The 9 Best Recurring Payment Systems & Subscription Billing Software

We chose Square Payments as one of the best subscription billing software because we believe it offers small businesses the most bang for their buck as a full-stack payment processor. Like Stripe, Square combines payment processing with billing, invoicing, an mPOS app, employee management, and even an online store builder (something Stripe does not offer). Included in Square’s payments ecosystem is support for subscription billing.

Square’s Subscriptions API allows you to review the invoices generated by subscriptions in your dashboard. You can also offer subscriptions via Square Online Checkout, a service that allows you to accept customers’ payments by simply sharing a link. Square Invoices also offers recurring invoicing with options for customers to opt into automatically recurring charges.

Square may not be ideal for larger merchants with high volume sales or for those who don’t wish to integrate with third-party subscription management software to access for more advanced subscription management functions.

Square Payments online transactions are priced at a rate of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.

If you’re offering subscriptions through the Square Online Store, you’ll have to buy at least the Premier plan, so you’ll be paying $29/month plus 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.

If you purchase the Premium subscription plan, your rate will decrease to just 2.6% + $0.30/transaction, but you’ll also be on the hook for $79/month. .

As with Stripe, Square’s flat-rate pricing is ideal for new businesses and lower-volume merchants. However, large merchants who sell at scale should still come out ahead using the Premier Plan’s discounted rate compared to Square’s standard rate.

Square Payments offers plenty of features for small business payment processing, including all the essential subscription management features one would expect from a full-stack payment processor. Here’s a look at Square Payment’s features:

• Flat-rate pricing with discounts on higher-tiered Square subscription plans
• Built-in invoicing features, including recurring invoices and automatic charges
• Free ACH processing
• Customizable online store building with Square Subscriptions API
• Customizable Square checkout templates with BigCommerce, Wix, BigCommerce, Magento, and more
• Affordable flat-rate pricing and no chargeback fees
• Built-in PCI compliance
• Offer customers buy now, pay later options through Afterpay
• Seamless integration within Square’s ecosystem and tons of third-party software options

We chose FreshBooks Payments as one of the best subscription payments software options because of its impressive accounting features and integration. As one of the biggest names in accounting and invoicing software, FreshBooks is a solid option for businesses that want seamless integration between their accounting and subscription management software.

While FreshBooks Payments doesn’t offer up a multitude of subscription-specific features like other specialized subscription billing solutions, it does offer support for recurring payments for a fraction of the cost of a software package like Chargebee.

However, FreshBooks is an expensive option for businesses that are just looking for recurring billing or subscription features — but that’s because you’re paying for the fully-fleshed FreshBooks software suite. As such, we think FreshBooks would be an ideal fit for businesses that need a combination of strong accounting features and subscription billing options, such as a subscription box company.

You can use FreshBooks Payments (a rebranded version of WePay) to process payments from your customers at a rate of 2.9% + $0.29 per transaction, but if you’d rather use Stripe or PayPal as your payment processor, you’ll be charged 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.

FreshBooks offers four different subscription tiers, with pricing starting at $17.00/month or $204/year when you pay annually.

To set up recurring billing profiles, schedule subscription payments, and save credit card details for your clients, you’ll have to purchase FreshBooks’ Advanced Payments add-on, which starts at $20/month for the Lite, Plus, and Premium plans.

Through FreshBooks’s recurring payments system, you can automatically charge a customer’s credit card, bank account, or PayPal account on a recurring basis. Here’s a look at some additional FreshBooks Payments features:

• Accept international payments with FreshBooks + Stripe
• Handle late payments with custom reminders and fees
• Share secure checkout links available online or via text
• Set up recurring payments through FreshBooks’ auto-billing feature
• Optional yearly payment for discounted FreshBooks’ subscription
• Very highly-rated popular mobile app
• Built-in invoicing with advanced features such as invoice view notices, auto-charged late fees, and automated recurring invoices
• Automatic expense tracking and receipt data capture

We chose PayPal as one of the best subscription billing platforms because of its ease of use, especially compared to similar options like Stripe. Not only is PayPal easy to use for merchants, but it’s easy to use for your customers, too.

