Orb vs Credyt
Orb is an enterprise usage-based billing platform built around SQL-defined metrics, pricing simulation, and deep finance integrations. It runs hosted rollups that process millions of events per second, invoicing at cycle end, with multi-year contract support. Credyt is real-time billing infrastructure built around per-usage authorization and multi-asset wallets: usage events are authorized before they occur and debited atomically from a customer wallet the moment each event happens. Orb and Credyt share high-throughput event processing as a foundation, but diverge on billing model: Orb accumulates usage and invoices; Credyt authorizes and debits before work starts. At the canonical scenario (100 customers, $2K MRR, 100K events, 5 seats), Orb costs approximately $720/month (estimate; public pricing requires sales) and Credyt costs $90/month plus pass-through PSP fees.
Choose if...
- →AI and infrastructure companies with complex multi-dimensional pricing that needs SQL-defined metrics and pricing simulation before rollout
- →Teams with enterprise contract requirements — commitments, multi-year deals, backdating, and high-volume event processing
- →Finance teams that need deep ERP integration, revenue recognition, and AR aging in the same billing platform
- →Companies running hybrid GTM (sales-led and product-led) that want one billing platform for both motions
- →AI products with per-request inference costs where pre-authorization prevents runaway spend before costs are incurred
- →Solo builders and early-stage teams who need credits, auto top-up, and a billing portal without frontend engineering
- →Prepaid credit and token-economy products where customers buy balance upfront and deplete it per usage event
- →Teams implementing hybrid pricing combining subscription entitlements with usage-based overages or top-up credit pools
Feature comparison
| Dimension | Orb | Credyt |
|---|---|---|
| Billing model | Invoice | Hybrid Hybrid: real-time wallet debit for usage events combined with subscription entitlements. Authorization happens before the work starts; the wallet is debited atomically at the moment of usage. |
| Usage authorization | Post-usage Threshold invoicing can trigger mid-cycle but remains post-consumption. Agentic Payment Methods (launched 2026) introduce new AI-agent payment flows but are not a pre-usage wallet authorization primitive. | Pre-usage |
| Wallet architecture | Add-on Sophisticated credit pools are a documented feature. They operate inside an invoice-based billing system: credits reduce invoice totals rather than being debited atomically per usage event. | First-class primitive |
| Multi-asset support | USD-with-labels | Native |
| Payment processing | Integrated | Built-in Built-in via Stripe with no markup on Stripe's standard fees. External PSPs are supported through the Adjustments API — the platform reflects balance changes in Credyt without a direct Credyt integration to the PSP. |
| Customer portal | Hosted portal Pre-authenticated hosted portal shows usage and invoices. No self-service wallet top-up or real-time balance management is available to end customers. | Drop-in |
| Auto top-up | Platform-configured Platform (merchant) sets top-up thresholds on behalf of customers. End customers have no self-service threshold control. | Customer-controlled |
| Profitability analytics | Aggregate | Event-level |
| Enterprise contracts | Full support | Not supported Volume pricing is negotiable for large wallet counts (contact info@credyt.ai); no formal contract tooling, commit management, or enterprise contract machinery is built into the platform. |
| Deployment | Cloud only | Cloud only |
Pricing comparison
- Model
- Enterprise; pricing not publicly disclosed
- Free tier
- No
- Starting price
- Contact sales (estimated ~$720/month at small scale based on previously public pricing)
- Model
- Per Monthly Active Wallet (MAW) + per-event above 1M/month
- Free tier
- Yes
- Starting price
- $0 (first 10 active wallets/month free forever, full feature access)
Canonical scenario — 100 customers, $2K MRR, 100K events, 5 seats
| Line item | Orb | Credyt |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | ~$720 (based on previously public pricing; Orb no longer publishes rates) | $0 |
| Per customer | $0 | $90 (100 customers × $0.90 effective rate; pricing is $1/MAW with first 10 MAWs free — 90 paid wallets × $1) |
| Seat fees | Not publicly available | $0 (no seat fees) |
| Event fees | $0 | $0 (100K events within the 1M/month free allowance) |
| Revenue % | $0 | $0 (no revenue percentage) |
| Payment processing | Pass-through | Pass-through |
| Total / month | ~$720 (estimate; current rates require sales) | $90 + pass-through PSP fees |
Orb: Orb does not publish pricing. The ~$720/month platform fee estimate is based on previously public pricing captured by third-party analysis before Orb removed its public pricing page. Current rates may differ; Orb's $25M Series B (September 2024) and ongoing product expansion may have affected pricing. Payment processing fees are charged by the connected PSP at pass-through rates. A sales conversation is required for current pricing.
