Payments core
Stripe
Handle subscriptions, credits, invoices, upgrades, and usage-based billing.
Best when you need flexible billing rules and can own the plumbing.
Revenue stack
A commercialization stack for subscriptions, credits, usage limits, invoices, and webhook-driven billing state that needs to stay in sync with the product.
Recommended layers
Payments core
Handle subscriptions, credits, invoices, upgrades, and usage-based billing.
Best when you need flexible billing rules and can own the plumbing.
Merchant of record
Simplify checkout, tax handling, and lightweight digital product sales.
Best when you want less payment plumbing and more operational simplicity.
Entitlements
Track plans, credits, feature access, usage limits, and webhook state.
Best when billing state needs to be visible to the app itself.
Communication
Send receipts, upgrade emails, failed payment alerts, and billing analytics signals.
Best once billing events need to drive product communication.
Decision checks
One source of truth for customer status, plan state, and credit balance.
One webhook flow that can survive retries and partial failures.
One upgrade path that customers can understand without support.
One analytics path that shows monetization without hiding product usage.