The PayPal brand, including Venmo and PayPal Pay Later provides your customers with recognizable options. Hitting the Pay with PayPal, Venmo, or Pay Later buttons tends to be easier and faster than manually inputting card info. There’s a chance that those payment options could increase conversion based on checkout ease alone.

However, PayPal isn’t without its faults. While PayPal offers no monthly fees, its 3.49% + $0.49 fee for using PayPal Payments is on the higher end, especially when compared to Square or Stripe.

PayPal’s subscription billing solution is built into its PayPal Checkout plan, so you’ll pay 2.59% + $0.49 for online credit card transactions or 3.49% + $0.49/transaction when using PayPal Payments. The lack of a monthly fee, puts PayPal ahead of the pack compared to Square or Stripe, but PayPal Payments’ high fees even the playing field.

We believe that PayPal’s features are best suited to small to mid-sized subscription-based businesses because it offers less customization and support for complex subscription billing needs compared to options like Chargebee or Maxio.

Here’s a breakdown of PayPal’s features:

• Transparent pricing starting at 2.59% + $0.49 for online card transactions
• PayPal Payments buttons for your checkout page, including Venmo and Pay Later options
• Option to offer new subscribers promotions, including free trials or discounted trials
• Support for fixed and variable subscriptions, including per-use charges
• PayPal developer options, including Subscriptions API
• Subscription reports, including new activity and MRR
• Support for international payments and 100+ currencies
• eCommerce integration with sites like Wix, BigCommerce, Shopify, WooCommerce, and GoDaddy
• Easy to use interface

We chose Zoho Subscriptions as one of the best subscription billing software because it offers one of the strongest mobile subscription management platforms on the market. While other options on this list, including Square, offer mobile apps, we think that Zoho is the best as it’s only dedicated to subscription billing management.

Zoho Subscriptions offers recurring billing, subscription management, and invoicing crafted for the entire billing life cycle. The software is compatible with numerous payment gateways and can handle currencies from countries around the globe, making Zoho Subscriptions a good subscription billing solution for international eCommerce.

One great feature you’ll get with Zoho Subscriptions is a free integration with Zoho Books, Zoho’s online accounting software. Any business already using Zoho Books to balance its books should definitely consider using Zoho Subscriptions as a subscription management solution. You’ll be able to integrate with other Zoho software packages (such as Zoho CRM) as well.

You can begin using Zoho Subscriptions to test the features and functions (and even sell a few subscriptions) for free. Once you’ve sold more than 20 subscriptions, you’ll need to choose one of the paid plans on offer.

Pricing starts at $59/organization/month if you choose to pay monthly or $49/organization/month if you choose to pay annually. As Zoho works with a variety of payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net, processing fees will vary depending on the gateway you use.

As a subscription management software, Zoho Subscriptions’ vast feature set comes as no surprise. Zoho Subscription’s features let you manage your customers’ billing experience, view key metrics, and customize the software to best fit your business’s needs. Here’s a look at Zoho Subscriptions’ standout features:

• Supports multiple payment gateways, including Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, and more
• Zoho Subscriptions mobile app that puts subscription creation, metrics, and management at your fingertips
• Solid selection of third-party integrations, including Zapier, Slack, Google Workspace, Office365, and more
• Completely customizable subscription management, including branding, automations, pricing tables, invoice tables, and more
• 30+ reports, including MRR, LTV, and churn rate
• Customizable Zoho billing API
• Supports managing multiple subscriptions
• Automatic prorated billing
• Supports payment in multiple currencies and payment methods, including ACH, card, bank transfer, and more

We chose Stripe as a top subscription payment software because it offers strong subscription billing management features built on top of one of the best-known online payment processing services — Stripe Payments.

You can create billing plans based on usage, the number of users, flat fees, or any other business model that suits your operations. You’ll also get support for coupons, free trials, automated failed payment emails, automatically-generated reports, and more.

Stripe’s simple pricing scheme is beneficial to startups and smaller businesses, as it allows them to keep down expenses. However, for larger businesses, Stripe’s pricing model becomes increasingly expensive as transaction volume increases.

