How much does Recurly cost?

Recurly publishes two plans. Starter is $249 a month plus 0.9% of billing volume, with the first $40,000 of billings each month included at no volume charge, and it carries a 90 day free trial. All-Access is billed annually at a percentage of billing volume Recurly advertises as low as under 1%, and needs $1 million in billing volume to qualify. Two add-ons are priced separately: Engage from $1,600 a month and RevRec from $850 a month, both billed annually. Recurly's FAQ says there is no setup fee. None of that includes card processing, which your gateway bills on top, so a Starter account billing $200,000 a month pays Recurly about $1,689 before its processor takes anything.

Is Recurly a payment processor?

No, and the distinction decides what you pay. Recurly is billing software that connects to a gateway you hold an account with. Its documentation lists 18 supported gateways including Stripe, Adyen, Braintree, Checkout.com, Cybersource, PayPal Complete, Nuvei, Worldpay and GoCardless, and the money moves through whichever one you connect. Underwriting, interchange, chargeback fees, reserves and payout timing are that gateway's business. Recurly handles plans, trials, proration, coupons, invoicing, tax and failed-payment retries. It is PCI DSS Level 1 compliant and listed on the Visa Global Registry of Service Providers, and cardholder data is sent to Recurly rather than through your own servers.

Does Recurly require a contract?

Starter does not. Recurly's FAQ says Starter is a month to month service you can cancel at any time, and that there is no setup fee. The same FAQ says its higher plans require a minimum 12 month commitment, and the All-Access tier on the current pricing page is billed annually with a $1 million billing volume minimum to qualify. Professional Services for implementation are quoted and billed separately, though Recurly says many merchants implement without them. If you sign an annual deal, pin down what counts as billing volume and what happens when you cross the included threshold, because overage is the most common billing complaint in public reviews.

How long do Recurly payouts take?

Recurly never holds your money, so it does not set payout timing. Settlement runs through whichever gateway you connected, and the funding schedule is the one that gateway or acquirer gives you, which differs across Stripe, Adyen, Braintree and Worldpay and can differ between two accounts on the same gateway. Recurly's part stops at instructing the charge, retrying it if it fails and recording the invoice. Chargebacks and reserves work the same way. If funding speed matters to your cash flow, negotiate it with your processor, because swapping billing platforms will not change it.

Recurly review

Name: Recurly
Brand: Recurly

Subscription billing and revenue recovery platform that runs on top of 18 payment gateways, from $249 a month plus 0.9% of billing volume.

No reviews yetFounded 2009Austin, TX, United States

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Starting rate: Set by your gateway, not by Recurly
Monthly fee: $249 on Starter, plus 0.9% of billings above $40,000
Payout: Varies
Contract: Month-to-month
PCI level: Level 1
Regions: US, UK +2

Overview

What Recurly does not do

Recurly does not underwrite you, does not hold your funds and does not set your card rates. Every other fact about it follows from that. You need a gateway or merchant account of your own first. Recurly then instructs the charge through it, stores the payment credential, retries the declines and produces the invoice and the tax line.

The practical consequence is two bills. One from Recurly, at $249 a month plus 0.9% of billing volume on Starter. One from your gateway, at whatever card rate you negotiated. Comparing Recurly against Stripe or Adyen on price compares two things that stack, not two things that compete.

The gateway list, and what depends on it

Recurly's pricing page says 20+ payment gateways. Its documentation lists 18: Adyen, Amazon Pay V2, Authorize.net, Braintree, Chase Paymentech Orbital, Check Commerce, Checkout.com, Commerce Hub by Fiserv, Cybersource, Ebanx, FreedomPay, GoCardless, Nuvei, PayPal Complete, Stripe, TSYS, Worldpay US eCommerce and Worldpay Global e-commerce.

Which payment methods you can accept then depends on which of those you chose, not on Recurly. ACH runs on Adyen, GoCardless, Stripe, Worldpay or Check Commerce. SEPA Direct Debit on Adyen, Stripe, GoCardless or Worldpay. Klarna arrives through Stripe. Venmo only through Braintree. Pix Automatico and UPI AutoPay only through Ebanx. Cards work in 140+ currencies across the card-capable gateways. Check the method you need against the gateway you have before assuming Recurly covers it.

