Recurring Billing Software for Ecommerce: 12 Options Compared

Recurring billing software charges your subscribers on schedule, retries the cards that fail and lets customers change or cancel their plan. Most "best of" lists rank SaaS tools for invoicing. This one is for ecommerce brands that ship products every month, and every price and feature below comes from the vendor's own pages, read on October 14, 2026.

What recurring billing software does

Three different products get called "billing software." Knowing which one you need cuts the list in half.

Some products bundle two layers. Stripe Billing runs on Stripe Payments but can also record payments made elsewhere.11Stripe Docs, Integrate with third-party payment processors Shopify's subscription apps run on the gateway connected to your Shopify store.1Shopify Help Center, Subscriptions: considerations and payment gateways, read October 14, 2026 How a recurring card payment works under the hood, from the first customer-initiated payment to the stored credential, is covered in our guide to subscription payment processing.

How this comparison works

No tool here is ranked. We read each vendor's pricing page and documentation and kept only what they publish. The criteria are the ones that matter to a brand selling physical products on subscription:

Recurring billing software compared

Processing fees come on top of every price above, except Paddle's, which includes them. "Not named" means the vendor's pricing page doesn't list it, not that the tool lacks it: ask in the demo.

Shopify subscription apps

If your store runs on Shopify, the processor question is settled by Shopify first. Its help center sets the rule for every third-party subscription app:

The fine print matters.1Shopify Help Center, Subscriptions: considerations and payment gateways, read October 14, 2026 Stripe is "available only to select merchants." Adyen is limited to organizations with an existing Adyen approval, and not every Adyen payment method works for subscriptions. With Authorize.net, Apple Pay and Google Pay aren't supported. Automatic card updates are a Shopify Payments feature: on other gateways, you may need customers to update their card themselves. Subscription products sell only on the online store, Shopify POS, Shop and custom storefront channels.

Shopify Subscriptions

Shopify's own app is free. Shopify stores the payment details, and you can't see full card numbers once they're entered.2Shopify Help Center, Subscriptions, read October 14, 2026 It suits a store starting with a simple subscribe-and-save offer.

Recharge

Recharge's three plans are Starter at $99 a month plus 1.49% + 19¢ per transaction, Plus at $499 a month plus 1.34% + 19¢, and Custom on quote.4Recharge, Pricing, read October 14, 2026 Starter includes the customer portal, failed payment recovery, cancellation prevention and analytics, with a 60-day free trial. Bundles, Concierge SMS, loyalty and the Storefront API start on Plus, which runs on a 12-month term. The pricing page names Shopify as the platform, with native Shopify discounts, tax and shipping.

Skio

Skio sells one listed plan, Scale, at $499 a month billed annually or $599 billed monthly, plus 1% + 20¢ on orders involving a subscription.6Skio, Pricing, read October 14, 2026 It includes a no-code customer portal, payment recovery campaigns with timing optimization, a cancel flow builder, migration, SMS and an API. Recharge acquired Skio in April 2026 and says both platforms keep operating as they did.5Recharge, Recharge welcomes Skio to build the future of subscription commerce, April 2026

Loop

Loop is free up to 50 active subscriptions. Starter costs $99 a month plus 1.0% per transaction, Pro $399 a month plus 0.75%, and there's no per-order fee.7Loop Subscriptions, Pricing, read October 14, 2026 Starter includes failed payment recovery, a customer portal and bundles. Backup payment methods start on Pro. Loop is the only Shopify app here that names its processors on its pricing page: Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Authorize.net and Shopify Payments.

Recurly for Shopify

Recurly sells a separate All-Access for Shopify plan, priced on quote "as low as" under 1% of billing volume, with subscribe and save, bundles, prepaid and gift subscriptions, cancel-save flows and a hosted subscriber portal.9Recurly, Pricing, read October 14, 2026

Billing engines for your own checkout

Off Shopify, or on a headless store, the billing engine sits between your checkout and your processors. You get more control over pricing and processors, and more integration work.

