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Chargebee and Zuora are cloud-based billing and invoicing solutions designed to help businesses manage their revenue and customer subscriptions. If you are looking for the right billing and invoicing solution for your business, these two companies should be at the top of your list. Both companies have top-notch features and excellent functionality.
However, before spending your money on either, you need to know what you are getting.
Do they support the payment platform you desire?
Do the automation features match your interest?
Is one of them better than the other?
Do any of them have what you want in a subscription management service?
Baremetrics is an online subscription management tool designed for both organizations and individual brands that use a subscription billing system.
In this Chargebee vs. Zuora debate, we seek to learn more about these platforms. Is Zuora better than Chargebee, or is Chargebee better than Zuora? Let’s find out.
Chargebee Vs. Zuora
These two platforms are quite useful for billing and invoicing. You do not need any coding knowledge to set up everything. They are both web-based, serving different enterprises and offering billing solutions.
Their main difference lies in the total number of integrations, with Chargebee taking the edge. Baremetrics integrates with Chargebee and Chargify to help growing SaaS & subscription driven-businesses with accurate metrics.
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If you’re curious about how your churn stacks up with similar companies, our Open Benchmarks show you average churn rates based on average revenue per user.
Chargebee
This billing and invoicing platform allow businesses to have recurrent billing plans for their subscription customers. It also allows one-time usage-based payment depending on how a company charges its customers.
Chargebee allows you to choose your preferred payment gateway easily from thirty options without the help of a programmer or coder. Businesses can also run product promotions and discounts, especially when working on new subscriptions.
Chargebee is quite pricey, with charges starting at $299 a month. However, it offers several user integrations that customers find useful.
Users enjoy automatic back-end operations such as invoicing, discount management, payment collections, tax applications, and customer communications, saving them time and effort.
You can also customize your email notifications once a customer signs up for a subscription. Chargebee is extremely easy to use with an excellent and receptive support team.
However, transitioning data from the playground to the live environment can be quite confusing.
Zuora
Founded in 2007, Zuora is an enterprise billing and invoicing company that helps businesses launch and manage their subscription-based services. It offers automatic recurring billing, quoting, collection, revenue recognition, and metrics.
It is perfect for any cloud-based business of any size that manages subscriptions through product catalogs and multiple payment methods. Just like Chargebee, it is web-based and offers 24-7 customer service.
It offers users one central hub for tackling their operations, allowing quick control of customer accounts, orders, invoicing, and update payments. Users can also quickly get reports within the hub and easily access its marketplace.
However, report building with Zuora can be hectic since you cannot link between multiple data sources. Their integration to SF is also quite awful, and most of the time, the data does not appear.
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Similarities
These two companies support all kinds of payment gateways, which users find amazing. They also allow businesses to charge for subscriptions or one-time usage. Both platforms have top-notch features and functionality.
Where then do the differences come in? Let’s take a look.
Chargebee Vs. Zuora Pricing
It would be best to consider that the cost of billing and invoicing software covers the software license, subscription fees, software training cost, required hardware, customization, maintenance, and support.
These costs define the system’s total cost of ownership. Zuora’s pricing starts at $49 a month, whereas Chargebee charges $299 upwards.
Chargebee Vs. Zuora: Target customer size
Billing and invoicing platforms usually have a defined customer size. Zuora best serves large and medium enterprises.
It was mainly set up to help companies move towards delivering services instead of products and those who aim to replace their existing billing and subscription model.
On the other hand, Chargebee serves all types of customers, ranging from small businesses to large enterprises.
Chargebee Vs. Zuora: Ease of Use
This is an important feature that you should always look out for before choosing a billing platform. Chargebee offers users a fast and easy setup with an intuitive UI and rich features.
It is also stable and offers quick updates of clients who have paid for their subscriptions.
Zuora also has a user-friendly system and is well designed for subscription billing. Users enjoy several easy-to-use features.
However, building reporting can be challenging from the number of reviews that we have seen, and the platform can be relatively slow when it comes to specific reports.
The best way of establishing ease of usage is through looking at the user reviews.
Chargebee Vs. Zuora : Customer support
Both of these platforms have commendable customer support. You can reach Chargebee via several mediums when asking for help or clarifications, and their 24-7 customer care will be willing to listen.
Zuora also has outstanding technical and customer support that will leave you fulfilled. However, they lack a Service Level Agreement where the support team can get back to you.
