Metronome and Orb alternatives for small SaaS teams
Metronome, Orb and m3ter are full billing platforms. If you already invoice through Stripe and just need trustworthy usage numbers, you probably need less.
Pricing from each vendor's public page, reviewed 2026-10-11. Check the linked sources for current terms.
What the platforms charge
| Vendor | What it is | Public price |
|---|---|---|
| Metronome | Usage billing platform | Startup plan: 0.8% of billing volume + $0.04 per 1k events (USD). Custom plan not public. |
| Orb | Usage billing and invoicing | Not public; all tiers contact sales. Based on billings and events. |
| m3ter | Usage billing for mid-size and large B2B | Not public; platform fee, implementation services typical. |
| Flexprice | Open-core billing for AI products | From $199/mo + 0.5% of billing; free self-host (AGPL). |
| Lago | Open-source billing platform | Free self-host (AGPL-3.0); Premium is a custom quote. |
| UsageBox | Metering only | $0 / $10 / $30 per month (USD). |
Per Metronome's published rates, 1M events a month is about $40 in event fees plus 0.8% of whatever you invoice through it.
What small teams actually do
1. Stripe alone
Report usage straight to Stripe usage-based billing from your app. Simplest option; you own the dedupe, retry and late-event logic.
2. Self-host open source
Lago or Flexprice, free to license. You run the infrastructure (Flexprice's architecture uses Kafka and ClickHouse) and they become your biller, not just your meter.
3. A metering-only API in front of Stripe
Keep Stripe for invoicing and payments, and use a small API to record events, dedupe retries and produce monthly totals. UsageBox and Usage Lab both fit here. See how they compare.
When a full platform is worth it
If you need contracts, commits and credits, CRM/ERP sync, or invoicing outside Stripe, platforms like Metronome, Orb or m3ter do far more than a meter. If you need one number per customer per month in Stripe, they're more than you need.
Where Usage Lab fits
Flat CAD plans (free up to 100k events/month), never a % of revenue, Cloudflare edge ingestion, and native Stripe push coming soon (dry-run today). Docs · Metering for Stripe guide