6 Best Usage-Based Billing Software for AI Companies in 2025
Choosing a usage-based billing software for your AI product? Our 2025 review compares the top 6 platforms to help you find the right fit
Co-Founder
If you’re building AI products, you need billing that moves as fast as your product. Flat-rate pricing is dead. Your customers want to pay for what they actually use, like tokens, API calls, compute, whatever hybrid pricing people claim as per their definition. So what’s actually good right now?
Key findings from our 2025 analysis:
- AI billing is real-time. Your tool needs to track usage at the atomic level. Tokens, API calls, and compute time. If you can’t meter it, you can’t monetize it.
- Most teams are running hybrid pricing now. Base fee + usage, or usage + outcome. Because no customer wants surprises, everyone wants to see exactly what they’re paying for and try new plans without talking to sales.
- Local pricing isn’t a nice to have anymore. You’ve seen OpenAI’s special India rates, right? If your tool can’t do PPP or custom prices by country, you’re missing half your market.
What actually matters for AI billing in 2025?
Changing your pricing should be as easy as switching your browser or your browser. And what’s with all these browser releases anyway?
I’ve worked with multiple billing teams, and trust me, nobody wants to wait for engineers to push code just to test a new pricing plan. Most tolls are built for engineers, but the real users are Product and GTMs. They’re the ones who are running the price experiments. They’re the one who wants to change the pricing. And, your billing platform needs to let them do it all without writing Jira tickets and waiting for engineers to write those changes.
If your tool still needs an engineer for every change, tell me when they will code your actual product. You will be stuck with price changes. You need to pick a tool that lets your PM and GTM lead the billing department. Speed wins, especially in the AI era. Here are the essential points I came up with to decide if the billing tool is capable for 2025.
- Metering, real time event data ingestion, and data aggregation.
- Token based, outcome based, or hybrid pricing models.
- Entitlements management, including access control and feature gating.
- Plans versioning, migration, grandfathering, and proration support.
- Upgrade/downgrade flows directly from the platform.
Which usage-based billing software is best for AI companies?
1.Paritydeals
Fastest to go live, easiest to change pricing, you can launch usage-based billing in 10 minutes, not months. No webhooks. No custom code. It’s built for AI products. You can change plans and meters without the engineer’s help. Price localization is built in (think: special India pricing, purchasing power parity pricing, all that). Tracks tokens, api calls, credits, and more.
Key features
- Usage-based billing: charge by tokens, api requests, seats, or credits. Meter usage in real time. Track every api hit, every byte, every token. If it moves, you can bill for it.
- Flexible pricing: Flat fee, usage, seat, tiered, volume, credits, pay as you go, overages, outcome, hybrid. Launch new pricing without bugging engineering.
- Entitlements and feature gating: Gate features by plan, usage, or custom rules. You can flip access instantly from the dashboard or API.
- Localized pricing: Set country specific prices in 135 currencies. Built-in VPN and proxy blocking abuse.
- No-code pricing tables: Publish, edit, and localize pricing tables remotely from the dashboard without touching the codebase. Price changes go live instantly, no redeploy.
- Run A/B testing and experiments.
- Customer lifecycle: Handle upgrades, downgrades, migrations, overrides, and grandfathering. No custom scripts needed.
- Fast setup: Get started in minutes. No webhooks, no hardcoded flags, no custom logic. One SDK, One dashboard, One source of truth.
Pricing
- Free plan for startups up to $10k MTR
- Startup plan $79 for $10k to $20k MTR
- Growth $199 for $20k to $50k MTR
- Custom: if you’re above $50k MTR, you can reach out to the team for bespoke pricing.
- No-code pricing tables: Publish, edit, and localize pricing tables remotely from the dashboard without touching the codebase. Price changes go live instantly, no redeploy.
Best for:
- AI startups and SaaS teams on Stripe who want usage-based, seat, or hybrid billing without building custom infra.
- Product-led growth teams that need to run pricing experiments and localize offers without waiting for engineering
- Global digital products that want to unlock sales in new markets with location-based pricing
- Founders and PMs who want direct control over pricing, plans, and entitlements
- Companies scaling fast that need billing that adapts to new models, markets, and customer segments
Pros
- Speed: move from flat to usage based pricing in a day. Engineering time on billing drops to near zero.
- Control: Product, growth, and finance teams can ship pricing changes, entitlements limits, pricing table updates, and new plans without developers.
- Global reach: Location based pricing unlocks sales in 85%of untapped markets. Localized pricing increases conversion and revenue.
- Experimentation: Run pricing tests, ship the winner, iterate fast. No code changes or redeploys.
- Security: Fraud protection for promos. VPN and proxy blocking are built in.
- Scalability: Handles everything from Indie SaaS to Enterprise. Custom plans for high volume or complex needs.