Revenue recovery is the actual product

Recurly reports a 49% annual dunning recovery rate, 72% of at-risk subscribers saved, a 96% annual renewal invoice paid rate and $1.7 billion in recovered revenue across its customer base. The recovered revenue dashboard splits results by method, so you can see what came from intelligent retries, what came from account updater, what came from expired card management and what came from a backup payment method on file.

Run the arithmetic before you buy. If involuntary churn costs you a few thousand dollars a month, none of this covers the platform fee. If you bill hundreds of thousands of consumer subscriptions and a percentage point of failed renewals is six figures a year, this is the line that pays for everything else in the contract.

Recurly vs Chargebee

The two get compared constantly because they do the same job: billing on top of a gateway you bring. The difference is where you start paying. Chargebee's Flow plan begins at $0 a month plus 0.80% of invoicing volume, with a $99 a month plus 0.65% option that breaks even around $66,000 in monthly volume. Recurly starts at $249 a month plus 0.9% above a $40,000 monthly allowance.

At $40,000 of monthly billings Recurly costs $249 and Chargebee costs $320, so at the entry point Recurly is actually cheaper. The lines cross at about $84,000 a month, and above that Recurly's 0.9% pulls ahead of Chargebee's 0.65% commit rate and keeps widening: at $500,000 a month Recurly is around $4,389 and Chargebee around $3,349. What actually separates them is what each is built around: Recurly leans on subscriber retention and failed-payment recovery for consumer subscription volume, Chargebee leans on B2B SaaS quoting, entitlements and revenue recognition.

Recurly Commerce is a different product

In May 2025 Recurly bought Redfast, a churn-prediction and in-product messaging tool, and Prive, a Shopify-first subscription app, and relaunched Prive as Recurly Commerce. It manages physical goods subscriptions inside Shopify. It is not the billing platform this page is about, and it is not what the Capterra rating of 4.6 out of 5 across 62 reviews measures.

This matters when you read reviews. Search results mix the two, and complaints written by Shopify merchants who were Prive customers before the acquisition get read as complaints about Recurly's billing engine. They are not the same software or the same support team.

Best for

Digital media and streaming

Consumer subscription apps

Failed payment recovery

Enterprise subscription billing

Regions

Global

Industries

Digital media

Streaming

SaaS

Publishing

Consumer subscriptions

Listed in

Subscriptions and SaaS For Developers E-commerce Payment Processors

Pros

Publishes real entry pricing at $249 a month plus 0.9% of billing volume with the first $40,000 of monthly billings included at no volume charge, plus a 90 day free trial, so you can model the platform cost before talking to sales
Revenue recovery is the strongest part of the product: Recurly reports a 49% annual dunning recovery rate, 72% of at-risk subscribers saved and $1.7 billion recovered across its customer base
Gateway agnostic across 18 supported gateways including Stripe, Adyen, Braintree, Checkout.com, Cybersource, PayPal Complete, Nuvei, Worldpay and GoCardless, so changing processor does not mean rebuilding billing
Capterra reviewers rate it 4.6 out of 5 across 62 reviews, with customer service its highest sub-score at 4.6 and reviewers describing chat answers 'within seconds'

Cons

You pay Recurly on top of your processor. The 0.9% sits above whatever Stripe, Adyen or Braintree charge, so a Starter account billing $200,000 a month owes Recurly about $1,689 before a single card fee
Payments orchestration is not in the entry plan. Recurly's documentation says custom gateway routing is not included in Starter or Pro, so the multi-gateway pitch in practice means the All-Access tier
All-Access is billed annually and needs $1 million in billing volume to qualify, and Recurly's FAQ says its higher plans require a minimum 12 month commitment
Reviewers report bills they did not expect. A Software Advice reviewer describes a hidden transaction limit and per-transaction fees pushing the cost 40% above what was agreed

Pricing

Pricing at a glance

Starter costs $249 a month plus 0.9% of billing volume, with the first $40,000 of billings each month included at no volume charge. All-Access is billed annually at a percentage of billing volume Recurly advertises as low as under 1%, needs $1 million in billing volume to qualify, and gateway processing fees are separate on every plan.

