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Chargebee vs. Zuora: A Detailed Look

By Jerusha Songate on March 30, 2021
Last updated on April 28, 2026

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.

Get your 14-day Baremetrics free trial and take your business to the next level.

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

  • What is the main difference between Chargebee and Zuora for subscription businesses?
    Chargebee suits businesses of all sizes with a lower starting price and broader integrations, while Zuora is built for large enterprises replacing legacy billing models.

    For SaaS founders choosing between the two as recurring billing platforms, the decision usually comes down to company stage and complexity. Chargebee starts at $299 per month, supports 30+ payment gateways, and works well for startups through enterprise. Zuora starts at $49 per month but is designed for companies shifting from product to service delivery and managing complex, multi-entity billing. Neither platform gives you real-time subscription analytics out of the box. To track MRR, churn rate, and LTV across whichever billing tool you choose, most SaaS finance teams layer in a dedicated metrics platform like Baremetrics on top.
  • How do you reduce involuntary churn caused by failed payments in a subscription business?
    Involuntary churn from failed payments is best reduced by automating payment retries, sending pre-dunning emails, and updating card details before a subscription lapses.

    Most subscription billing software like Chargebee or Zuora offers basic retry logic, but recovery rates vary significantly depending on timing and sequencing. A dedicated recovery layer adds meaningful lift. Baremetrics Recover, for example, automatically retries failed charges on an optimised schedule and sends targeted emails to subscribers with expired or declined cards, recovering revenue that would otherwise count as churned MRR. For SaaS teams tracking net revenue retention, even a 1-2 percentage point reduction in involuntary churn has a compounding effect on monthly recurring revenue over time.
  • How do you benchmark your SaaS churn rate against similar subscription companies?
    You can benchmark your churn rate against comparable SaaS companies using open datasets that segment results by average revenue per user and MRR band.

    Knowing your churn number means little without context. A 5% monthly churn rate looks very different at $50K MRR versus $2M MRR, and it looks different again depending on your average contract value and customer segment. Baremetrics publishes Open Benchmarks drawn from hundreds of real subscription businesses, letting you filter churn comparisons by ARPU to see how your retention stacks up. This is more actionable than industry averages because it accounts for billing interval, customer size, and pricing tier, the variables that actually drive churn differences across subscription companies.
  • What platforms offer automated failed payment recovery for subscription businesses choosing between billing tools?
    Automated failed payment recovery is available through a small number of tools, either built into billing platforms or added as a dedicated layer on top of your payment processor.

    When evaluating recurring billing software like Chargebee or Zuora, check whether failed payment recovery is included or sold separately. Key capabilities to look for include:
    • Intelligent retry scheduling based on card network and failure reason
    • Automated dunning emails with direct card-update links
    • Recovery reporting that shows recovered MRR separately from new MRR
    Baremetrics Recover handles this as a standalone feature that connects directly to Stripe, Braintree, or Recurly, letting SaaS teams recover failed subscription payments without changing their billing infrastructure or writing custom retry logic.
  • How do you track MRR movements broken down by new, expansion, contraction, and churned revenue?
    Tracking MRR by movement type requires splitting your monthly recurring revenue into four components: new MRR from new customers, expansion MRR from upgrades, contraction MRR from downgrades, and churned MRR from cancellations.

    Most subscription billing platforms record transactions but do not surface these distinctions automatically. For SaaS finance leads and growth teams, understanding net MRR change at this level is essential for diagnosing whether a revenue problem is an acquisition issue, a retention issue, or an expansion issue. Baremetrics pulls this breakdown in real time from your payment processor data in Stripe, Braintree, or Recurly, with no manual tagging or spreadsheet work required. You can filter each MRR movement type by customer segment, pricing tier, or billing interval to pinpoint exactly where revenue is growing or leaking.

Jerusha Songate

Jerusha has a strong interest in SaaS and finding new business opportunities. She writes for Baremetrics as part of her passion for business journalism.