Recurly

What is Recurly

Recurly is a subscription management and recurring billing platform designed to handle the full lifecycle of subscription commerce for digital and physical products. The platform provides billing orchestration, payment gateway integrations, tax and compliance hooks, revenue recognition support, and tools to manage churn and retention. It is aimed at subscription-led businesses of varying sizes, with particular strengths for mid-market and enterprise companies that need robust integrations with ERP and CRM systems.

Recurly is commonly used by SaaS companies, media and streaming services, e-commerce subscription boxes, membership programs, and any business that converts one-time buyers into recurring customers. The vendor publishes industry data such as the 2025 State of Subscriptions based on thousands of accounts and millions of subscribers, which informs product development and best practices for churn reduction and retention strategies. See their 2025 State of Subscriptions for more context on industry benchmarks.

The product surface includes hosted billing, API-first developer tools, dunning automation, analytics and reporting, and integrations with payment gateways, fraud detection, tax calculation, and enterprise systems. For technical documentation and developer resources, consult Recurly’s API documentation.

Recurly features

What does Recurly do?

Recurly centralizes recurring revenue operations and automates recurring billing workflows across acquisition, billing, retention, and recognition. Key functional areas include:

• Subscription lifecycle management: plan tiers, metered usage, add-ons and coupons, proration, and trial handling.
• Billing orchestration: multiple payment methods, hosted checkout pages, tokenization, and retry/dunning logic.
• Revenue operations: consolidated reporting, revenue recognition exports for accounting systems, and invoice management.

Recurly also offers integrations to minimize manual reconciliation and reduce operational overhead. Integrations typically cover payment gateways (tokenization and gateway switching), tax engines for jurisdictional tax calculation, fraud screening services, and ERP/CRM systems for revenue and customer data sync. The platform is designed to let product and finance teams iterate on pricing and packaging while keeping collections and compliance handled centrally.

Additional practical features include: automated dunning sequences to recover failed payments, customer self-service portals for subscription changes, support for gift and promo codes, and analytics dashboards that surface churn drivers and cohort performance. Developers can use the RESTful API and client libraries to embed subscription flows, run custom billing logic, and synchronize events with backend systems; see Recurly’s developer resources at their API documentation site.

Recurly pricing

Recurly offers flexible pricing tailored to different business needs, from startups to enterprise organizations. Their commercial model is typically a combination of a platform fee and usage-based charges (transaction or volume fees) that scale with payment volume, plus optional fees for advanced features or enterprise services. Recurly commonly provides tiered commercial packages for different levels of functionality and support, and they offer annual billing discounts for committed volume.

Common plan categories used by Recurly and similar subscription platforms include Free Plan, Starter, Professional, and Enterprise, where each category bundles a set of features: basic billing and hosted checkout in lower tiers and advanced revenue recognition, higher SLA support, and custom integrations in enterprise tiers. The exact pricing, monthly fees, transaction rates, and savings for annual commitments vary by contract, customer size, and selected add-ons.

For publicly available, up-to-date pricing details and any published starter tiers or trial offers, consult Recurly’s official resources. Visit their official pricing page for the most current information.

How much is Recurly per month

Recurly offers flexible pricing plans that commonly include a monthly platform fee plus usage or transaction-based charges. Monthly costs depend on the selected tier, payment volume, and any optional services such as advanced reporting, enterprise support, or professional services for migration and integration. For accurate monthly pricing tailored to your business, request a quote through their sales channels or review the details on their official pricing page.

How much is Recurly per year

Recurly offers annual billing arrangements that typically provide discounts compared to month-to-month billing, and contracts are often priced based on expected payment volume and required service level. Annual pricing structures can include committed transaction volumes with stepped pricing, bundled professional services, or custom enterprise agreements. For exact yearly rates and potential savings percentages for annual commitments, check Recurly’s official pricing page or contact their sales team.

How much is Recurly in general

Recurly pricing ranges from lower-entry platform fees for small customers to custom enterprise agreements for large merchants. In general, expect a combination of recurring platform fees and variable fees tied to transaction volume or processed revenue. Smaller subscription businesses should plan for an initial monthly or annual platform cost plus gateway and card processing fees, while larger customers negotiate enterprise-tier pricing that aligns with volume and SLA needs. Visit their official pricing page for the most current information.

