Usage-Based Billing for AI Products: Stripe vs Metronome vs Orb vs Lago
In January Stripe closed its purchase of Metronome. In June Adyen agreed to buy Orb for $335 million. Two of the best-known usage-billing platforms now belong to payment companies, at the same moment AI products need usage billing most. We compare Stripe Billing, Metronome, Orb and open-source Lago on how they meter and price usage, price them for an AI product invoicing $50,000 a month, and look at what the buyouts mean for lock-in.
First: why AI products end up on usage billing
A classic SaaS seat costs you almost the same to serve whether the customer logs in once or all day. An AI feature does not. Every request costs you model tokens, and your heaviest users can cost a hundred times more than your lightest. On a flat seat price, the customers who love your product most are the ones losing you money.
Usage billing ties what customers pay to what they use: tokens, credits, API calls, minutes, tasks completed. The platforms on this page do the hard parts: they take in usage events, apply your price plan, track prepaid credits, and produce an invoice that customers and your finance team can both trust.
Margins that survive heavy users
Revenue rises with usage, so a customer who runs ten times more agent tasks pays for them instead of quietly eating your gross margin.
Prepaid credits
Customers buy a block of credits up front and draw it down. You get cash early, and they get a bill they can predict.
Price changes without a deploy
Model prices change every few months. With pricing in a billing system rather than in code, you can update rates or add a new tier without shipping anything.
Usage customers can see
Live usage and spend alerts prevent the surprise invoice that turns a happy customer into a refund request.
What it does not do: it does not choose your pricing. A billing platform will happily charge per token, per credit or per outcome, but deciding which unit customers understand and accept is still your job. And pure usage pricing makes revenue harder to forecast, which is why most AI products combine a base fee with included usage.
Do you need this yet? If you sell flat monthly plans with a usage cap, plain Stripe subscriptions are enough, and you can enforce the cap in your own app. A billing platform pays off when invoices depend on metered usage, when you sell credits, or when sales starts negotiating custom contracts.
Quick Verdict
Subscriptions, invoices and basic metered pricing next to the payments you probably already run on Stripe. The Meters API includes up to 100M events a month.
The usage-billing engine Stripe bought. It handles high-volume events, multidimensional rates and negotiated enterprise contracts. Now Stripe's route for complex usage pricing.
Usage billing with real-time ingestion, price-change tooling and finance integrations, used by Vercel, Replit and Supabase. Adyen agreed to acquire it in June 2026.
Open-source metering and usage billing (AGPLv3) that you can self-host, and that works with any payment processor. Lago lists Mistral AI and Groq as customers.
TL;DR
No single winner. Pick on pricing complexity and who you want to depend on. Simple per-unit pricing, already on Stripe → Stripe Billing. Enterprise contracts and commitments, happy to stay with Stripe → Metronome. Frequent pricing changes and finance integrations, on any processor → Orb. Self-hosting, no revenue-share fee, or no billing vendor tied to a payment company → Lago.
The four jobs a usage-billing system does
"Usage billing" covers four separate jobs. The platforms differ mostly in how far along this chain they are strong, so it helps to know which ones your pricing actually needs.
1. Metering: counting what happened
Your app sends an event for each billable action, such as a model call with its token counts. The system must accept millions of these, drop duplicates, and add them up per customer. This is where event volume, and some vendors' per-event fees, come in.
2. Rating: turning usage into money
Apply the price plan: tiers, volume discounts, different rates per model, minimums, included usage. Simple per-unit pricing is easy everywhere. Prices that vary along several dimensions, or differ per customer contract, are where the specialist tools earn their fee.
3. Credits and entitlements: what a customer may still use
Prepaid credit balances that burn down, top-ups, expiry, and a signal to your app when a customer runs out. For AI products this is often the most important job, and the hardest to build yourself.
4. Invoicing and collection: getting paid
Produce the invoice, charge the card, retry failed payments, and sync to accounting. Stripe does this natively. Metronome, Orb and Lago produce the invoice and then hand payment to a processor such as Stripe or Adyen.
A quick test: if your price page fits on one line ("$0.002 per request"), you need jobs 1 and 4, which Stripe covers. If your enterprise deals each have their own rate card and commitment, you need all four done well.
The four, in detail
Plans and prices as published on each vendor's site in October 2026. Card processing fees are separate in every case. Orb and Lago Premium publish no prices, so they are quote-only.
