9 best Orb alternatives for SaaS and AI companies

Billing is the backbone of your revenue strategy.

For SaaS, Fintech, and especially AI-native companies experimenting with AI pricing strategies and usage-based models, the wrong billing system can slow growth, drain resources, and create headaches for Finance and RevOps teams. (Not to mention when engineering teams are forced to step in and help.)

Orb's usage-based billing platform excels in certain scenarios, but eventually, teams realize they need more from their billing tool than just usage-based features.

Whether we’re talking deeper subscription management, stronger revenue recognition, or simply a platform that scales with your business complexity, there’s an Orb alternative out there.

That’s why in this guide, we break down the leading Orb alternatives from unified revenue platforms like Alguna, to enterprise-grade options like Zuora.

Orb usage-based billing: Comparison overview

Usage-based pricing is no longer a niche experiment—it’s firmly mainstream, accelerated by the rise of the AI economy and demand for scalable, flexible pricing.

In fact, 78% of companies using usage-based pricing adopted it in just the past five years, with nearly half doing so in the last two years alone. This rapid shift has created a surge in platforms designed to help businesses manage, meter, and monetize usage effectively.

Below is an overview of Orb alternatives challenging their usage based billing platform.

Alguna - Best Orb alternative for usage-based billing

YC-backed Alguna is a modern, all-in-one revenue management platform designed to unify the entire quote-to-revenue process for AI, Fintech and B2B companies. It consolidates pricing, quoting, and billing into a single no-code platform, streamlining revenue workflows and enabling quick experimentation with pricing models.

This end-to-end approach closes gaps between Sales, Finance, and Revenue teams by providing a single system for everything from pricing experiments to contract management and billing.

Alguna supports all major usage models. You can capture and rate usage events in real time (e.g., API calls, tokens consumed, transactions processed) and watch the usage data flow seamlessly into automated invoices.

Customers can see detailed usage breakdowns on invoices or in their dedicated customer portals, making sure there are no ugly surprises. 

Key features: 

• Flexible pricing and packaging: Create any subscription or usage-based pricing model (flat recurring, tiered, volume, pay-as-you-go, prepaid credits, etc.) directly through a no-code interface. This allows quick iteration on pricing strategies (e.g. trying new usage-based plans) without engineering work.
• Built-in CPQ and contract management: Alguna streamlines quote-to-cash by including a native CPQ tool. Sales teams can configure quotes for complex deals (with approvals and e-signature built in) and once signed, the terms sync automatically to billing and CRM records.
• Usage metering and billing automation: Designed for high-volume event processing, users can define custom usage metrics and ingestion pipelines and Alguna will meter the usage data and aggregate charges on any schedule (real-time, monthly, etc.).
• Revenue insights: Get out-of-the-box revenue analytics and reports and get a trustworthy view of billed and recurring revenue in one system without stitching together spreadsheets.
• Integrations: Alguna offers native integrations with table stakes CRMs including Salesforce and HubSpot along with accounting tools like QuickBooks, Xero, and NetSuite for financial reporting. Webhooks and API are available for custom needs.

Pricing: Alguna uses transparent flat subscription pricing starting at $399 per month for the full platform, with no percentage cut of your revenue. This is a notable contrast to many billing tools that charge based on your billable revenue or usage. 

Pros:

• Truly unified platform: Alguna offers an end-to-end solution covering pricing, quoting, and billing in one. This means fewer siloed tools (e.g. a separate CPQ, separate billing system, etc.) and a single source of truth for all revenue data.
• No-code flexibility: Alguna was built for non-technical teams. Business teams (RevOps, Finance) can self-serve to update pricing models, launch new plans or discounts, and manage customer accounts without coding.
• Built for usage-based and subscription models: Unlike older subscription-focused systems, Alguna was built with usage-based billing in mind from the start. It handles complex consumption metrics and real-time billing natively.
• Custom contract functionality: Compared to Orb, which has limited contract management, Alguna lets you customize contracts based on discounts, bespoke terms, and hybrid plans (e.g., base subscription + usage + prepaid credits + discount). With e-signatures directly available in Alguna, contracts flow automatically into billing and reporting after they’ve been signed. 

