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Payments
Revenue
Platforms and marketplaces
Money management
Developer resources
Overview
Billing
OverviewAbout the Billing APIs
Subscriptions
Invoicing
Usage-based billing
    Overview
    Choose a usage-based billing setup
      Use products and prices
      Use rate cards
    Record usage for billing
    Offer billing credits
    Monitor usage
Quotes
Customer management
Billing with other products
Revenue recovery
Automations
Test your integration
Tax
Overview
Use Stripe tax
Manage compliance
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Select a report
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HomeRevenueUsage-based billing

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 pricing models each integration path supports.

Pricing modelPRODUCTS AND PRICESRATE 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.

Use casePRODUCTS AND PRICESRATE CARDS Private preview
Set up multiple items per subscriptionUp to 20 Up to 1,000
Roll out prices to all subscribers without code
Set up different pricing versions by user cohort
Set a billing cadence distinct from a service period
Automate changes to subscriptions over time
Set up usage alerts
Configure an invoice finalization grace period

Stripe products support

The following table describes which products and features each integration path supports.

Stripe product featurePRODUCTS AND PRICESRATE 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.

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