StackBE vs Stripe Billing

What is Stripe Billing?

Stripe Billing is Stripe's subscription management layer built on top of their payment processing infrastructure. It handles recurring payments, invoicing, and basic subscription lifecycle management.

Stripe Billing adds:

It's a natural choice for teams already using Stripe who need to add subscriptions.

What is StackBE?

StackBE is a complete subscription backend for SaaS applications. It combines authentication, subscription management, entitlements, and customer management in a single API.

StackBE includes:

StackBE uses your Stripe account through Stripe Connect, so you maintain direct customer relationships.

Key Differences

Authentication

Stripe Billing: No authentication included. You need a separate auth solution (Auth0, Clerk, Firebase Auth, etc.) and must sync user identities with Stripe customers.

StackBE: Magic link authentication built-in. Customers authenticate through StackBE, and their identity is automatically linked to their subscription. One system, one identity.

Entitlements & Feature Access

Stripe Billing: No entitlements system. You define products and prices, but checking "does this user have access to feature X?" requires custom code. Most teams use feature flags or build their own entitlement logic.

StackBE: Entitlements are first-class. Define features on each plan, then check access with a single API call. When a subscription changes, entitlements update automatically. No feature flag synchronization needed.

For more on this approach, see our guide on entitlements over feature flags.

Customer Management

Stripe Billing: Customers exist in Stripe. You query Stripe for customer data, subscription status, and billing history. Your app likely duplicates this data locally for performance.

StackBE: Unified customer records with subscription status, entitlements, and authentication all in one place. No need to sync between systems.

Developer Experience

Stripe Billing: Excellent documentation and SDKs. However, you're assembling multiple pieces: Stripe for billing, another service for auth, custom code for entitlements, and glue code to connect them.

StackBE: Single SDK, single API. Authentication, billing, and entitlements work together out of the box. Less code to write and maintain.

Webhook Complexity

Stripe Billing: You must handle Stripe webhooks to keep your system in sync. Webhooks can arrive out of order, be duplicated, or fail. Building reliable webhook handling is a significant engineering effort.

StackBE: We handle Stripe webhooks internally. You can subscribe to StackBE webhooks for events you care about, or simply query the API for current state. The complexity is managed for you.

Learn more about webhook challenges in our Stripe webhook best practices guide.

Pricing Model

Stripe Billing: 0.5% of recurring revenue on top of standard Stripe processing fees (2.9% + $0.30). So roughly 3.4% total per transaction.

StackBE: Flat monthly fee based on your tier, plus standard Stripe processing fees (2.9% + $0.30) which go directly to your Stripe account. At scale, percentage-based fees become significant—flat fees are more predictable.

When to Choose Stripe Billing

Stripe Billing is a good fit when:

When to Choose StackBE

StackBE is a better fit when:

The Bottom Line

Stripe Billing is a payment and subscription tool. StackBE is a SaaS backend.

If you just need to charge customers and manage subscriptions, Stripe Billing works. If you need authentication, entitlements, and customer management integrated with billing, StackBE saves you from building (and maintaining) that integration yourself.

Read more about why billing complexity grows in our post on why subscriptions don't belong in your core app.