Chargebee bills for you. It does not sell for you.
Their own docs put it plainly: Chargebee sits between your app and your payment gateway, does not handle settlements or payouts, and is not your merchant of record. The VAT returns stay yours. That is the comparison, not the rate.
Chargebee is a strong subscription billing platform and the comparison people make with us is not quite the right one. They are explicit in their documentation that they are not a payment gateway, do not touch settlements or payouts, and are not the merchant of record — they integrate one, Reach, for customers who want that. So the real question is not whether 0.75% beats 5% + 50¢. It is what the whole stack costs once you add the gateway fees Chargebee never sees, the merchant account you have to hold, and the tax registrations, filings and audit exposure that stay in your name. If you already run all of that and want better billing on top, Chargebee is an excellent purchase. If you wanted to stop running it, they are not the product for that.
Fungies and Chargebee, side by side
✓ Yes — we are the legal seller and we file.
No. Their docs define the term and place Chargebee outside it.
✓ Us, across 150+ countries and all 27 EU member states.
You. They calculate and support multi-region tax; the registrations and returns are yours.
✓ 5% + 50¢ per sale, all in. Negotiable at higher sales volume.
Free to $250K cumulative billing, then 0.75%. Performance is $599/mo on an annual commitment.
✓ Nothing. Processing, tax and fraud are inside the rate.
Your gateway's full rate. Their docs confirm they levy no processing fee themselves.
✓ No. You sell through ours.
Yes. Their FAQ says you need a gateway and merchant account to get paid.
✓ Daily by default, into your own connected account.
Not their concern — the gateway settles to you directly on its own schedule.
✓ We answer them. No per-dispute fee.
Yours to answer, at your gateway's fee. Chargebee records them and charges nothing.
✓ Dunning, smart retries and abandoned checkout emails included from the first sale.
Smart Dunning starts at the Performance plan. The free tier caps custom retries at five.
✓ Store builder, hosting and your own domain included, plus hosted, overlay and embedded checkout.
Hosted checkout, pricing tables and a self-serve portal. Custom domain is enabled on request.
✓ Steam key delivery, web stores for mobile in-app purchases, in-game items and currency packs.
B2B and usage-based SaaS focus. No games tooling.
Chargebee now also sells Chargebee Pay, embedded processing run through Adyen for pre-qualified customers in the US, UK and selected European countries. It gives them a payments product; it does not make them a merchant of record, and the tax position is unchanged. Its rates are not published. Where we describe what Chargebee does not do, we mean the billing platform as documented, not a judgement on its quality.
What the stack actually costs
Their fee is not the fee
Chargebee's documentation is unusually clear that they do not levy a processing fee on any transaction, because the money never passes through them. So the 0.75% is what you pay for billing software, and underneath it sits your gateway's full rate: roughly 2.9% plus a fixed fee domestically, plus an international card surcharge, plus a currency conversion charge, plus per-dispute fees. Add those and the comparison against a single all-in 5% + 50¢ looks very different from the comparison against 0.75%.
The tax registrations stay in your name
This is the whole difference and it is not a fee. Chargebee supports multi-region tax calculation, and calculation is the easy part. Someone still has to register for VAT in each jurisdiction where you cross a threshold, file the returns on each local calendar, hold the evidence, and answer the audit. With Chargebee that someone is you or your accountant. With us it is us, because we are the legal seller and it is our liability rather than a service we perform for you.
Dunning is not in the free tier
Smart Dunning is documented as available from the Performance plan, which is $599 a month on an annual commitment. Below that you get custom retries capped at five attempts that you configure yourself, against up to twelve adaptive attempts on the paid tier. Failed renewals are the single largest recoverable leak in a subscription business, so the free tier is free in a specific way. Our dunning, smart retries and abandoned checkout emails work from your first sale.
Nobody has to underwrite you twice
Chargebee requires you to obtain your own gateway and merchant account, which means your own underwriting, your own risk review and your own exposure to being deplatformed by an acquirer who has decided your category looks risky this quarter. Selling through our merchant account removes that step, which is worth most to exactly the businesses that find underwriting hardest.
One bill, one dashboard, one support thread
The billing platform, the gateway, the tax engine and the fraud tool are four vendors, four contracts and four places to look when a renewal fails. That is a real operating cost even when each individual piece is good. We are one, which is a smaller and less flexible answer, and for most teams under a certain size a better one.