For smaller businesses, in a head-to-head Stripe versus PayPal comparison, we’ve found that Stripe is the far more affordable option, while PayPal is far easier to use.

Stripe Billing offers two pricing plans: Starter and Scale. Starter offers basic subscription management features and costs 0.5% on recurring payments. Scale boasts automation and strong reporting features and costs 0.8% on recurring payments and one-time invoices.

Stripe’s “full-stack” payment services package comes with no monthly charges or extra fees. Instead, similarly to other payment aggregators, Stripe charges a flat rate of 2.9% + $0.30 from each successful card charge.

Stripe Billing builds on the excellent Stripe Payments platform with several impressive subscription management solutions. Here’s a look at the subscription management features you can expect from Stripe Billing:

• Set up subscriptions through payment links, Stripe Checkout, or via custom integration
• Revenue recovery tools, including customizable payment reminders for missed and overdue payments
• Stripe-hosted customer billing portal
• One-time and recurring invoices
• Automatic retry for failed payments
• Automatic revenue reporting to streamline accrual accounting
• Create custom quotes and estimates for customers

Chargebee made our list of the best subscription payment software because we believe it provides a lot of value for both startups and scaling businesses.

Chargebee’s capacity to handle multiple payment methods and tax profiles, large quantities of subscriptions, and the ability to tailor subscription packages to fit the needs of different kinds of businesses make it a great subscription payment software option.

Smaller businesses will find a lot to like as well, with support for SaaS metrics and integration with Xero and QuickBooks included with Chargebee’s lower-tier subscription plan.

Chargebee doesn’t include a payment gateway or merchant account in its services. Thankfully, Chargebee integrates with a wide array of payment gateways, including Stripe.

Chargebee is designed to scale with your company as you expand, offering subscription packages for each stage of a growing business.

In fact, a startup can use Chargebee’s recurring billing software for free until $250,000 has been invoiced, after which you’ll be charged a fee of 0.75% on billing. Compared to Zuora or Maxio, this free trial period is very generous and best suited for newer businesses.

Chargebee’s Performance plan starts at $599/month until $100,000 has been billed, then adds a fee of 0.75% on billing.

Chargebee is one of the leading subscription billing management software and offers a strong collection of features best suited to supporting the needs of growing businesses and startups. Here’s a look at Chargebee’s subscription management features:

• Advanced billing features such as coupons, gift subscriptions, advance invoices, and more
• Support for multiple billing models and custom contract terms
• Create custom payment pages and domains
• Offers one-click payment method, offline checkout, and multiple payment methods for customers
• Solid reporting features, including SaaS metrics, A/R aging, abandoned cart tracking, tax reports, and more
• Dunning options for payment recovery and custom emails
• Solid developer API options and filters
• Xero, QuickBooks, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, and Intacct integration options

For larger businesses with complex subscription management needs, Recurly is the best of the best. With its wide array of integrations, compatibility with 20+ payment gateways, support for several different billing models, and international business support (140+ currencies are supported), Recurly has a lot to offer enterprise-level businesses.

Smaller businesses will find much to like about Recurly as well, including the fact that you can sign up for Recurly and test out its features for free. You’ll need a paid account — and a connection to a payment gateway and merchant account — before you can begin taking payments from customers, however.

With the broad range of billing models available, Recurly is adaptable to a wide range of businesses, as customers can be charged in a number of different ways, depending on your chosen model. The system lets you test different pricing types so you get a sense of what best matches your customers’ needs.

Recurly offers three pricing plans: Core, Professional, and Elite. Recurly’s Core Plan starts at $249/month + 0.9% on all total processing volume (TPV), while the Professional and Elite plans utilize quote-based pricing.

Recurly is currently running a 12-month promotion for their Core Plan, which offers no platform fee up until their TPV exceeds $40,000/month, after which, merchants will be charged a fee of 0.9% of any TPV over $40,000 per month.

While this promotion is generous, Chargebee’s free trial offers a more generous free trial period for startups or newly established subscription-based businesses.

