Stigg vs Stripe Billing
Stigg is a subscription orchestration and entitlement management platform that handles plan management, feature gating, pricing experiments, and customer portal, while delegating payment collection to Stripe, Zuora, or another billing system. Stripe Billing is a full-stack subscription billing system that includes invoicing, payment collection, tax, and revenue recognition as tightly integrated capabilities. Stigg manages the entitlement and access layer; Stripe Billing covers the full billing and payment stack. At the canonical scenario (100 customers, $2K MRR, 100K events, 5 seats), Stigg costs approximately $448/month (Growth plan) and Stripe Billing costs approximately $72/month including processing.
Choose if...
- →Teams already on Stripe, Zuora, or Chargebee that want entitlement management without replacing their billing stack
- →Product and growth teams that need to iterate on pricing tiers without engineering changes for each update
- →SaaS products with complex feature access rules, seat limits, and usage quotas across multiple tiers
- →Companies needing credit-based monetization layered over an existing subscription billing system
- →Teams already on Stripe Payments that want subscription and invoiced usage billing without switching infrastructure
- →Products with global payment needs requiring 50+ payment methods and 135+ currencies
- →Enterprise SaaS requiring contracts, commits, CPQ, and ASC 606 revenue recognition
- →Businesses that want a single vendor for payments, tax, billing, and revenue recognition
Feature comparison
| Dimension | Stigg | Stripe Billing |
|---|---|---|
| Billing model | Subscription + usage | Invoice |
| Wallet architecture | Add-on Credits and wallet primitives are well-developed with stacked grants, per-grant priority, expiry dates, and explicit drawdown order; billing of wallet top-ups runs through the connected downstream system. | Add-on Credit grants and balances exist as invoice adjustments, not a first-class wallet primitive. No real-time wallet debit. |
| Payment processing | Not applicable Stigg does not process payments. Collection is handled by the connected billing system (Stripe, Zuora, Chargebee, AWS Marketplace, Apple App Store). | Built-in |
| PSP agnostic | Not applicable | No |
| Customer portal | Drop-in Customer portal is embed-only via React, JavaScript, and Vue widgets; no hosted redirect-style billing page with a branded URL is available. | Hosted portal Stripe-hosted portal covers subscription management, payment methods, and invoice history; does not expose a real-time prepaid balance or self-service wallet top-up. |
| Auto top-up | Platform-configured | None |
| Integration model | Orchestration layer | Replaces stack |
| Profitability analytics | None | Aggregate |
| Enterprise contracts | Basic Enterprise contracts and invoicing are managed by the connected downstream billing system. Stigg's Scale plan includes custom MSA, SAML SSO, and dedicated account management. | Full support Full enterprise contract support: commits, quotes, CPQ integrations, ASC 606 revenue recognition, CRM (Salesforce, NetSuite) integrations. Metronome's contract management is being integrated post-acquisition. |
| Pricing models | Subscription, Per-unit, Tiered, Hybrid (subscription + usage), Prepaid credits / wallet, Seat-based | Subscription, Per-unit, Tiered, Volume, Seat-based, Hybrid (subscription + usage) |
Pricing comparison
- Model
- Per subscription + per seat + per event data; contract minimum applies on Growth
- Free tier
- Yes
- Starting price
- $448/month billed annually (Growth plan)
- Model
- Revenue percentage on recurring payments + Stripe Payments processing
- Free tier
- No
- Starting price
- 0.5% of recurring payments (Starter plan)
Canonical scenario — 100 customers, $2K MRR, 100K events, 5 seats
| Line item | Stigg | Stripe Billing |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fee | $0 | $0 |
| Per customer | $32 (100 × $0.32 self-service subscription rate, after Growth discount) | $0 |
| Seat fees | $160 (5 × $32/month) | $0 |
| Event fees | ~$0 (100K events well below the $448/month plan floor) | $0 |
| Revenue % | $0 | $10 (0.5% × $2,000 on Starter plan) |
| Payment processing | Not applicable | Blended |
| Total / month | $448 effective (Growth plan $448/month minimum applies; computed per-unit cost for this scenario is ~$192) | ~$72 ($10 Starter billing fee + ~$62 Stripe Payments processing at 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction on US cards; card mix dependent) |
Stigg: Computed per-unit costs for this scenario total ~$192 ($32 per-customer × 100 + $160 seats), but the Growth plan has a $448/month contract minimum billed annually, making $448 the effective monthly cost at this scale. Enterprise subscription rate ($0.47/sub after discount) would increase per-customer costs if subscriptions are classified as enterprise. Scale plan requires custom pricing. Payment processing fees are charged by the connected billing system, not Stigg.