When Chargebee is the better call
No provider wins every case, and a comparison that pretends otherwise is not worth your time. Here is where Chargebee is the better answer.
You want to keep your own merchant account
If you have negotiated interchange, or hold banking relationships that a merchant of record would sit in front of, Chargebee lets you keep all of it and add billing on top. We cannot — being the seller of record is the entire point of what we do, and it means your customer's card statement says our name.
You need multi-gateway routing
Their coverage runs to more than forty gateways across 150+ countries with no single-gateway lock-in, letting you route by market or switch processors without rebuilding billing. A merchant of record is structurally incapable of offering that, because the merchant of record is the processor.
Enterprise procurement is asking for certifications
They publish SOC 1 Type 2, SOC 2 Type 2, PCI DSS Level 1 and ISO 27001:2022. SOC 1 in particular matters when a customer's auditors need assurance over controls affecting financial reporting. If your deals stall on a security questionnaire, that set is hard to argue with.
You bill complex usage or need revenue recognition
Custom usage metering and aggregation, hybrid plans, CPQ for Salesforce and HubSpot, and ASC 606 revenue recognition with journal entry mapping and multi-entity support. That is a finance stack rather than a checkout, and if you need it, you need it. Their startup programme also bills your first $1M free if you are in a partner accelerator or VC portfolio and have raised under $5M.
What sellers say once they have switched
★★★★★ 4.8/5 from 10 reviews on G2 →
Vadim Finayev “We work with quite a few merchants of record, but none comes close to the support and speed of implementation of Fungies. If you want a payment partner that actually gives you the feeling they want to work with you — rather than leaving you on read for three days or randomly restricting your account — you are in the right place.”
David Elliott “I researched the options and Fungies was the best fit for functionality and customisation within a store builder you can connect to your own domain. Taking a small percentage of sales, instead of charging a subscription for every environment and plugin, is refreshing.”
Elnura Abdimanap Kyzy “The platform is user-friendly, integrates easily with APIs and webhooks, and simplifies managing digital products and subscriptions. We were up and running quickly and support has been responsive throughout. Fungies is clearly tailored to the needs of SaaS businesses.”
Francisco Magnone Rienzi “Fungies has been a great partner — fast setup, competitive pricing, and real humans providing quick answers. They are constantly rolling out new features, and I am excited to see what is next.”
5% + 50¢
per sale, and nothing else
Negotiable at higher sales volume.
No monthly fee. No minimum. No card to get started.
One rate covers the whole stack. There is no tier that unlocks tax filing and no add-on for the store builder.
- ✓ Payment processing
- ✓ Tax calculation and filing
- ✓ Fraud screening
- ✓ Chargeback handling
- ✓ Store builder and hosting
- ✓ Every platform feature
Teams who made the move
All customer stories →Leadsin.io
A hosted checkout with no payment infrastructure to build
A lead generation platform started taking monthly and yearly subscriptions without standing up any payment infrastructure of its own.
Viewbot.tv
Merchant of Record billing, live in one session
The engagement platform for Twitch and Kick streamers moved its whole subscription business onto a checkout that matches its own dark theme.
RenderAI
From days of integration to a couple of minutes
An AI image platform replaced a slow manual payment process with three subscription tiers and an overlay checkout.
Fungies and Chargebee, asked plainly
Compare us with the others
-
Paddle
Same headline rate, daily payouts instead of monthly, and a storefront in the box.
-
Stripe
One rate covering tax, subscriptions, and a storefront, instead of three line items.
-
Lemon Squeezy
A flat rate with no surcharges for selling abroad or billing monthly.
-
Dodo Payments
A lower headline that adds surcharges. Ours is flat, with disputes absorbed.
-
Creem
Cheaper per sale. Read their docs on chargebacks and payouts before deciding.
-
Gumroad
Half the commission, and AI products are welcome here.
-
FastSpring
Their rate is quote-only. Ours is on the pricing page. Compare what is published.
-
Xsolla
Their 5% is 5% plus cost of channel. Ours is the whole number.
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Cleverbridge
Enterprise merchant of record, sales-gated. Start selling today instead.
-
Nexway
Enterprise merchant of record that lists early-stage businesses as limited support.
Work out which problem you have
If it is billing logic, buy Chargebee and keep your gateway. If it is tax registrations, chargebacks and being the seller, that is the part we take, and you can test it without moving anything.