Cons:

• Newer market entrant: Alguna came out of Y Combinator in summer 2023 to challenge legacy players that couldn’t keep up with market changes.
• Less suited for simplicity at small scale: Alguna is designed for comprehensive revenue ops, very early-stage startups with basic needs (e.g. a single $5/month subscription product) might not fully utilize its power. In those cases, a lightweight tool or even Stripe Billing could suffice until complexity grows.

Best for: 

• B2B SaaS and AI companies that are scaling up and need a platform that offers hybrid self-serve plans and custom contracts along with an integrated CPQ, e-sign, and billing. 
• High-growth startups in AI or Fintech experimenting with AI pricing models and evolving usage-based models are a great fit for Alguna’s platform.
• Finance and RevOps teams that want a no-code platform to manage pricing and billing changes on their own in one unified platform.

Stripe Billing - Best for startups with basic subscription needs already using Stripe

Stripe Billing is Stripe’s own subscription and invoicing module. It’s a developer-friendly solution that integrates seamlessly with Stripe Payments, making it convenient for businesses that want an all-in-one payment and billing stack.

Early stage startups tend to use Stripe for credit card processing, so adding Stripe Billing can be an easy way to start handling subscriptions and invoices in the same system.

While easy to get started, Stripe Billing isn’t built for complexity and companies often look for Stripe alternatives as they start to scale.

Key features:

• Recurring subscription management: Stripe Billing supports the creation of subscription plans with various billing intervals (monthly, annual, etc.), free trials, and coupons. It automates recurring charges on saved payment methods and will generate invoices for each billing cycle.
• Usage-based billing: For metered billing needs, Stripe allows usage tracking for products. You can create metered billing plans where you report usage (via API) for each customer and Stripe will calculate the charge according to a pricing formula (per-unit, tiered, volume tiers, etc.). It’s relatively basic (the usage must be reported to Stripe each period), but it covers common models.
• Robust APIs: Stripe’s APIs are a highlight. Developers can programmatically manage customers, subscriptions, coupons, and usage reports easily via API or Stripe’s client libraries. Webhooks are available to notify your app of billing events (like invoice paid, subscription canceled, etc.).

Pricing: Stripe Billing’s pricing is usage-based and layered on top of Stripe’s standard payment processing fees. Customers pay 0.7% of the billing volume (i.e. 0.7% of each recurring transaction).

Pros:

• All-in-one convenience: Using Stripe Billing means your subscription management and payment processing are in one platform. There’s no need to integrate a separate billing system with a payment gateway as you get both in Stripe.
• Developer friendly: Stripe is famous for its excellent developer experience. The APIs and docs for Stripe Billing are no exception and engineering teams can set up complex billing logic relatively quickly.
• Global payments infrastructure: Stripe natively supports many payment methods (credit/debit cards, ACH, SEPA, Apple Pay, etc.) and currencies, which Stripe Billing can leverage.

Cons:

• Fees can stack up: The biggest downside is cost. Stripe Billing’s ~0.7% fee on revenue is on top of Stripe’s processing fees. This can become expensive as you scale high transaction volumes or large ACV customers.
• Limited advanced billing features: Stripe Billing is great for straightforward SaaS models, but it lacks many advanced capabilities such as automations around custom contract management for larger deals.
• Developer-oriented: While Stripe has an admin dashboard, many non-technical users find it less intuitive for performing certain tasks (like editing subscriptions or proration settings) compared to UIs of tools like Alguna.

Best for: 

• Startups and small businesses that have relatively standard subscription billing needs and are already using (or plan to use) Stripe for payments.
• Simple SaaS models, especially B2C or self-serve SaaS where you just need to charge credit cards on a schedule and maybe track usage in a basic way.