Credyt: Credyt charges $1 per Monthly Active Wallet with the first 10 active wallets free each month. At 100 customers the effective cost is $90 (90 paid wallets × $1). Payment processing fees from Stripe (or external PSP) are passed through without markup and are not included in Credyt's charge. Event total of 100K is well within the 1M free monthly allowance. Do not express as $0.90 per wallet — the pricing is $1/MAW with 10 free.
Orb: strengths and limitations
- +Pricing simulation — retrospective testing of pricing model changes against historical usage before deployment, reducing migration risk
- +Custom SQL metrics for complex aggregation logic, supporting multi-dimensional billing (region, model, tier, customer segment) without bespoke pipelines
- +High-throughput hosted rollups architecture designed to process millions of events per second with backfill support for late data
- +Deep finance integrations — NetSuite, Salesforce, data warehouses, and ASC 606 revenue recognition alongside detailed invoice management
- +Multi-year enterprise contracts with commitments, backdating, amendments, and multi-product deals
- +Agentic payment support for AI agents executing payments on behalf of end users, launched in 2026
- −Post-usage invoicing model — usage accumulates and is billed at cycle end; threshold invoicing triggers mid-cycle but is still post-consumption
- −Pricing not publicly available — enterprise-level pricing requires a sales conversation with no published starting figure
- −No real-time pre-authorization primitive — there is no documented way to query wallet state and block an action before it runs
- −Auto top-up is platform-configured — end customers cannot set their own top-up threshold or amount via self-service
- −Implementation overhead — setting up metering, pricing models, and invoice workflows requires engineering resources and billing expertise
- −Credit portal is read-only — customers view usage and invoices but cannot perform self-service top-ups or manage wallet balances
Credyt: strengths and limitations
- +Pre-usage wallet authorization prevents margin loss before AI inference costs are incurred
- +Multi-asset wallets hold USD, tokens, GPU hours, credits, and custom units in one customer wallet
- +Drop-in branded billing portal with live balances, usage history, and self-service top-up; no frontend engineering required
- +Event-level cost attribution tracks profitability per customer, per feature, and per workload
- +MCP server connects to Cursor, Windsurf, Claude Code, Codex, Lovable, Bolt, Replit, and V0 for one-prompt billing setup
- +Flat per-wallet pricing with no revenue percentage, no PSP markup, and no seat fees
- −Cloud-hosted only — no self-hosted or on-premises deployment option
- −Proprietary platform; not open source unlike Lago or Flexprice
- −No enterprise contract tooling; large volumes can negotiate custom pricing but there is no formal contract management layer
- −PSP-agnostic only in partial sense; non-Stripe PSPs require manual Adjustments API integration rather than a native connector
- −Not a drop-in replacement for invoice-based subscription billing systems such as Stripe Billing or Zuora
- −Does not process payments directly — depends on Stripe or an external PSP for payment collection
Which one should you pick?
Choose Credyt if your product charges per AI inference request and you cannot absorb the credit risk of customers spending beyond their balance. Per-usage authorization blocks work before it runs when a wallet is empty, and event-level profitability analytics let you track margin per customer against actual vendor costs. Credyt is also the simpler choice for products that do not need SQL-defined metrics. The wallet-and-authorization model fits common AI API billing patterns (per-request inference, token-based chat, batch processing) without custom aggregation logic.
Choose Orb if your billing logic is genuinely complex: multi-dimensional pricing across models, regions, and tiers; retrospective pricing simulation before changes go live; backfill handling for late data; or deep ERP integration for revenue recognition and AR aging. Orb's enterprise contract management (commitments, amendments, multi-product deals) and finance-grade integrations with NetSuite and Salesforce are its primary differentiators for teams with dedicated finance operations. Orb also ships Agentic Payment Methods for AI agents that execute payments on behalf of end users, a distinct capability from Credyt's wallet authorization model.
Both platforms suit high-volume AI billing, but they solve different problems. Orb is billing infrastructure for teams that treat pricing as a product function and need pricing simulation and dedicated finance-team tooling. Credyt is spend-control infrastructure for teams where each event carries real cost and preventing unauthorized consumption is the priority.