Choose a usage-based billing setup
Charge customers based on their usage of your product or service.
Usage-based billing enables you to charge customers based on their usage of your product or service. This guide helps you understand which Stripe integration pattern best fits your business needs.
Choose your integration
You can set up usage-based billing with two different patterns:
- Products and prices: Use Products and Prices to create a meter, set up pricing and billing, and send meter events to record customer usage.
- Rate cards Private preview: Use rate cards if you only offer usage-based pricing and don’t offer discounts or trials. Otherwise, use products and prices. Create a rate card, subscribe your customer, record usage, and monitor servicing events.
Private preview
Rate cards are currently in private preview and could change in shape and integration path before they’re generally available to all Stripe users. Contact here to request access.
Pricing model support
The following table describes which usage-based and recurring pricing models each integration path supports.
| Pricing model | PRODUCTS AND PRICES | RATE CARDS Private preview |
|---|---|---|
| Pay as you go | ||
| Credit burndown | ||
| Flat recurring fee | ||
| Per-seat fee | ||
| Discounts and promo codes | ||
| Trials |
Billing functionality support
The following table describes which use cases each integration path supports.
Stripe products support
The following table describes which products and features each integration path supports.
| Stripe product feature | PRODUCTS AND PRICES | RATE CARDS Private preview |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic tax support | ||
| Manual tax support | ||
| Collect payment with Checkout | ||
| Customer portal | Limited 1 | |
| Invoicing | ||
| Automations | ||
| Smart retries |
1 Users can download invoices, update payment methods and customer information. Users can’t cancel a subscription or upgrade and downgrade subscriptions.