What is Recurly used for

Recurly is used to operationalize recurring revenue models so product, growth, and finance teams can manage subscriptions without building billing infrastructure in-house. Specific use cases include:

• Converting one-time purchases to subscriptions through hosted checkout and subscription promotions.
• Managing complex billing scenarios such as usage-based charges, metered billing, mixed billing cycles, and proration rules.
• Collecting payments globally through multiple payment gateways while centralizing reconciliation and reporting.

Finance teams use Recurly to produce consistent invoice records, export data for revenue recognition, and reduce manual work in reconciliation. Growth and product teams use the platform to run pricing experiments, test packaging, and deploy targeted retention campaigns that are backed by automated dunning and recovery flows. Customer support teams use its customer portal and account management APIs to handle plan changes and refunds with an auditable trail.

Operationally, Recurly is also used for international expansion because it integrates with tax engines and global payment methods, enabling teams to offer localized payment experiences and maintain compliance with regional tax and card network rules. Reporting and cohort analysis features support churn analysis and lifetime value calculations that guide retention investments.

Pros and cons of Recurly

Recurly is a mature subscription billing platform with clear strengths and trade-offs to consider during vendor selection.

Pros:

• Robust billing and dunning capabilities that recover revenue from failed payments and reduce churn through automated retry logic.
• Broad integrations with payment gateways, tax engines, fraud services, and ERP/CRM systems to support end-to-end revenue operations.
• API-first design and developer tooling that enable custom workflows, hosted checkout, and event-driven integrations.

Cons:

• Pricing is typically usage-based and negotiated, which means small businesses should budget for platform and transaction costs that vary with scale.
• Advanced features and enterprise-grade support are commonly tied to higher-tier plans or custom contracts, which may require procurement cycles for large organizations.
• Implementations that require deep ERP or bespoke invoicing workflows can incur professional services or longer integration projects.

Selecting Recurly should involve comparing transaction economics, integration effort, and feature fit against alternatives. For many teams, the operational time saved by using a subscription platform outweighs the platform costs, but you should model expected monthly fees and transaction rates as part of procurement.

Recurly free trial

Recurly often provides ways to evaluate the platform before committing to a full implementation. Typical options include sandbox accounts for developers, trial access to product features, and demo environments for finance and operations teams.

Sandbox environments let engineers test API flows, simulate webhooks, and validate gateway integration without processing real payments. Business stakeholders can preview hosted checkout, subscription lifecycle events, and reporting through demo accounts provided during sales evaluations. For details about trial availability and how to get access, consult Recurly’s developer resources or the pricing and contact pages.

Trial and sandbox arrangements are useful to validate tax, billing, and revenue recognition workflows with your accounting and engineering teams before moving to production.

Is Recurly free

No, Recurly is not a universally free subscription platform. The company provides sandbox and trial capabilities for evaluation, but production use is billed via platform fees and usage charges. Small teams should expect to budget for a paid plan or negotiated contract to use Recurly’s production services. For current details on any entry-level or promotional offers, visit their official pricing page.

Recurly API

Recurly provides a RESTful API and client libraries in multiple languages to manage subscriptions, invoices, transactions, and customer records programmatically. The API exposes endpoints for creating and updating accounts, adding payment methods, creating subscriptions, handling trial-to-paid flows, and retrieving event histories for reconciliation. Webhooks enable event-driven architectures by delivering real-time notifications for subscription changes, billing failures, and payment events.

Developer resources include SDKs, code samples, API references, and a sandbox environment for testing integration flows. The platform’s API-first approach enables custom checkout flows, server-side control of subscription lifecycle rules, and integration of subscription events into internal systems like CRMs and ERPs. For technical details, see the official Recurly API documentation.

Authentication, idempotency keys, and rate limits are documented in the API reference; teams should design retry logic and error handling according to those guidelines. Recurly also publishes changelogs and migration notes that help engineering teams keep integrations current as new API versions are released.

10 Recurly alternatives

Paid alternatives to Recurly

• Zuora — Enterprise-grade subscription management and billing platform with deep revenue recognition, multi-entity support, and complex pricing models. Zuora is often chosen by large enterprises needing heavy configurability and finance-focused controls.
• Chargebee — Subscription billing and revenue operations platform that supports recurring billing, invoicing, and revenue recognition with packaged plans for SMBs and enterprise customers. Chargebee provides prebuilt integrations and strong analytics for growth teams.
• Stripe Billing — Billing and subscription tools from Stripe that combine payments, invoicing, and billing automation in a single platform. Stripe Billing is notable for tight integration with Stripe Payments and developer-friendly APIs.
• Chargify — Subscription billing platform focused on B2B SaaS businesses, with support for complex B2B pricing, add-ons, and billing scenarios, plus analytics and revenue reporting.
• Paddle — Commerce platform that combines checkout, payment processing, tax, and subscription billing, often used by SaaS and software vendors for simplified global compliance.
• Braintree — Payment gateway and recurring billing features (part of PayPal) that can be combined with subscription logic for merchants prioritizing payment methods and global payment options.
• SaaSOptics — Financial operations platform focused on revenue recognition, subscription analytics, and investor-ready reporting, frequently used alongside billing engines.

