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Compare · Billing platforms

Limitr vs Recurly.

Recurly bills subscriptions and recovers failed payments, at the end of the cycle. Limitr decides what each customer may use on every call, and what it costs you.

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The short answer
Recurly

Subscription management and recurring billing, with payments and dunning.

Limitr

Decides every call in your app, with prices, costs, limits, and contract terms, then bills it.

Side by side

What happens when…

The moments that decide it, answered from each product's own docs and pricing.

When…RecurlyLimitr
An agent loop runs away at 2 a.m.Usage is charged at the end of the billing cycle. Stopping calls is up to your app.The call that would break the budget never runs. Task, customer, and org budgets are checked in your app first.
A customer costs more than they payBills revenue. We found no per-customer cost view.Margin per account is live, and a cap on what an account can cost you stops it before it turns unprofitable.
Sales signs a custom dealPlans, add-ons, ramps, and coupons.Write it as a contract in Limitr Cloud. Its prices, limits, and terms are enforced in the product on the next call.
How it’s pricedA monthly fee plus a share of billing volume.Free to build. $49 a month plus usage when live. Never a share of your revenue.

Checked November 10, 2026. Sources: Recurly usage-based billing · Recurly pricing (ERPResearch). Something out of date? Tell us.

Architecture

Where the decision happens.

The difference most comparisons skip: where a call is allowed, priced, and capped, and when.

Recurly
After the call

Usage is recorded and billed after it happens. Your app acts on alerts and webhooks, once the calls have already run.

Your app
no check first
Model or APIthe cost
afterward
Billing servicerecords it
Limitr
Inside your app, before the call

The engine runs natively in your process and decides every call in about a millisecond: allowed, priced at your cost and your price, and held to the contract. Usage goes to Limitr Cloud in the background.

Your appLimitr engine inside
decided first
Model or APIthe cost
in the background
Limitr Cloudledger and invoices

Proof

Don't take our word for it.

Bring last month's usage. We'll replay it through Limitr Analyst and show your margin per account, and what Limitr would have stopped.

100,000+users metered for The Regis Company's Fortune 500 contract971 of 1,000attack calls stopped inside the app in our abuse demo, on a real policy0network calls to decide a request. It keeps deciding when the network doesn't.Apache 2.0Read exactly what decides your calls.
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The gap

What you'd still build on Recurly.

Teams pair Recurly with code of their own. With Limitr, that part is the product.

With Recurly, you still build
With Limitr, you get
Usage limits in the product
Budgets and limits checked in your app before the call
Cost per call and margin per account
Your cost and your price on every call, so margin per account is live
Per-customer terms beyond plans and coupons
Contracts enforced in the product on the next call

Choose Recurly if recovering failed subscription payments is the core problem.

Switching

From Recurly to Limitr.

No migration day. Limitr runs next to what you have until the numbers match.

Book a replayMap your pricing
Map your Recurly plans and prices to a Limitr policy, line by line.
Run Limitr in observe mode next to Recurly and compare the numbers on real traffic.
Switch enforcement on. Customers come over as they appear, with no migration day.

Common questions

Limitr vs Recurly, answered.

Yes, as usage add-ons charged at the end of each billing cycle. Limitr decides and prices each use as it happens.

Recurly bills subscriptions and recovers failed payments, at the end of the cycle. Limitr decides what each customer may use on every call, and what it costs you. Choose Recurly if recovering failed subscription payments is the core problem.

Recurly: after the call. Usage is recorded and billed after it happens. Your app acts on alerts and webhooks, once the calls have already run. Limitr: inside your app, before the call. The engine runs natively in your process and decides every call in about a millisecond: allowed, priced at your cost and your price, and held to the contract. Usage goes to Limitr Cloud in the background.

Map your Recurly plans and prices to a Limitr policy, line by line. Run Limitr in observe mode next to Recurly and compare the numbers on real traffic. Switch enforcement on. Customers come over as they appear, with no migration day.

Recurly: A monthly fee plus a share of billing volume. Limitr: Free to build. $49 a month plus usage when live. Never a share of your revenue.

Limitr is built for them. An agent is a customer like any other, with its own plan, limits, and budget, linked to the workspace it works for. Budgets per task, customer, and org are checked in your app before each step runs, and the agent can see what it has left as a Claude tool.

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npm i @formata/limitr
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