Stripe Billing: Starter plan at 0.5% is the lowest published tier; Scale plan would cost $16 (0.8% × $2,000) in billing fees before processing. Stripe Payments processing (2.9% + $0.30 per US card transaction) is an additional cost that varies by card mix; the ~$62 estimate assumes 100 transactions at average $20. Stripe Billing inherits Metronome's metering and contract tooling post-acquisition (completed January 14, 2026); integration timelines for combined features are not publicly dated.
Stigg: strengths and limitations
- +Typed entitlement primitive with documented P95 latency under 100ms for real-time feature access checks
- +Credits suite with stacked grants, per-grant priority, expiry dates, custom consumption formulas, and explicit drawdown order
- +No-code pricing console lets product teams change entitlements, plans, and feature access without engineering tickets
- +PSP-agnostic orchestration connects to Stripe, Zuora, Chargebee, AWS Marketplace, and Apple App Store
- +Broad SDK coverage: Node, Python, Go, Ruby, Java, gRPC sidecar, plus React, JavaScript, and Vue UI components
- +Named enterprise customers including Webflow, Miro, Cloudinary, New Relic, PagerDuty, Upwork, and AI21
- −No hosted redirect-style billing portal; customer portal requires embedding React or JavaScript widgets in the host app
- −No profitability analytics — usage reporting does not ingest vendor costs for per-customer margin analysis
- −Growth plan carries a $448/month contract minimum regardless of actual per-unit usage volume
- −Sandbox tier is non-production only; production requires Growth or Scale
- −Production integrations can take weeks to months for complex configurations due to the platform's modeling overhead
- −Integration catalog depth varies — Chargebee is less thoroughly documented than Stripe and Zuora
Stripe Billing: strengths and limitations
- +Comprehensive payments infrastructure — processing, fraud, tax, compliance, and revenue recognition on one account
- +Global payment methods — 50+ payment methods and 135+ currencies with local acquiring
- +Mature developer ecosystem with extensive SDKs, documentation, and third-party integrations
- +Enterprise integrations including NetSuite, Salesforce, Stripe Data Pipeline, and ASC 606 revenue recognition
- +Metronome acquisition (January 2026) adds high-throughput SQL-based metering and enterprise contract management
- +AI-assisted Smart Retries use machine learning to recover ~9% more failed card charge revenue
- −Invoice-based architecture accumulates charges through billing cycles with no real-time wallet debit primitive
- −Tight coupling to Stripe Payments — replacing or mixing PSPs requires rebuilding billing
- −No native multi-asset wallet — no first-class tokens, GPU hours, or custom unit primitives
- −Customer portal is invoice-centric and does not expose a real-time prepaid balance or wallet top-up
- −Metronome integration is still in progress as of April 2026; combined feature GA dates are not public
- −Full revenue reporting and advanced recovery require the Scale plan (0.8%), not the Starter plan (0.5%)
Which one should you pick?
Choose Stigg if your product has complex entitlement logic (multiple plan tiers, feature flags, add-ons, and pricing experiments) and you want to manage that logic independently of your payment processor. Stigg's product-led growth tooling and no-code pricing console are well suited to SaaS products with self-serve upgrade flows and frequent pricing iteration.
Choose Stripe Billing if you want invoicing, payment collection, tax compliance, and revenue recognition in one system, or if you're already on the Stripe stack and want to minimize integration surface. Stripe Billing's global payment infrastructure and enterprise contract tooling are its primary advantages. The Metronome acquisition (completed January 2026) is adding enterprise metering and contract management capabilities.
Some teams run Stigg on top of Stripe Billing: Stigg handles plan and feature management while Stripe handles payment collection and invoicing. If that combined setup fits your architecture, the question is whether you need the entitlement abstraction layer Stigg provides or whether Stripe Billing's native product catalog is sufficient for your pricing complexity.