, where does a customer see usage against their quota, how does support look up an account's plan state? That's application code. Describing it to Greta — "three tiers; Free gets 2 projects, Pro gets unlimited plus exports; expired trials keep read-only access; admins see plan, usage and payment status per account" — produces the entitlement model, the gates, the account page and the admin view as a real app wired to your billing webhooks. The entitlement model guide is the worksheet for getting that description right, and the trial expiration test matrix checks the edge everyone ships broken. Greta's own pricing stays boring: free tier at 30 credits a month (5 a day), then $20/month flat ($5 with the current welcome offer).
How to choose without regret
- US-heavy sales, developer on team → Stripe Billing, and budget a real week for the product layer.
- Global sales, no appetite for tax → Paddle or Lemon Squeezy; the higher percentage is your tax department's salary.
- Genuine plan/contract sprawl → Chargebee or Recurly, but audit whether the sprawl is real or aspirational.
- Any of the above → the entitlement layer is yours either way; build it deliberately, not in if-statements.
FAQ
What's the best billing software for a small SaaS? Stripe Billing if you have developer capacity and mostly domestic sales; a merchant of record (Paddle, Lemon Squeezy) if you sell globally and want tax handled. Billing-ops platforms are for operational complexity most small SaaS doesn't have yet.
What's a merchant of record? The vendor legally sells your product and remits tax worldwide, then pays you out. You trade a higher fee for never thinking about VAT thresholds. For small global SaaS it's often the single best operational simplification available.
Do I still need to build anything if billing is handled? Yes — everything your users see: plan gates, trial behavior, usage displays, account and admin pages. Billing vendors move money; the product around it is application code, which is exactly the part an AI app builder generates from a description.
How much does subscription billing cost in total? Money layer: roughly 0.5–5%+ of revenue depending on layer choice (September 2026 shapes; verify live). Product layer: traditionally weeks of development — the part generation collapses to a description and a build session.