Chargebee - Best Orb alternative for standard B2B or B2B subscription models

Chargebee is a popular subscription management and recurring billing platform that has been around for over a decade. It’s best known for helping SaaS and e-commerce businesses automate their subscription workflows.

Chargebee has historically focused on recurring billing (hence strong support for subscription plans, trials, coupons, etc.), and in recent years it has expanded capabilities through acquisitions. 

While it has added some usage-based billing features, its core strength is still subscription billing and related analytics. Businesses that are moving away from basic subscription management typically look for Chargebee alternatives.

Key features:

• Comprehensive subscription management: Chargebee supports creating products and plans with various billing cycles (monthly, yearly, custom intervals) and offers features like free trial periods, setup fees, add-on charges, quantity-based plans, and plan upgrades/downgrades
• Hybrid Billing (subscriptions + usage): Chargebee supports usage-based billing in conjunction with subscriptions. While not initially built for usage-based billing, it covers common needs where you have an overage or consumption component to your plans.
• Integration ecosystem: One of Chargebee’s strengths is a large list of integrations. It connects with 30+ payment gateways (Stripe, Braintree, Adyen, etc.) and all major ERP systems and CRMs.

Pricing: Chargebee’s Performance plan starts at $599 per month for up to $100K in billing per month. 

Pros:

• Rich feature set for subscription businesses: Chargebee is a tried-and-tested solution with a robust set of features for subscription management. It handles the “nuts and bolts” very well – recurring billing, proration, trials, cancellations, reactivations, all with a lot of flexibility.
• Finance-friendly integrations: Chargebee plays nicely with finance tech stacks. Finance teams enjoy built-in integrations to accounting software and tax systems, making reconciliation and compliance easier.

Cons:

• Not focused on usage-first companies: While Chargebee supports usage-based billing, it will take a lot of engineering effort to get started as well as maintain it.
• Too complex for simple needs: Chargebee is feature-rich, which also means complexity. For a very simple business model, Chargebee can feel like over-engineering. Plus, implementation can be long and cumbersome.
• Cost as you scale: Chargebee’s pricing can become expensive for high-growth companies. 

Best for: 

• Mid-stage SaaS companies and subscription-based businesses that need a reliable, full-featured billing system to automate their growing subscriber base. 
• Standard B2B or B2C SaaS models offering monthly/annual plans, perhaps with add-ons or some usage overages.

Amberflo - A developer-first alternative to Orb

Amberflo is a SaaS metering and billing platform that tracks usage-based pricing plans, manages the measurement of all usage data, and enables companies to create scalable pricing strategies.

Unlike traditional subscription billing software, Amberflo is developer-first and focuses on capturing usage data at scale, then powering flexible pricing plans on top of that data. Think of it as the “AWS billing” approach offered as a service, it meters any kind of product usage and helps you turn that into billable events, invoices, and analytics.

Key features:

• Real-time usage metering: Amberflo can ingest usage events in real-time via its APIs or SDKs. You instrument your product to send usage data (e.g. “user X consumed Y units of service Z”) to Amberflo, and it will record and aggregate these events.
• Usage-based pricing models: On top of the metered data, Amberflo lets you define pricing plans and models. It supports a variety of usage pricing structures: per-unit pricing, tiered pricing, volume pricing, prepaid credits, free tiers, and more.
• Analytics and insights: The platform provides dashboards and reports to analyze usage and revenue. Because it collects raw usage events, Amberflo can offer granular visibility into how your customers are consuming your product. 

Pricing: Amberflo’s pricing is custom based on usage across all plans.

Pros:

• Purpose-built for usage-based monetization: If your business model is centered on usage (UBP – Usage-Based Pricing), Amberflo is tailor-made for you. It excels at the granular metering that usage-based companies require.
• Highly flexible: Amberflo is very flexible, you can meter any metric and define any pricing. This means you’re not constrained by a rigid billing system. For instance, you could roll out a completely new pricing dimension by just instrumenting a new meter, rather than waiting on a billing provider to support that feature.
• Built for scale: Built by ex-AWS folks, Amberflo is designed with scale in mind. It can handle massive event volumes and the system processes events quickly, enabling near real-time billing calculations. 