Cons
- No revenue recognition features
- Does not currently offer a quote-to-cash feature
- Currently limited to Stripe payments.
Benefits for AI companies
- Token-accurate billing: Charge for llm tokens, API calls, or hybrids. Aligns with how AI infra is actually used.
- Protect margins: Set usage caps, overages, and credits. Avoid runaway costs and keep billing predictable.
- Global monetization: Location based pricing makes your AI product accessible everywhere, without losing premium pricing in rich countries.
- Rapid iteration: Test new pricing, bundles, or entitlements as your product evolves. Ship changes in minutes, not sprints.
- Enterprise flexibility: Override limits per user, roll back plans, and grandfather contracts. Handle weird custom deals.
- Data driven: See what converts, where, and why. Optimize pricing for different geos and user segments.
2.Stripe Billing
Stripe is the default choice for many teams because Stripe owns payments. Stripe Billing supports subscriptions and usage based pricing, and it works for AI products. The setup is not beginner friendly. You will write and maintain many webhooks, often more than 250+ event types, and you will spend too much engineering time keeping them stable. Theo has a good rundown of the pain points.
Stripe Billing makes sense if you already use Stripe for payments and you have engineers who can own a billing database, webhook logic, and price versioning. You will find many freelance jobs that exist only to wire up Stripe Billing, which says a lot about the effort needed. Platforms like ParityDeals sit between Stripe and your app code, so you keep Stripe for payments and don’t have to deal with the pain and chaos that comes with Stripe billing.
Key features
- Invoicing
- Customer portal
- Credit notes
- Rate cards
- Billing for platforms
- Subscription migration
- Subscription schedules
- Entitlements
- Compliance
- Pricing models
- Usage-based billing
- Discounts
- Stripe Scripts
- Prorations
- Sales contract schedules
- Installments
- Subscription backdating
- Test clocks
Pricing
Stripe uses pay as you go pricing. They charge 0.7% of billing volume. For invoices, they charge 0.4% and 0.5% per paid invoice.
Best for:
Startups and scale-ups that already use Stripe for payments and have a team to manage the billing database, event pipeline, and price changes.
Pros
- A large set of products in one stack: payments, tax, invoicing, and reporting
- Global reach and strong payment methods
- Big partner network
Cons
- You should expect weeks or months of backend and frontend work
- You must wire data models and handle more than 20 event types
- Every price change needs a new version and a safe migration path
- Keeping the purchase and subscription state in sync between Stripe and your database is hard
- Webhook order is not guaranteed, which can cause partial updates and errors
- Race conditions can mark payments as successful in your app when they fail in Stripe
- There is no built-in product usage analytics
Benefits for AI companies
Stripe supports usage based, subscription, hybrid, and outcome-based pricing, which matters for AI. Accurate metering for tokens, API calls, and other events is hard at scale, and the Stripe integration becomes harder as your product grows more complex.
3.Maxio
Maxio offers subscriptions and usage based billing. Their core position is billing, compliance, and reporting in one place. Maxio offers solutions for B2B and B2C. Strong pick for mid sized teams. Finance gets clean reports. Their setup is not easy. You will need engineers to set up the process, and it will require months.
Key features
- Billing and subscription management
- Usage based billing
- Revenue recognition
- Metrics and reporting
- Data ingestion
- Payments that handle disputes and reconcile deposits
- Multi currency and international payments
- Integrations with CRM and accounting tools
Pricing
Starts at $599 per month up to 100k in monthly billings. Above 100k, custom quote
Best for:
Finance led teams that want billing, revenue, and SaaS metrics together.
Pros
- Covers billing, revenue recognition, and SaaS metrics in one tool
- Good integrations with finance systems
- Solid for subscription first pricing
Cons
- Setup is hard and time consuming
- Changing or testing prices is slow
- Overkill and complex for small teams
Benefits for AI companies
Good if you sell seats + usage and need strict finance tracking. Not great if you run fast price tests or change plans often.
4.Metronome
Like Chargebee, Metronome is built for enterprise giants. If your company isn’t dropping at least a 100 grand on billing every year, don’t bother. It is made for tracking extreme usage spikes, hybrid models, and AI edge cases. But it’s enterprise only and seriously expensive. Unless you’re pushing millions of api calls, it’s overkill.
Key features
- Real time metering. Tracks API calls.
- Flexible pricing models, commitments, overages, and hybrid setups.
- Customer dashboards. Set alerts, limits, and keep tabs on spend so nobody gets surprise bills.
- Integrations and data access
- Extensive APIs allow for embedding billing visibility into products.
- Granular data & reporting
Pricing
You pay a platform fee just to get in the door, and then you get charged for every event they meter. Plus, they take a cut of your revenue. Most bills start at six figures. If you’re not an enterprise, move along.
