Adyen vs Chargebee

Adyen is a global payments company founded in Amsterdam in 2006 by Pieter van der Does and Arnout Schuijff, and listed on Euronext Amsterdam since 2018. Adyen runs its own acquiring, processing and risk stack in one system, so a merchant gets one contract and one report for card payments, local payment methods and in-store terminals across many countries. Customers include Uber, Microsoft, eBay and OpenAI.

The platform covers online checkout through Drop-in and Components SDKs, point-of-sale terminals, Tap to Pay on phones, RevenueProtect fraud scoring, network tokenization, payouts, and Adyen for Platforms for marketplaces that onboard and pay sub-merchants. Pricing is published and usage-based: a fixed $0.13 processing fee per transaction plus a payment method fee, such as Interchange++ plus 0.60% for Visa and Mastercard. There are no setup or monthly fees, though a minimum invoice can apply depending on industry.

Adyen fits large retailers, travel and mobility companies, and marketplaces processing high volumes across several regions, where unified data and acquiring margins matter. It is a poor fit for small shops: onboarding is sales-led, integration needs developers, and support is tuned for enterprise accounts. Stripe is easier for startups and SaaS billing, PayPal brings consumer wallet reach, and Square suits small in-person sellers.

Adyen keeps growing: H1 2026 net revenue was about EUR 1.3 billion, up 19% year on year, and in July 2026 it completed the acquisitions of Talon.One (loyalty and promotions) and Orb (usage-based billing).

Chargebee is a subscription billing and revenue management platform founded in 2011 in Chennai, India. It sits between your product and one or more payment gateways (Stripe, Adyen, Braintree, PayPal, GoCardless and others) and manages everything that happens after a customer chooses a plan: trials, upgrades, proration, invoicing, collections and reporting.

Core billing handles flat, per-seat, tiered and usage-based pricing, coupons, add-ons and multiple currencies, with hosted checkout pages and a self-serve customer portal. Around it Chargebee adds dunning and smart payment retries, tax calculation through integrations, revenue recognition for ASC 606 and IFRS 15 reporting, subscription analytics such as MRR and churn, and Chargebee Retention (built on its Brightback acquisition) for cancel flows and save offers. Billing runs on a Flow plan priced as a share of monthly invoicing volume (0.80% with no base fee, or $99 a month plus 0.65%), and Enterprise deals with multi-entity features are custom.

Chargebee is a strong fit for B2B SaaS and subscription commerce companies whose pricing has outgrown simple monthly plans, or who need gateway independence for different regions. For a startup with a handful of plans already on Stripe, Stripe Billing is cheaper and faster to implement. Recurly is the closest alternative for consumer subscriptions, Maxio (formerly Chargify and SaaSOptics) targets B2B finance teams, and Paddle or Lemon Squeezy act as merchant of record, taking on global sales tax liability that Chargebee leaves with you.