What suits your business?
Chargebee, Zuora, or other solutions like Stripe, PayPal, Chargify, Braintree, and Recurly are options to consider for your business operations.
You know what you need for your business based on the features that we have discussed. You can use Chargebee if you are running a small, medium, or large business and would like to automate your operation and focus on making money.
Zuora, on the other hand, best serves companies moving towards service delivery and those that want to exchange their existing billing and subscription model.
At the end of the day, make sure that you settle for a platform with a generous price model for the subscription economy.
How Baremetrics Can Help
Both Chargebee and Zuora have their fair share of advantages. Therefore, ensure that you know the features you want in billing and subscription software.
Ensure that you check our blogs for more in-depth information on how you can grant your subscription customers a better experience.
Frequently Asked Questions
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What is the main difference between Chargebee and Zuora for subscription businesses?
Chargebee is a flexible billing platform built for businesses of all sizes, while Zuora is an enterprise-focused subscription management system designed for large organizations transitioning from product to service delivery.
For SaaS founders evaluating the two, the key differences come down to target customer size, pricing, and complexity. Chargebee serves small, mid-market, and enterprise customers and starts at $299 per month. Zuora starts at $49 per month but is primarily suited to larger enterprises. Chargebee supports over 30 payment gateway integrations, while Zuora's Salesforce integration has drawn criticism for reliability issues. If you are running a subscription business and comparing chargebee vs zuora, Chargebee tends to be the more practical choice for scaling SaaS teams, while Zuora suits businesses undertaking a full billing infrastructure overhaul. -
Which billing platform is better for a SaaS startup with low MRR: Chargebee or Zuora?
Chargebee is the stronger fit for early-stage SaaS companies with low MRR, given its support for smaller businesses, intuitive setup, and broader range of pricing tiers.
Zuora was built to serve large and mid-market enterprises moving away from traditional product billing, which makes it a heavier implementation than most startups need. Chargebee offers a faster, lower-friction onboarding experience with no coding required, making it more accessible for founders who need recurring billing up and running quickly. That said, neither platform gives you visibility into your actual subscription health. To track MRR growth, churn rate, and LTV alongside your billing tool, a dedicated analytics layer like Baremetrics connects directly to your payment processor and surfaces those metrics in real time. -
What platforms offer automated failed payment recovery for subscription businesses?
Baremetrics Recover is a dedicated failed payment recovery tool that automatically retries declined charges to reduce involuntary churn for subscription businesses.
Involuntary churn caused by failed payments is one of the most common and preventable sources of MRR loss for SaaS companies. While billing platforms like Chargebee and Zuora handle the invoicing layer, they do not always provide the granular dunning logic needed to systematically recover revenue. Baremetrics Recover uses smart retry schedules and customizable dunning sequences to recapture failed payments before subscribers are lost. For subscription businesses focused on reducing churn rate and protecting LTV, pairing your billing platform with a purpose-built recovery tool is a more effective approach than relying on billing software alone. -
How do I benchmark my SaaS churn rate against similar subscription companies?
Baremetrics Open Benchmarks lets you compare your churn rate, MRR, and LTV against real data from hundreds of SaaS and subscription businesses.
Knowing your churn rate in isolation is not enough. The more useful question is how your churn rate compares to subscription businesses at a similar average revenue per user (ARPU) or MRR range. Baremetrics publishes live benchmark data drawn from its customer base, segmented by metrics like average churn and revenue per account. This gives SaaS founders and finance teams a concrete reference point when evaluating whether their retention is strong or where it needs work. You can explore the data at baremetrics.com/open-benchmarks. -
How do I track MRR, churn, and LTV when using a billing platform like Chargebee or Zuora?
Chargebee and Zuora handle billing and invoicing but do not provide the subscription analytics depth needed to accurately track MRR movements, churn cohorts, and customer LTV.
Billing platforms are built to collect and process payments. They are not built to answer questions like: what is my net MRR after expansion and contraction, which customer segments are churning fastest, or what is my projected ARR over the next 12 months? For those answers, a dedicated analytics tool is needed. Baremetrics connects directly to Chargebee, Stripe, Braintree, and Recurly and turns that raw billing data into real-time dashboards covering MRR, churn rate, LTV, and revenue forecasting. It requires no manual setup and works alongside whichever billing platform you are already using.