Stripe Billing

Stripe Billing costs 0.7% of billing volume on pay-as-you-go, and that volume includes billing transactions processed outside Stripe.10Stripe, Billing pricing, read October 14, 2026 Smart Retries are included. Stripe's recommended default is 8 tries within 2 weeks, and it doesn't retry after hard declines such as a lost or stolen card.12Stripe Docs, Automate payment retries (Smart Retries) The hosted customer portal lets customers update their card, change or cancel their subscription and download invoices, with a coupon offer before they cancel.13Stripe Docs, Provide a customer portal to your customers

Stripe Billing can run subscriptions whose payments go through another processor. Stripe's documentation is clear about what that costs you:11Stripe Docs, Integrate with third-party payment processors

Chargebee

Chargebee's Flow plan has no monthly fee and charges 0.80% of monthly invoicing volume. Enterprise costs $99 a month plus 0.65%.14Chargebee, Pricing, read October 14, 2026 Both include basic and smart dunning, the customer portal and connections to 40+ payment gateways. The pricing page doesn't mention Shopify or ecommerce platforms.

Recurly

Recurly Starter costs $249 a month plus 0.9% of billing volume, with the first $40K of billings each month free. It includes one dunning campaign and 20+ payment gateways, with a 90-day free trial.9Recurly, Pricing, read October 14, 2026 All-Access starts at $1M of billing volume and adds multiple dunning campaigns and payment orchestration across gateways.

Maxio

Maxio's Grow plan costs $599 a month for up to $100K in monthly billings. Scale is on quote. Every plan includes collections and dunning, and 20+ payment gateways, including Maxio's own payments.15Maxio, Pricing, read October 14, 2026 Its page speaks to SaaS, AI and subscription businesses.

Zuora

Zuora doesn't publish prices: its pricing page sends you to sales. The page shows Stripe, Braintree and Adyen among connected payment providers.16Zuora, Pricing, read October 14, 2026 It's built for large companies with complex contracts and multiple entities, more than for a brand shipping one box a month.

Ordergroove

Ordergroove sells subscriptions, bundles, clubs and memberships for ecommerce. It doesn't publish prices, and it's the only tool here that lists many store platforms: Shopify, Shopify Plus, BigCommerce, commercetools, Adobe Commerce, Magento, Salesforce and a custom cart.8Ordergroove, Pricing, read October 14, 2026 Its pricing page doesn't name processors.

Inside Tagada

Build the funnel once, route every customer to the right offer

Checkout, upsells and subscriptions on one flow, with conditions per country, order or customer.

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Merchant of record: why Paddle is out for physical products

A merchant of record sells your product in its own name. It collects payment, calculates and files sales tax, and handles fraud and disputes. Paddle charges 5% + 50¢ per checkout transaction and handles tax and compliance as merchant of record.17Paddle, Pricing, read October 14, 2026

For more on the trade-off, see merchant of record in our glossary.

Several processors: the question most lists skip

A subscription business depends on cards stored months ago. Whoever stores them decides how easily you can change tools or add a processor. Shopify's own migration guide shows how slow that can be:3Shopify Help Center, Migrating subscription payment methods, read October 14, 2026

Three questions to ask every vendor, in writing:

Running more than one processor brings its own rules on which declines can be retried elsewhere. See dynamic payment routing and token vault migration.

Dunning and card rules your software must cover

Every tool here retries failed payments. The details decide how much comes back and whether the retries break card network rules. Our guide to what dunning is covers the method. When you compare tools, check these:

Sources: Visa Core Rules, April 18, 202619Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, April 18, 2026; Shopify Help Center1Shopify Help Center, Subscriptions: considerations and payment gateways, read October 14, 2026; Stripe Docs.12Stripe Docs, Automate payment retries (Smart Retries)

The full set of subscription rules (terms shown at checkout, consent, cancellation, trial reminders) is in our guide to negative option billing. To compare recovery tools on their own, see dunning management software. Why renewals fail in the first place is covered in subscription payment failures.

Which tool fits your store

Where Tagada fits

Whichever tool you pick, the order of the decision stays the same: your store platform, then your processors and where cards are stored, then dunning and the customer portal, and only then the price at your volume.