Cons:

• Narrower scope (billing vs. full suite): Amberflo is focused on metering and billing. It is not a full subscription management suite like some others in this list. It doesn’t handle, for example, subscription lifecycle beyond usage – things like complex subscription amendments, quote generation, or built-in CRM workflows
• Developer reliance (and steep learning curve): Adopting Amberflo requires engineering effort to instrument your product and integrate the APIs. If your team is not prepared to spend time on billing integration, Amberflo might feel too technical.
• Cost at scale uncertain: The usage-based pricing of Amberflo is double-edged. It’s great when you’re small, but one should carefully model the costs when you have a very large usage volume. There isn’t publicly available detailed pricing, so watch out for financial “gotchas.”

Best for:

• Product-led companies and SaaS vendors who are deeply invested in usage-based pricing or “pay-as-you-go” models.
• Infrastructure or API providers (e.g., cloud service, AI/ML API, developer platform) where every unit of usage counts toward revenue

Metronome - Best for infrastructure and database companies

Metronome is a usage-based billing platform geared towards large-scale SaaS and infrastructure companies that can handle massive volumes of usage events and complex billing logic with accuracy.

It provides a full real-time billing pipeline that ingests events, aggregates usage, and generates invoices. Designed to scale to billions of events and high customer counts, Metronome is typically seen as an “enterprise-grade” usage billing solution.

But not every company is ready for a setup favoring enterprise companies, so plenty of Metronome competitors, including Alguna and Lago, offer platforms that make it easier to get started.

Key features:

• High-throughput usage ingestion: Metronome can process usage data at extreme scale – their architecture handles millions of events per second with guaranteed delivery and processing. This is crucial for companies with lots of usage data (think of a monitoring service collecting data points, or a communications API counting messages).
• Data warehouse sync and analytics: Metronome can sync data to warehouses like Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift in near real-time. This is a boon for data-driven finance teams who want to run custom queries or join billing data with other datasets.
• Real-time usage alerts: It includes features for setting up usage alerts and notifications. Both internal teams and end-customers can get alerted when certain thresholds are hit.

Pricing: Not publicly listed. Platform fee plus usage-based components, reported to start at $1k per month.

Pros:

• Enterprise-grade scalability: Metronome is known to be very performant at scale – it’s often the go-to when other systems begin to lag or choke on volume. If you process huge amounts of usage data, Metronome can likely handle it without breaking a sweat.
• Supports complex B2B deals: For companies with complex enterprise pricing, Metronome stands out. It was built with input from enterprise billing scenarios – e.g., you can set up contract-specific pricing and terms per customer.
• Minimal coding for custom logic: Despite flexibility, you don’t necessarily have to write custom scripts for billing logic – Metronome tries to make as much as possible configurable in their UI or via YAM.

Cons:

• Not a full Quote-to-Cash CRM/CPQ: Metronome covers billing and a chunk of revenue ops, but it’s not a CPQ or CRM. Large companies still pair Metronome with CRM systems (Salesforce, etc.) and possibly custom CPQ tools.
• Not geared towards non-technical users: It’s not exactly plug-and-play as a lot of the heavy lifting might still be set up by developers or technical consultants. For revenue teams wanting a simple UI to create a new plan or run a quick report, Metronome could feel a bit much. Some training and expertise is required to fully leverage it.
• High cost: The most glaring downside is cost. Metronome is expensive and is likely one of the most expensive options on the market for billing.

Best for:

• Infrastructure or database companies that require consumption-based billing rather than simple billing workflows.
• Late-stage or enterprise SaaS companies that have significant usage-based or hybrid billing complexity

m3ter - Best for products with multiple usage dimensions

m3ter (pronounced “meter”) is a UK-based usage-based billing and pricing operations platform aimed at empowering B2B software companies to implement and iterate on usage-based pricing strategies.