Best for:
Massive enterprises with complex pricing and usage.
Pros
- Combines metering, aggregation, invoicing, and reporting
- Supports complex pricing
- Handles multi dimensional pricing and revenue share models
- Transparent billing and spend controls help reduce churn and build loyalty.
- Connects with existing stacks, so you’re not locked into a walled garden.
Cons
- Setup is brutal. You’ll need serious dev muscle
- UX and UI are painful
- Every data event costs you, so high volume gets pricey fast
- They take a cut of your revenue, which hurts if your margins are thin
- Switching later is a nightmare
- Complexity for Small Teams
- Designed for developers and needs too much developer involvement
Benefits for AI companies
Works for big teams that want both self serve and enterprise contracts. Perfect for companies juggling crazy AI billing.
5.Chargebee
Chargee is one of the oldest billing platforms. They are known for recurring subscriptions. Now they are building the usage based billing solution. Their metering solution is in early access for select customers. It’s good if you already use Chargebee for subscriptions. However, they are not as plug-and-play as ParityDeals. They are more enterprise focused. They have multiple products beyond billing, so the app can feel clunky, and their UX is outdated.
Key features
- Product catalog
- Entitlements
- Revenue recognition
- Metrics and reporting
- Checkout
- Payments and collections
- Trials and self serve
- Reports and analytics
Pricing
$7,188per year up to 100k in monthly billings Above 100k, enterprise plan through sales Startup plan: free up to 250k in cumulative billing, then 0.75 percent on billing
Best for:
Larger teams that want billing, reporting, and revenue recognition, CPQ, and Customer retention solution in one place.
Pros
- Enterprise grade
- Offers sales quoting, revenue recognition, and customer retention tools
- Works well for subscription plans
Cons
- Setup is very hard and needs a billing team on your side
- Hard for granular, real-time metering
- The user experience can feel heavy
Benefits for AI companies
Although they are old player, their AI usage-based billing is in a nascent stage, and they have just rolled out their metering solution.
6.Zuora
Zuora is what happens when you listen to an old school CFO and end up using a tool that will eat your sprint. Zeora is an enterprise grade quote-to-cash platform for teams that want every subscription, usage charge, and invoice to pass audit. If you’re running hybrid models, multi-currency, or need to appease the finance team, Zuora is your partner. It offers per-unit, tiered, overage, prepaid credits. But here’s the tradeoff. Zuora is built for after-the-fact billing. You’ll still need a separate metering layer if you want real time usage or in-app meters. Their UX is pure enterprise style, so you know it isn’t good. Implementation is months, not weeks.
Key features
- Flexible charge models
- Usage ingestion
- Rating & bill runs
- Prepaid credits
- Commitments & thresholds
- Multi currency price books
- Discounts and promotions
- Workflows & automation
- Taxes and compliance
- Payments & collections
- CPQ and CRM
- Reporting
Pricing
Zuora operates a sales-led, enterprise pricing model with platform + volume tiers. You’re looking at mid five figures to low six figures a year for the core platform. Commonly 50k–200k USD depending on complexity, regions, and ERP/tax integration. If you want other add-ons like revenue recognition or collections, the bill climbs even higher.
Best for:
Zuora is for enterprise companies. Your main focus should be on surviving enterprise audits, not the easy usage-based billing.
Pros
- Finance-grade, robust catalogs, proration, amendments, revenue recognition, and audits. Designed for scale and compliance.
- Commitments, prepaid wallets, tiered/overage mixes, multi year AMAs with ramping.
- CPQ, taxes, payments, ERP, and data tools integrations.
- Multi-entity, multi-currency, localized invoicing and tax logic
Cons
- You’ll still need a metering/entitlement service.
- Too complex an operation.
- Expect months, not weeks. Needs RevOps + SI partners for setup.
- Pricing is enterprise level, so very costly. Total cost (licenses + implementation + ongoing admin) is high versus developer first tools.
Benefits for AI companies
If you’re selling to enterprises, running complex deals, or need audit trails, go with Zuora. Most AI teams pair Zuora with a dedicated metering platform for real-time UX. If you’re sub $1–2M ARR, think twice before signing up.
To sum it up, here’s what actually matters in 2025
- Real time metering (tokens, api calls, compute, etc.)
- Instant plan changes (no engineer dependencies)
- Clear billing breakdowns for customers (nobody likes surprise bills)
- Price localization from day one
AI billing is not just about charging money. It’s about letting your product team experiment, your customers understand their bills, and your company grow without switching platforms every year.
Founder tip: Start with something you can launch in a day, not a month. You’ll thank yourself later.
Final word: Don’t get locked into a tool that can’t keep up with your roadmap. If your billing can’t pivot as fast as your product, you’re already behind. Welcome to the AI era.