Stripe Billing
Subscriptions and metering inside Stripe
0.7% of billing volume
Pay as you go, on top of payment processing
- 0.7% covers invoices paid on and off Stripe; one-off invoices excluded
- Meters API for basic usage pricing, up to 100M events a month included
- Subscriptions, trials, proration, customer portal and dunning
- LLM token billing (private preview): syncs OpenAI, Anthropic and Google prices and applies your margin
- Complex usage pricing and negotiated contracts route to Metronome
- CaveatA percentage of revenue grows with you: at $1M a month billed, 0.7% is $7,000. And the Billing pricing page itself points you to Metronome, priced separately, once your usage pricing gets complex.
Best for: Startups already on Stripe with simple per-unit or tiered usage pricing.
Metronome
Usage billing for complex contracts
0.8% + $0.04 per 1K events
Startup plan; Custom plan by quote
- Built for high event volumes and multidimensional rates
- Negotiated contracts, commitments and marketplace transactions
- Native Stripe integration, plus cloud marketplace payments
- Startup plan: 0.8% of billing volume plus $0.04 per 1,000 ingested events
- Acquired by Stripe (closed January 14, 2026)
- CaveatThe per-event fee adds up for chatty products: 100M raw events is $4,000 a month before the revenue share. Batch or pre-aggregate events where you can. And it is now owned by a payment company, which matters if you ever want to change processors.
Best for: AI and infrastructure companies selling enterprise contracts with commitments and custom rates.
Orb
Usage billing and pricing operations
Custom pricing
Core, Advanced and Enterprise plans, based on billings and events
- Real-time event ingestion and usage alerts
- Hybrid and usage-based billing, with automated price changes
- Orb Invoicing, plus finance and tax integrations
- Advanced: data warehouse sync, Salesforce and NetSuite integrations
- Works with several payment processors; Adyen says that continues
- CaveatNo public prices, so a quote is the only way to compare, and Advanced and Enterprise add a platform fee. Adyen's stated plan to combine billing and payments over time is worth asking about before you sign a multi-year deal.
Best for: Growth-stage companies that change pricing often and need billing data in their warehouse and ERP.
Lago
Open-source metering and billing
$0 self-hosted (AGPLv3)
Lago Premium (cloud or self-hosted) by quote
- Metering, usage and subscription billing, prepaid credits and invoicing
- Self-host with Docker; Helm charts for larger deployments
- Works with Stripe, Adyen and other processors, so your billing logic is not tied to one
- MIT-licensed agent SDKs and MCP server in separate repos
- Customers listed by Lago include Mistral AI, Groq and PayPal
- CaveatSelf-hosting means you run a billing system (database, Redis, workers, backups), and billing is the one system that cannot lose data. Features such as automatic dunning and premium ingestion sources are paid add-ons.
Best for: Teams that want control over their billing data, no revenue-share fee, or independence from any payment company.
What billing $50,000 a month costs on each
One example: an AI product invoicing $50,000 a month and sending 20 million usage events after batching. These are the billing platform's own fees, from published October 2026 rates. Card processing is extra and similar across all four.
Stripe Billing
~$350/mo
0.7% × $50,000. 20M events fits inside the 100M included with the Meters API.
Metronome
~$1,200/mo
0.8% × $50,000 = $400, plus 20,000 × $0.04 per thousand events = $800. Startup plan.
Orb
Quote
Priced on billings and events, with a platform fee on Advanced and up. No public rates to calculate from.
Lago (self-hosted)
~$50–150/mo
Our hosting estimate for the app, workers, Postgres and Redis. No license fee. Excludes engineering time.
Do not pick on this number alone: the percentage fees grow with revenue, while Lago's hosting cost barely moves, so the gap widens as you grow. But one billing bug that undercharges customers for a month costs more than a year of any of these fees. At this size, choose on how well each fits your pricing model, then check the bill.
Feature comparison
"Basic" and "Stripe-first" are our summary of each vendor's documentation, not a feature-by-feature audit. Confirm any capability you depend on in a demo.
The buyouts: what they mean for you
Payment companies are buying billing companies because billing decides where payments go. Whoever produces the invoice is in the best position to collect it. Stripe now owns Metronome, and Adyen has agreed to buy Orb. Both have said existing customers keep working, and Adyen has said Orb will keep supporting other processors.
