# Basic usage-based billing

Charge customers based on how much they use your product or service.

## Choosing between Metronome and basic usage-based billing

Stripe offers two approaches to usage-based billing. [Metronome](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/usage-based.md) is Stripe’s primary usage-based billing platform, recommended for all new integrations. Basic usage-based billing, built on the Billing Meters API, is a lower-level primitive that remains fully supported for existing integrations.

Unless you are maintaining an existing Billing Meters integration, use Metronome. This includes:

- Starting a new usage-based billing integration from scratch
- Adding usage-based pricing to existing flat-rate subscriptions — this is the clearest signal to use Metronome rather than build on Billing Meters
- Needing prepaid credits or credit burndown
- Needing enterprise contracts, commits, or ramp schedules
- Needing dimensional or composite pricing
- Needing real-time usage visibility (Billing Meters only reconciles usage at invoice time)
- Needing high-volume event ingestion at scale

Stay on basic usage-based billing only if you are already billing customers via Billing Meters today. Other reasons to stay:

- You need full compatibility with Connect, Checkout, Adaptive Pricing, or Workflows (Metronome has limited support for some of these)

For a full feature comparison, see [Compare basic usage-based billing and Metronome](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/usage-based/compare-metronome.md). To start a Metronome integration, see [Get started with Metronome](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/usage-based.md).

Metronome is now part of Stripe. [Learn if Metronome affects you](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/usage-based/compare-metronome.md)

## 

Usage-based billing is a common pricing model for SaaS businesses that enables you to charge customers based on their usage of your product or service. With Stripe Billing, you can set up and integrate different types of usage-based pricing models with your SaaS product.
[Get started](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/usage-based/implementation-guide.md)
## Choose your path

Unless you maintain an existing Billing Meters integration, use [Metronome](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/usage-based.md) for most use cases including starting a new integration and adding usage-based pricing to existing flat-rate subscriptions. Metronome handles real-time metering, flexible pricing models (including tiered, dimensional, and composite pricing), prepaid credits, enterprise contracts, and automated invoice generation.

If you already bill customers using Billing Meters, you don’t need to migrate. Continue using the resources below to manage your existing integration, and [compare basic usage-based billing and Metronome](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/usage-based/compare-metronome.md) to learn about the differences between the two systems.

## Basic usage-based billing resources

[Compare basic usage-based billing and Metronome](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/usage-based/compare-metronome.md): Understand the differences between basic usage-based billing and Metronome.

[Record usage for billing](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/usage-based/recording-usage.md): Record customer usage data in Stripe to bill your customers the correct amounts.

[Offer billing credits](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/usage-based/billing-credits.md): Use billing credits for prepaid or promotional usage-based products or services.

[Monitor usage](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/usage-based/monitor.md): Set up alerts for when a customer exceeds a usage threshold.

[Usage records (Legacy)](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/usage-based-legacy.md): View the legacy usage records docs.