COMPARETHE STRIPE BILLING ALTERNATIVE
Stripe moves money. Recurly grows it.
Stripe Billing is one of 25+ products built to support Stripe Payments. Subscription management is Recurly's only focus. Get the tools you need, with or without replacing Stripe for payments.
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$1.7B
in annual recovered revenue
96%
subscription renewal rate
18x
ROI average
30x
More recovered revenue per merchant than Stripe
Subscription leaders trust Recurly
Why leading teams choose Recurly
| Capability | Recurly | Stripe |
|---|---|---|
| Specialized subscription tooling — cancel-save, churn prevention, subscriber intelligence built in |
Strong
| Weak |
| Failed payment recovery — up to 70% recovered vs. Stripe's ~41% |
Strong
| Average |
| Implementation speed — weeks to value, not a multi-quarter project |
Strong
| Strong |
| Payment flexibility — 20+ gateways live today, no lock-in |
Strong
| Weak |
| Total cost of ownership — factoring processing rates, recovery losses, and dev time at scale |
Strong
| Average |
| Support model — CSMs engaged on growth strategy, not a self-serve ticket queue |
Strong
| Weak |
CAPABILITIES
Why Recurly?
Stripe Billing is one of 25+ products built to drive adoption of Stripe Payments. Recurly's entire platform exists for one reason: to grow subscription revenue. The difference shows in every billing cycle.
Keep Stripe as a gateway or replace it entirely
You do not have to tear out your payment stack. Use Stripe as your gateway while Recurly manages your full subscription lifecycle. Or switch to any of 20+ gateways and remove the dependency altogether.
ML-powered recovery that static retries cannot replicate
Stripe Billing offers basic retry schedules unaware of subscription-specific context. Recurly's ML-powered retry engine recovers up to 70% of failed payments versus Stripe's roughly 41%. At scale, that gap is revenue you're either recovering or losing every month.
Native cancel-save and voluntary churn prevention
Stripe Billing has no cancel-save flows, no in-product retention prompts, and no voluntary churn prevention. Every churned subscriber is a missed save opportunity that Recurly Engage would have caught.
Subscription-first analytics, not bolted-on reporting
Recurly gives you MRR, LTV, churn cohorts, and recovery rate out of the box. Stripe's analytics were built for payment volume, not subscriber lifecycle. Know what's making you money, not just what's processing.
"Together, we can provide the best subscriber experience. Recurly understands preparation and delivers."
Stephen Comstock
CIO (former), Customer since 2015
"After implementing Recurly, Output saw an astounding 45% decrease in card declines."
Brian Zarlenga
General Manager
Output
"One of the key reasons why we're able to get where we are is that we are very fast to react and also very flexible. Recurly plays a huge part in that."
Anton Jusufi
Director of Product Management
Fabfitfun
See what Stripe Billing cannot show you
Get a personalized side-by-side comparison of Recurly and Stripe. We will show you exactly what switching actually takes and what you stand to recover in year one.
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