The platform acts as a middle layer that automates metering, pricing calculations, and invoice generation, freeing up teams from building these capabilities in-house.

m3ter can handle both purely usage-based models and hybrid models, but really shines when usage is a key component of pricing.

Key features:

• Automated metering and data integrity: m3ter can ingest usage events from various sources and automates the aggregation and cleansing of that data. It will detect formatting errors or duplicates in usage data and flag them for remediation to ensure that billing inputs are accurate at scale.
• Real-time billing: m3ter performs real-time bill calculations. This means as usage data comes in, m3ter can continuously compute running totals so that both you and your customer can see how charges are accruing mid-cycle.
• Cost allocation and analytics: m3ter includes tools to analyze and forecast usage and revenue. A cost allocation feature helps companies understand their costs per customer or per unit (useful if you also have costs tied to usage, so you maintain margins).

Pricing: No publicly listed pricing. They likely tailor pricing to client size and usage.

Pros:

• Quickly iterate pricing: The ease of configuring pricing in m3ter is a major benefit. Want to launch a new pricing model? You can set it up in m3ter, run a simulation, and go live quickly. 
• Integrates into modern stacks: m3ter understands that scale-ups likely already have a mix of tools (Stripe, CRMs, etc.). Their connectors (like for Salesforce) and open API mean you can slot m3ter into your existing workflow without ripping everything out. 
• Strong customer support: As a newer entrant, m3ter has been building its reputation on being hands-on with support.

Cons:

• Not a full subscription suite: If a company primarily needs classic subscription management (e.g., managing seat licenses, advanced dunning, dealing with subscription cancellations/upgrades), m3ter alone might not cover your needs across the entire billing cycle.
• Usage-focused (not Finance suite): m3ter’s strong suit is the operational side of pricing and billing. It is not a comprehensive finance management platform. 
• Too complex for small startups: If you’re at very early stages or your usage metrics are very low volume, implementing m3ter might be more effort than needed. It’s designed to automate intricate billing processes that become painful at scale, meaning it’s also one of the most difficult platforms to integrate into your tech stack.

Best for:

• Growth-stage B2B SaaS companies that are introducing or expanding usage-based pricing and need more flexibility than their initial billing setup provides.
• Product with multiple usage dimensions or you want to start experimenting with consumption-based models but don’t want to rebuild your billing from scratch.

Recurly - Best for traditional subscription models

Recurly is a long-standing subscription management and recurring billing platform widely used across consumer subscription businesses but also SaaS.

It provides an easy-to-use system to manage subscribers, plans, and payments, with a particular strength in dunning (failed payment recovery) and churn management.

While Recurly has added support for usage-based add-ons, its sweet spot is still traditional subscription models (monthly fees, annual plans, etc.).

Key features:

• Subscription lifecycle management: Recurly manages the entire subscriber lifecycle – sign-ups, upgrades/downgrades, cancellations, refunds, and reactivations. It allows multiple subscription plans per customer (multi-subscription support), and handles edge cases like pausing subscriptions or postponing them.
• Payments and gateway flexibility: Recurly supports a wide array of payment gateways and methods. You can connect Recurly to gateways like Stripe, Braintree, PayPal, etc., and even multiple gateways at once for redundancy or geographic optimization.
• Dunning and churn reduction tools: One of Recurly’s standout features is its smart dunning campaigns. You can configure how and when to retry failed transactions, and Recurly will automatically email customers to update their card details using customizable templates. 

Pricing: Custom based on number of transactions.

Pros:

• Quick Deployment: Recurly is often praised for being very user-friendly and quick to implement. Many companies have integrated Recurly and launched subscriptions in a matter of days or weeks.
• High success in payment recovery: Recurly has a strong track record with dunning. Their customers often report improvements in churn rates because Recurly’s retry logic and update capabilities recover a lot of failed transactions.
• Rich feature set for subscription promotions: Create coupons (promo codes) easily (percentage off, amount off, free trial extensions, etc.), set up gift subscriptions, offer trials, and even have custom fields to track marketing campaigns on subscriptions. 