That is probably true for now. The practical question is what it costs to leave later. Your price plans, customer contracts and years of usage history all live in the billing system. Moving them is a migration project, not a settings change.
Three questions to ask any vendor: Can I export all raw usage events, not just invoices? Can I collect payments through a different processor without re-implementing billing? What happens to my contract price if the product is merged into the parent's billing platform? If you want those answers to stay in your hands, that is the case for an open-source option like Lago.
Challengers worth knowing
Smaller and younger than the four above, and worth a look when their focus matches yours.
Open-source billing built specifically for AI-native companies, with metering, credits and entitlements. A second self-hostable option to compare against Lago.
Not a product, a pattern. Count usage in your database, enforce limits in your app, and bill flat plans with overage lines. Enough for one meter, and easy to replace later.
Which one should you pick?
You are pre-revenue or just launched, on Stripe
Stripe Billing. Send usage to the Meters API, sell plans with included usage, and you are live in days. If you bill for LLM tokens, ask about Stripe's token billing preview.
You sell six-figure contracts with commitments
Metronome or Orb. Both handle per-customer rate cards, minimum commitments and drawdowns. Run a parallel evaluation: Metronome if you are committed to Stripe, Orb if you want to keep processor options open or need deep warehouse and ERP sync.
You want to own your billing data and logic
Lago. Self-host it, keep every usage event in your own database, and collect payments through whichever processor gives you the best rate. Budget for running it like the critical system it is.
You have one simple meter
None of them yet. A usage counter in your database and Stripe subscriptions with an overage line will carry you further than you expect. Move to a platform when you add credits or a second meter.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best usage-based billing platform for an AI startup?
There is no single best one. It depends on how complex your pricing is and who you want to depend on. If you already take payments with Stripe and price simply per unit, Stripe Billing with its Meters API is the shortest path. If you sell negotiated contracts, prepaid commitments and credits to larger customers, Metronome (now a Stripe product) and Orb (being acquired by Adyen) are built for that. If you want to self-host, stay independent of any payment processor, or avoid a percentage-of-revenue fee, Lago is open source.
Did Stripe buy Metronome?
Yes. Stripe completed its acquisition of Metronome on January 14, 2026. The price was reported at about $1 billion, though neither company disclosed it. Metronome now describes itself as part of Stripe. Stripe’s own Billing pricing page sends full usage-based billing (multidimensional rates and negotiated contracts) to Metronome, which is priced separately.
Who is buying Orb?
Adyen, the Dutch payments company, announced on June 11, 2026 that it would acquire Orb for $335 million in cash, with closing expected around July 1. Adyen has said Orb will keep operating and will continue to support customers who use other payment processors, while it works toward combining billing and payments over time. Orb customers named in coverage include Vercel, Replit, Glean and Supabase.
How much does Stripe Billing cost?
On pay-as-you-go, Stripe Billing charges 0.7% of billing volume, including invoices paid outside Stripe and excluding one-off invoices. That is on top of normal card processing fees. Basic usage-based billing through the Meters API includes up to 100 million events a month. More complex usage pricing goes through Metronome, which has its own pricing.
Is Lago really free?
The core Lago platform is open source under the AGPLv3 license and free to self-host with Docker. You pay for the servers, database and the time to run it. Lago also sells a Premium edition, cloud or self-hosted, with extra features such as premium ingestion sources and automatic dunning, priced by quote. AGPLv3 is fine for running your own billing. If you plan to modify Lago and offer it to others as a service, check the license terms with a lawyer.
How do I bill customers for LLM tokens?
Record every model call as a usage event with the customer, model and token counts, then price those events with a markup over what the provider charges you. Every platform here can do this. Stripe also has a dedicated LLM token billing feature, in private preview since early 2026, that syncs model prices for OpenAI, Anthropic and Google and applies the margin you set. It can read usage from gateways such as OpenRouter and Vercel. Many AI products sell prepaid credits instead of raw tokens, which makes the bill easier for customers to predict.
Should I build usage billing myself?
For one simple meter, such as API calls per month, a counter in your database and a Stripe invoice line can be enough. Building gets expensive once you need prepaid credits that burn down, mid-month plan changes, minimum commitments, invoice previews, or usage that must match what finance books as revenue. Billing errors cost money and trust, which is why these tools exist.