Assembly Line

Recurly

Recurly powers subscription management and recurring billing for high-volume digital commerce. Launch, retain, and scale with a platform that handles billions in annual payments for leading brands.

Recurly is commercial billing and subscriptions software made by Recurly.

Made by
Recurly
Source code
Closed

Website

Judgement

What it is
Complete system
What it does
Subscription billing for consumer and B2B subscription brands, with dunning, churn recovery, multiple gateways and analytics.
Adopt it when
A high-volume consumer subscription business wants strong failed-payment recovery and gateway flexibility.
Watch out
It costs more than gateway-native billing, and usage-based pricing support is weaker than newer tools.
Ready for
Production-ready
Runs as
Cloud service
What the license allows
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.

Judged on 2026-11-03 from the maker's description and Wikipedia. The license and age lines are worked out directly.

Open-source alternatives to Recurly

  1. 1
    Lago getlago

    Open Source Metering and Usage Based Billing API ⭐️ Consumption tracking, Subscription management, Pricing iterations, Payment orchestration & Revenue analytics

    Building block Production-ready A software or AI company bills on usage and wants an open-source alternative to Stripe Billing or Orb it can self-host.

    ★ 11k AGPL-3.0 Go Active, pushed 6 days ago
  2. 2
    Polar polarsource

    Polar — A billing platform for the intelligence era

    Complete system Production-ready You sell software or digital products internationally and want tax handling and billing done for you.

    ★ 10k Apache-2.0 Python Active, pushed today
  3. 3
    Flexprice flexprice

    Usage-based pricing and billing for developers 🔓 Cloud or self-hosted ⚙️ No-code UI 💰 Realtime usage metering 🎟 Credits & top-ups 🔑 Control feature access

    Building block Usable An AI product sells credits or usage tiers and wants an open-source billing backend.

    ★ 6.9k AGPL-3.0 Go Active, pushed yesterday
  4. 4
    Killbill killbill

    Open-Source Subscription Billing & Payments Platform

    Building block Production-ready A company with Java engineers needs mature subscription billing it fully controls, at scale.

    ★ 5.8k Apache-2.0 Java Active, pushed 11 days ago
  5. 5
    Paymenter Paymenter

    Free and open-source webshop solution for hostings

    Complete system Usable You run a small game or web hosting business and want a free alternative to WHMCS.

    ★ 2.8k MIT PHP Active, pushed today
  6. 6
    Cashier-stripe laravel

    Laravel Cashier provides an expressive, fluent interface to Stripe's subscription billing services.

    Integration Production-ready You are building a Laravel SaaS and charging through Stripe.

    ★ 2.5k MIT PHP Active, pushed 13 days ago
  7. 7
    OpenMeter openmeterio

    Metering and Billing for AI, API and DevOps. Collect and aggregate millions of usage events in real-time and enable usage-based billing.

    Building block Usable You run an API or AI product and need accurate metering, with billing optional.

    ★ 2.4k Apache-2.0 Go Active, pushed today
  8. 8
    Pay pay-rails

    Payments for Ruby on Rails apps

    Integration Production-ready You are building a Rails SaaS and want one billing API that can switch payment providers.

    ★ 2.3k MIT Ruby Active, pushed today
  9. 9
    Lotus uselotus

    Open Source Pricing & Packaging Infrastructure

    Building block Experimental A SaaS team wants to experiment with pricing models on a self-hosted engine.

    ★ 1.8k MIT Python Active, pushed 7 days ago
  10. 10
    Dj-stripe dj-stripe

    dj-stripe automatically syncs your Stripe Data to your local database as pre-implemented Django Models allowing you to use the Django ORM, in your code, to work with the data making it easier and faster.

    Integration Production-ready You run a Django app on Stripe and want to query billing data with the ORM.

    ★ 1.8k MIT Python Active, pushed today

Every alternative to Recurly

Other commercial billing and subscription management systems

  1. 1
    Stripe Billing Stripe, Inc.

    Power your subscriptions with Stripe Billing. Set up recurring and usage-based pricing with APIs or within the Dashboard. Reduce churn with AI-powered tools.

    Complete system Production-ready You already use Stripe Payments and want recurring billing set up through its API or dashboard with little extra work.

    Commercial
  2. 2
    GoCardless GoCardless

    Collect and send payments, minimise failures, and fight fraud. No more chasing payments and no expensive card fees.

    Complete system Production-ready You collect regular invoices or subscriptions and want lower fees and fewer failures than cards.

    406 readers a month Since 2011 Commercial
  3. 3
    Zuora Zuora

    Zuora is the leading Quote to Cash and subscription management platform, unifying billing, payments, revenue, and AR to scale your modern monetization.

    Complete system Production-ready A large company with complex subscription and usage contracts needs billing and ASC 606 revenue recognition at enterprise scale.

    315 readers a month Since 2007 Commercial
  4. 4
    Zoho Billing Zoho Corporation

    Complete system Production-ready A small subscription business wants cheap recurring billing and already uses Zoho accounting.

    Commercial
  5. 5
    Chargebee Chargebee

    Complete system Production-ready A subscription business has outgrown Stripe Billing's defaults and wants gateway choice, finance reporting and a no-code billing admin.

    Commercial
  6. 6
    Maxio Maxio

    Maxio is the all-in-one billing and financial reporting platform trusted by over 2,000 SaaS, AI, and subscription businesses. Drive revenue growth with simplified billing, revenue recognition and reporting.

    Complete system Production-ready A B2B SaaS finance team wants billing and SaaS metrics like ARR and churn reporting in one place.

    Commercial
  7. 7
    Paddle Paddle.com Market Ltd

    Complete system Production-ready A software or SaaS seller wants to sell worldwide without registering for sales tax and VAT in every jurisdiction.

    Commercial
  8. 8
    Lemon Squeezy Stripe, Inc.

    Sell digital products and SaaS software the easy peasy way with Lemon Squeezy. As your merchant of record, we handle the tax compliance burden so you can focus on more revenue and less headache.

    Complete system Usable An indie developer or small creator wants to sell software or downloads worldwide without dealing with sales tax.

    Commercial
  9. 9
    Orb Orb

    Design, execute, and operate revenue with usage-based billing. Orb helps modern software companies adapt pricing as products, usage, and costs evolve.

    Complete system Production-ready A software or AI company charges by usage and needs to change pricing models often without rebuilding billing.

    Commercial
  10. 10
    Metronome Metronome

    Metronome is the usage-based billing platform that helps you launch products faster. Easily model your pricing today, iterate confidently tomorrow.

    Complete system Production-ready A high-volume API or AI company sells usage commitments and credits and needs billing that handles enterprise contracts.

    Commercial

Under it

Every program, Recurly included, runs on a microchip.

How compilers were built, back to punched paper tape

The description is the maker's own, quoted as written.