Recurly has an extensive feature set designed for the needs of larger businesses. If your business has any complex or even just slightly unusual subscription processing needs, odds are that you’ll be able to handle them with Recurly. Here’s a breakdown of some of Reculry’s standout features:

• Multiple pricing models, including fixed recurring, usage-based, one-time purchases, volume pricing, and more
• Offer promotions, including coupons, discounts, trials, and gift subscription options
• Subscriber management actions, including pausing, upgrading, postponing, canceling, and more
• Communicate with subscribers via custom email templates, dunning campaigns, and more
• Configure multiple gateways, including a test gateway and custom gateway routing
• Tax-inclusive pricing, sales tax support, and VAT and GST support
• Zapier integration which connects another 2,000+ apps
• Excellent reports dashboard, including MRR, plans, churn analysis, recovered revenue, trial performance, and more
• Single sign-on access and user-based roles

We chose Zuora as one of the best subscription payment platforms because we believe Zuora offers the flexibility and comprehensive feature set necessary for handling complex billing needs. Compared to simpler subscription billing options like FreshBooks or PayPal, you’re going to get  more customization options and built-in subscription management features with Zuora.

Zuora is a subscription management platform that bills itself as a complete order-to-revenue service, letting you manage quotes, orders, and billing for the whole customer lifecycle.

A business using Zuora is likely to be offering products to large companies that require varied, customizable service packages. An ordinary subscription management service won’t be able to offer such flexible solutions. You’ll still have to connect Zuora to a payment gateway and merchant account, however.

Zuora software isn’t offered as a single package but as a collection of features that businesses can pick and choose from to create a tailored package that fits their particular needs.

As such, Zoura is a solution primarily for very large businesses with complex subscription management needs, and no pricing information is given on the website. This is a bit unusual, as both Chargebee and Maxio offer transparent pricing for at least one of their plans.

You can sign up for a free trial of the recurring billing software, however.

Larger businesses or those with complex billing needs will find that Zuora’s feature set runs the gauntlet, from the decidedly basic support for card payments to the advanced AI-driven payment retries.

Additional Zuora features include:

• Support for 20+ payment gateways
• Multiple payment methods, such as digital wallets, cards, bank debits, and more
• Strong fraud protection, including acceptance rule management
• Extensive payment recovery features, including AI-driven retry scheduling and payment recovery metric tracking
• Support for 180 currencies
• Recurring invoicing with Zuora Billing

Maxio (formerly known as Chargify and SaaSOptics before the merger) is a recurring billing and subscription management software platform that, like most of the options listed in this article, requires connections to a payment gateway and/or merchant account.

We chose Maxio as one of the best subscription billing platforms because we believe it offers the best B2B payments experience of all the options on this list. While other subscription billing software, such as Zuora, support B2B subscription payments, Maxio is specifically designed for those payments and offers a more drilled-down experience.

Maxio lets you offer a wide variety of recurring billing models, along with events-based billing and offer management. Maxio is set up specifically to take advantage of Stripe’s features, should you use Stripe for payment processing. However, you also have the option of using any one of a host of other processing providers, including Braintree, Authorize.net, GoCardless, and more.

The lowest-tier Maxio subscription goes for $599/month for up to $1 million in annual billing. Maxio’s Growth and Scale plans offer quote-based pricing. All of Maxio’s plans offer access to the Maxio platform, including financial automations, invoicing, and advanced reporting, advanced billing, collections, advanced revenue management, expense management, project tracking.

Additional services are offered as Maxio modules, which are essentially add-ons that make it possible to create custom service packages based on your business’s needs.

With the power of Chargify and SaaSOptics, Maxio offers what is possibly the most extensive feature set of all the subscription billing options on this list. Here’s a look at Maxio’s comprehensive feature list:

• Invoice for contract renewals, price increases, and more
• Set flexible payment terms for your customers
• Customizable invoice themes
• Extensive reports with configurable dashboards
• Integration with Salesforce, Hubspot, QuickBooks, and Xero
• Supports 150+ currencies internationally
• Advanced billing with automated dunning, support for parent or child invoices, and multi-attribute and usage billing options
• Offer self-service billing portals for your customers
• Designed to make the implementation process as easy as possible