Cons:

• Not focused on usage-based billing: While you can attach usage charges in Recurly (via metered add-ons), it’s not as sophisticated in that area. If your model is heavily usage-based, Recurly might feel lacking.
• Limitations for complex billing logic: Recurly is not as flexible as some newer usage-centric platforms. If you have very complex billing logic (e.g., multi-dimensional usage rating, advanced bundling, or per-seat pricing that changes based on thresholds), Recurly might not handle it natively.
• Basic analytics and revenue recognition: Recurly’s reporting is good for SaaS metrics but not deep financial analytics. If you need sophisticated cohort analysis or revenue recognition schedules, you’ll need to export data to another system. 

Best for:

• Mid-market companies in the subscription economy, particularly those focusing on standard recurring revenue models.

Maxio - Best for revenue recognition

Maxio is a unified subscription management and financial operations platform born from the 2021 merger of Chargify and SaaSOptics.

The platform combines Chargify’s subscription billing capabilities with SaaSOptics’ strength in revenue management and analytics. In March, they also acquired Revops to expand Maxio’s capabilities further.

While Maxio can be powerful, you can’t avoid the fact that the platform is a result of three separate products that have been combined (and still being integrated), resulting in a somewhat disjointed experience for customers.

Key features:

• Complete subscription and billing management: Maxio supports the full range of subscription management: recurring billing with different models (flat-rate, tiered, usage add-ons, etc.), automated invoicing, proration for mid-period changes, discounts, trials, and even complex contract terms like multi-year deals or custom start dates.
• Analytics and SaaS metrics: Maxio includes a robust analytics suite for SaaS KPIs. Given SaaSOptics’ legacy, it tracks metrics like MRR (with components like new MRR, expansion, contraction, churn), bookings, billings, cash collections, customer counts, average revenue per account, cohort analyses, etc.
• Revenue recognition and financial reporting: A key strength of Maxio (thanks to the SaaSOptics DNA) is built-in revenue recognition automation and GAAP reporting.

Pricing: Maxio’s Grow plan starts at $599/month for up to $100k in billings.

Pros:

• All-in-one revenue operations: Maxio’s biggest pro is that it consolidates multiple functions – billing, subscription analytics, and financial reporting – into one platform
• Built for finance teams: Maxio is often described as “built for finance folks”. It has the canned reports and terminologies (ARR, MRR, deferred revenue, etc.) that a CFO cares about right out-of-the-box
• Automated efficiency: With Maxio, finance teams can close books faster and with more confidence. Automatic revenue schedules and one-click sync to accounting means less manual journal entries

Cons:

• Learning curve and complexity: Maxio is a complex system. Implementing it can take time (often up to 12 months) and typically requires a well-planned project, possibly with Maxio’s onboarding team or a consultant.
• Disjointed experience: Additional complexity is added by having to effectively integrate with three different platforms (Chargify, SaaSOptics, and RevOps).
• Slow support: With the mergers, some users have reported that support can be slow at times (this was also mentioned for Chargify in the past). When dealing with complex billing issues, waiting on support can be frustrating.
• Cost: While Maxio’s pricing is in line with its value, it is a significant expense. For a startup graduating from something like Stripe Billing (which was cheap at first), paying $7k+ a year plus dedicating time to implement can be a barrier. 

Best for:

• B2B SaaS companies that need a financial-grade billing system. 
• Companies that have a dedicated finance team who want to automate and tighten billing and reporting.

Zuora - Best for enterprise companies with complex billing

Zuora is a legacy player when it comes to subscription billing. In its early days (we’re talking 2007), it became famous as the champion of the “Subscription Economy.” Today it’s owned by private equity firm Silver Lake.

Designed to handle extremely complex billing scenarios, multi-element arrangements, and high volumes, the platform caters mainly to large enterprises and companies in transformation to subscription models. 