Open source alternatives to Recurly

• Kill Bill — Open source subscription billing and payments platform designed for extensibility; it provides core billing engine functionality and plugins for gateways, taxes, and analytics. Good for teams willing to manage self-hosted infrastructure.
• ERPNext — Open source ERP with modules for subscription billing, invoicing, and accounting; suitable for organizations that want an all-in-one system and can customize the platform.
• Solidus — An open source e-commerce platform that can be extended with subscription and recurring billing plugins; viable when you need tight control over checkout and fulfillment workflows.

When evaluating alternatives, weigh hosted SaaS ease-of-use against the control and cost advantages of open source options. Integration effort, regulatory compliance, and total cost of ownership are key decision factors.

Frequently asked questions about Recurly

What is Recurly used for?

Recurly is used for subscription management and recurring billing. It handles plan configuration, recurring charge automation, dunning and recovery, payment gateway orchestration, and reporting to support growth and finance teams managing subscription revenue.

How does Recurly handle failed payments and dunning?

Recurly includes configurable dunning and retry logic. Administrators can define sequences of retries, notification templates, and business rules to recover failed payments; these controls are typically configurable per plan or account and integrate with account status and communications.

Does Recurly integrate with ERP and CRM systems?

Yes, Recurly integrates with common ERP and CRM platforms. Integration options include native connectors, middleware, and APIs that synchronize invoices, customer records, and payment events to systems such as NetSuite, Salesforce, and other enterprise tools.

Can Recurly handle international taxes and VAT?

Yes, Recurly integrates with tax engines to calculate jurisdictional taxes. The platform supports connecting to third-party tax services for VAT/GST and sales tax calculation, and it exports tax details for accounting and compliance purposes.

Is there a Recurly sandbox for developers?

Yes, Recurly provides sandbox and developer environments. These environments let developers test API calls, simulate webhook events, and validate checkout and billing flows without processing live payments.

Why choose Recurly over building an in-house billing system?

Recurly reduces operational overhead for recurring billing and compliance. Using a commercial subscription platform avoids the ongoing maintenance of payment integrations, PCI scope, tax updates, and dunning logic, allowing teams to focus on product and growth.

When should a business consider migrating to Recurly?

Businesses should consider Recurly when subscription volume or billing complexity exceeds manual processes. Typical triggers include multiple pricing models, international expansion, high failed payment rates that need dunning automation, or the need for reliable revenue reporting and recognition.

Where can I find Recurly documentation and API references?

Recurly’s developer documentation is available online. The official API reference and developer guides provide SDKs, endpoint descriptions, and sandbox access at Recurly’s developer site: https://developers.recurly.com/.

How much does Recurly cost per user or per month?

Recurly offers competitive pricing plans that combine a platform fee with usage-based transaction charges. Exact monthly costs depend on selected features, payment volume, and contract terms—see their official pricing page for tailored quotes and published options.

Does Recurly support revenue recognition for accounting?

Yes, Recurly supports revenue reporting and exports for revenue recognition. The platform can export invoice and deferred revenue data in formats used by accounting systems and integrates with financial systems to support ASC 606/IFRS 15 compliance workflows.

recurly careers

Recurly hires across engineering, product, sales, and customer success roles to support its subscription-focused products and services. Positions typically include roles in software development, technical support, revenue operations, and product management. For current openings and recruiting details, consult their company careers page or LinkedIn.

recurly affiliate

Recurly has partner and channel programs that include referral and integration partnerships for solution providers, agencies, and platform partners. These programs often provide co-marketing resources, technical enablement, and commercial referral arrangements. Contact Recurly’s partnerships team for program requirements and commission structures.

Where to find Recurly reviews

To evaluate real-world experiences, look for reviews on independent software review sites, user testimonials, and analyst reports. Common places to find customer feedback include G2, Capterra, and published case studies on Recurly’s resources pages. For product-specific performance and integration experiences, search for case studies such as the 2025 State of Subscriptions and customer stories (for example, customers like Cinemark and PandaDoc) that describe implementation outcomes.