Orb

Overview

Orb is a billing platform built specifically for usage-based and hybrid pricing. While Stripe Billing and Chargebee were designed around seat-based subscriptions, Orb was designed around events — API calls, tokens consumed, compute minutes, data processed.

You send usage events to Orb. Orb meters them in real time, applies your pricing model, and generates invoices. The platform calls this “revenue design” — the idea that pricing should be as flexible and iterative as the product itself.

Orb’s customer base tells the story: Replit, Vercel, Supabase, Glean. AI-native and infrastructure companies where consumption pricing is the natural business model. In January 2026, Orb rebranded around this thesis — that seat-based pricing is declining and usage-based models are becoming the default for AI-era software.

Best For

API platforms, AI/ML companies, infrastructure providers, and any SaaS product where pricing is tied to consumption rather than seats. If your billing model involves metering real-time events and translating them into invoices, Orb is purpose-built for that.

Strengths

• Usage-based billing is the entire product. Not a feature bolted onto subscription billing — every design decision assumes consumption pricing
• Real-time event ingestion. Usage events are processed as they happen, not batch-aggregated. This matters for alerting, spend caps, and mid-cycle visibility
• Pricing model flexibility. Per-unit, tiered, packaged, volume-based, and custom hybrid models. You can iterate on pricing without re-engineering billing
• Developer-first API. Clean, well-documented, designed for engineering teams that want to integrate billing into their product architecture
• Proven with AI-native companies. The customer base validates the approach — companies running real usage-based billing at scale

Trade-offs

• Requires a payment processor underneath. Orb handles metering and invoicing, not payment collection. You’ll pair it with Stripe or another processor
• Overkill for simple subscriptions. If your pricing is flat-rate or per-seat, Orb adds complexity you don’t need. Stripe Billing or Chargebee will handle it
• Smaller ecosystem. Fewer integrations and community resources compared to Stripe or Chargebee. You’re buying into a more focused tool
• Not a merchant of record. Tax compliance is your responsibility, same as Stripe

Ready to start?

• Try Orb