Pricing model: Subscription, Custom quote
Contract: Month-to-month
Free trial: Yes
Monthly minimum: None on Starter. All-Access requires $1M in billing volume

Fee breakdown

Online card rate	Set by your gateway, not by Recurly
ACH / bank rate	Set by your gateway. ACH runs on Adyen, GoCardless, Stripe, Worldpay or Check Commerce
Monthly fee	$249 on Starter, plus 0.9% of billings above $40,000
Setup fee	None, per Recurly's FAQ
Monthly minimum	None on Starter. All-Access requires $1M in billing volume
Chargeback fee	Charged by your gateway or acquirer, not by Recurly
Early termination fee	None on Starter, which is month to month. Recurly's FAQ puts a 12 month minimum on its Professional and Elite plans

Features

Payment methods

Visa
Mastercard
Amex
Apple Pay
Google Pay
PayPal
ACH
SEPA
BNPL
UPI
Wallets

Integrations & deployment

API
Hosted checkout
Drop-in UI
Invoicing
Shopify

Capabilities

Recurring billing
Multi-currency
3D Secure
Tokenization
Reporting dashboard
Developer-friendly

At a glance

Currencies: Cards in 140+ currencies, with the methods and currencies you can actually use set by the gateway you connect
Payout: Varies
PCI level: Level 1
High-risk friendly: No

Reviews

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Frequently asked questions

How much does Recurly cost?: Recurly publishes two plans. Starter is $249 a month plus 0.9% of billing volume, with the first $40,000 of billings each month included at no volume charge, and it carries a 90 day free trial. All-Access is billed annually at a percentage of billing volume Recurly advertises as low as under 1%, and needs $1 million in billing volume to qualify. Two add-ons are priced separately: Engage from $1,600 a month and RevRec from $850 a month, both billed annually. Recurly's FAQ says there is no setup fee. None of that includes card processing, which your gateway bills on top, so a Starter account billing $200,000 a month pays Recurly about $1,689 before its processor takes anything.
Is Recurly a payment processor?: No, and the distinction decides what you pay. Recurly is billing software that connects to a gateway you hold an account with. Its documentation lists 18 supported gateways including Stripe, Adyen, Braintree, Checkout.com, Cybersource, PayPal Complete, Nuvei, Worldpay and GoCardless, and the money moves through whichever one you connect. Underwriting, interchange, chargeback fees, reserves and payout timing are that gateway's business. Recurly handles plans, trials, proration, coupons, invoicing, tax and failed-payment retries. It is PCI DSS Level 1 compliant and listed on the Visa Global Registry of Service Providers, and cardholder data is sent to Recurly rather than through your own servers.
Does Recurly require a contract?: Starter does not. Recurly's FAQ says Starter is a month to month service you can cancel at any time, and that there is no setup fee. The same FAQ says its higher plans require a minimum 12 month commitment, and the All-Access tier on the current pricing page is billed annually with a $1 million billing volume minimum to qualify. Professional Services for implementation are quoted and billed separately, though Recurly says many merchants implement without them. If you sign an annual deal, pin down what counts as billing volume and what happens when you cross the included threshold, because overage is the most common billing complaint in public reviews.
How long do Recurly payouts take?: Recurly never holds your money, so it does not set payout timing. Settlement runs through whichever gateway you connected, and the funding schedule is the one that gateway or acquirer gives you, which differs across Stripe, Adyen, Braintree and Worldpay and can differ between two accounts on the same gateway. Recurly's part stops at instructing the charge, retrying it if it fails and recording the invoice. Chargebacks and reserves work the same way. If funding speed matters to your cash flow, negotiate it with your processor, because swapping billing platforms will not change it.

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