A message for SaaS companies using Stripe Billing
Your Billing Platform Is Eating Your Margins
Stripe charges 0.7% of your revenue just to manage subscriptions. That's £84,000/year at £1M MRR.
We replace it for a flat monthly fee.
Stripe Billing Cost
£7,000
per month
£84,000/yr
Managed Lago Cost
£1,500
per month (flat)
£18,000/yr
You Save
£66,000
per year
79% less
At £1M MRR, Stripe takes £84,000/yr just for billing management. We do it for £18,000/yr flat.
The Problem
What Stripe Billing Actually Costs
This is fair. Card networks and fraud prevention cost money. You keep paying this.
This is the problem. A percentage of your revenue for subscription management software.
The 0.7% at Scale
| MRR | Monthly | Annual |
|---|---|---|
| £100K | £700 | £8,400 |
| £500K | £3,500 | £42,000 |
| £1M | £7,000 | £84,000 |
| £2M | £14,000 | £168,000 |
| £5M | £35,000 | £420,000 |
And it was 0.5% until mid-2025. They raised it. What stops them raising it again?
The Insight
What You're Actually Paying For
The 0.7% covers billing features. Here's what they are:
These are solved problems.
Open-source billing engines do all of this. You're paying a percentage of your REVENUE for commodity software.
The Solution
Managed Lago
We run Lago — the open-source billing engine trusted by companies worldwide — fully managed in your cloud or ours.
Same checkout. Same payouts. Same payment dashboard.
Open-source billing orchestration. Flat monthly fee.
No more 0.7% revenue tax. Gone.
The Economics
Side by Side
“Scales with your success — against you.”
“Flat fee. Your growth is YOUR growth.”
The more successful you are, the more you save.
What You Get
Everything Stripe Billing Does.
Without the Percentage Tax.
Usage-Based Billing
Built for it from day one. Credits, tokens, metered usage — native, not bolted on.
Subscription Management
Upgrades, downgrades, proration, trials. Everything you need, nothing you don't.
Invoice Generation
Automated, customizable invoices. PDF, email, API — your brand, your rules.
Dunning & Recovery
Smart retries, grace periods, automated reminders. Recover revenue on autopilot.
Revenue Analytics
MRR, churn, ARPU, cohort analysis. Real-time dashboards without a third-party tool.
Multi-Currency
Bill in any currency. Automatic FX handling. Go global without billing friction.
API-First
Everything is an API call. Integrate in days, not months. Extensive SDKs and webhooks.
Event-Driven Architecture
Ingest billions of events. Real-time aggregation. Built for modern SaaS and AI companies.
Why Lago
Not Just Any Alternative
Open Source (MIT License)
8,000+ GitHub stars. Transparent code. No black boxes.
Built for Usage-Based Billing
The sweet spot for AI and modern SaaS. Credits, tokens, compute minutes — native, not an afterthought.
No Vendor Lock-In
It's YOUR billing data, in YOUR infrastructure. Export anytime. Migrate anytime.
Battle-Tested
Used by companies processing millions in billing. Production-grade from day one.
“If we disappeared tomorrow, your billing keeps running.
Try that with Stripe Billing.”
How It Works
Prove It First. Pay Nothing.
We run Lago alongside Stripe for a full billing cycle — at zero cost to you. Your finance team verifies every invoice matches before you switch.
Automated Audit
Our migration tool reads your entire Stripe Billing setup — every product, price, subscription, coupon, and metered metric. You get a full mapping report showing exactly how each element translates to Lago.
Deploy & Map
We deploy your managed Lago instance, run the automated migration, and connect it to your existing Stripe account for payments. Every plan, charge model, and customer is mapped and verified.
Shadow Billing (Free)No charge
Lago generates invoices for every customer alongside Stripe — but charges nobody. Both systems run in parallel on your live data. This is your proof period.
Reconciliation ReportNo charge
We deliver an invoice-by-invoice comparison to your finance team. "4,237 invoices generated. 4,231 matched to the penny. Here are the 6 edge cases and how we resolved them." Your CFO signs off.
Cut Over — Start Saving
Stripe Billing off. Lago live. Rolling cutover by customer cohort as billing cycles end — no big bang. Your first invoice from us arrives after your team has already verified everything works.
You don't pay us a penny until your finance team says yes.
The shadow billing period is free. We eat the infrastructure cost. If the numbers don't match, you walk away. No invoice. No obligation. We only win when your CFO is convinced.
FAQ
Questions You're Thinking
“Do I stop using Stripe?”
No. Stripe still processes your payments. Same checkout, same payouts, same payment dashboard. We only replace the billing and subscription management layer — the part that costs you 0.7%.
“What if Lago goes down?”
We run it with a 99.9% SLA, automated backups, 24/7 monitoring, and failover. Your billing is as reliable as any managed infrastructure service.
“Is this risky?”
Lago is open-source and battle-tested. Your billing data lives in your infrastructure. If anything, you're reducing risk by owning your billing stack instead of depending on a vendor's pricing decisions.
“What about Stripe's dunning and smart retries?”
Lago has equivalent functionality. We configure dunning rules, retry schedules, and grace periods during migration to match or exceed your current setup.
“Can I go back to Stripe Billing?”
Yes, anytime. Your subscription data is yours. No lock-in, no exit fees, no hostage situations.
Stop Paying a Revenue Tax
on Your Own Success
See exactly how much you'd save by switching from Stripe Billing to Managed Lago.
Stripe Billing Cost
£7,000
per month
£84,000/yr
Managed Lago Cost
£1,500
per month (flat)
£18,000/yr
You Save
£66,000
per year
79% less
At £1M MRR, Stripe takes £84,000/yr just for billing management. We do it for £18,000/yr flat.