While still a key player, Zuora was built way before the age of AI monetization, making it significantly more difficult for them to keep up with newer, purpose-built platforms like Alguna.

Key features:

• Flexible usage pricing models: Zuora allows you to configure a wide array of usage-based charge models—including flat fees, per-unit billing, tiered pricing, overages, prepaid with drawdown, committed usage levels, and multi-attribute pricing.
• Workflow and customization: Zuora is highly customizable. It has a workflow engine (Zuora Workflow) to automate business processes (e.g., sending custom notifications, syncing data to other systems, conditional logic for approvals). You can also extend it via API or even write code (using their platform tools) to implement custom behaviors.
• Compliance and ecosystem: Zuora is PCI Level 1 compliant (and can either store payment details or tokenize via gateway) and supports various compliance needs like GDPR. It has a large ecosystem of integrations and partners. 

Pricing: Zuora is one of the more expensive solutions starting at $50k + implementation and integration fees.

Pros:

• Built for enterprise: Zuora can handle massive scale of transactions and customers. If you anticipate needing to manage millions of subscribers or very high throughput usage events, Zuora is proven in that space.
• Enterprise-grade compliance and audit: Big companies often choose Zuora because it checks all the compliance boxes. It produces audit trails for changes, you can enforce SSO and role-based access controls in detail, and with RevPro can ensure ASC 606 revenue compliance.
• Community expertise: Zuora has been around since 2007 and has a robust community of users and certified professionals. If you need help or advice, there are user groups, consultants, and a wealth of documentation. 

Cons:

• Lack of usage‑based and consumption‑based billing flexibility: Usage billing isn't Zuora’s strongest feature, and configuring advanced models (like postpaid credits or tiered consumption) is challenging. 

⚠️ Zuora acquired Togai in 2024 to offer improved usage metering capabilities. You can use Zuora’s built-in consumption functionality or opt to leverage the enhanced Togai-powered tools, depending on your needs.

• Very high complexity (and overhead): Zuora’s flexibility comes at the cost of significant complexity. Implementing Zuora is akin to implementing an ERP system. It can take several months (or more than a year for huge projects) with a dedicated team. Many companies need to hire dedicated admins or consultants just to keep it running. This is one of the main reasons teams eventually start looking for Zuora alternatives.
• Steep learning curve for users: Users often find Zuora’s UI and processes not as user-friendly as newer SaaS tools like Alguna. It was designed with an “admin/operations” mindset rather than self-service.
• Cost: Zuora is one of the most expensive options. For mid-sized or smaller companies, it’s usually cost-prohibitive (unless maybe VC-funded and aggressively scaling with a complex model). You have to consider not just license cost, but also implementation and maintenance costs.

Best for: 

• Large enterprises or rapidly-scaling companies with highly complex billing needs and the resources to manage an enterprise system.
• Industries like telecommunications and media conglomerates, IoT services,  large-scale SaaS or Cloud services.

Which Orb alternative is right for you?

Every company’s revenue workflow looks different. If you’re running a n early-stage SaaS or AI startup, Stripe Billing might get you live quickly with minimal overhead. As you grow, platforms like Chargebee and Maxio can help bring order to subscriptions, compliance, and reporting. 

For companies leaning heavily into consumption or hybrid pricing, Amberflo, Metronome, and m3ter provide purpose-built usage billing capabilities. And if you’re operating at true enterprise scale, Zuora still offers unmatched global coverage and complexity (with a steep price tag).

What stands out across these comparisons is the trade-off between flexibility, cost, and complexity. Most tools excel at one or two of these, but fall short of unifying them all. That’s where Alguna differentiates: by giving founders, CFOs, and RevOps teams a single system for subscriptions, usage, CPQ, invoicing, and analytics, without forcing them into enterprise bloat or endless custom integrations.

If you want to unify your revenue workflows while staying agile, Alguna is the Orb alternative that scales with you.