What is Kill Bill used for?

Kill Bill is an open-source subscription billing and payments platform written in Java, for online businesses that want to run and extend their own billing infrastructure. It is a good fit for SaaS companies running their own billing, e-commerce stores with recurring orders and teams avoiding billing vendor lock-in.

Is Kill Bill open source?

Yes. Kill Bill is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at killbill/killbill and is written mainly in Java.

Yes. Kill Bill is open source, so the software itself is free to use. Paid plans are also available, starting at $40 per month.

Can I self-host Kill Bill?

Yes. Kill Bill can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Kill Bill an alternative to?

Kill Bill is an open-source alternative to Chargebee, Recurly, Zuora and Stripe. Other open-source alternatives to Chargebee include Lago, Meteroid and Flexprice.

Is Kill Bill actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Kill Bill was on 2 October 2026. The project has 5.8k stars on GitHub.

Kill Bill: open-source alternative to Chargebee, Recurly

About Kill Bill

Kill Bill is an open-source platform for subscription billing and payment processing. It is meant for online businesses that want to manage plans, invoices and payments themselves rather than depend on a third-party billing service, which also keeps customer and financial data under their own control.

The platform provides real-time analytics and financial reports out of the box, supports experimenting with different subscription models, and makes it straightforward to run trials and short-lived promotional discounts. It is highly modular, so functionality that is not needed can be turned off or swapped for an existing system, and an extension framework lets teams add their own behavior.

Kill Bill is written in Java and licensed under Apache-2.0. It can run on your own premises or in the cloud, and a business can begin with one area and migrate others over time. Its documentation lives on docs.killbill.io, and the project describes its approach as SaaS-style billing combined with open-source ownership.

Key features

Subscription plan and trial management
Invoicing and payment processing
Real-time analytics and financial reports
Modular architecture with replaceable components
Extension framework for custom plugins
Support for short promotional discounts

Good fit for

→SaaS companies running their own billing
→E-commerce stores with recurring orders
→Teams avoiding billing vendor lock-in

Built with: Java
Tags: billing; subscriptions; payments; invoicing; saas; java; analytics; self-hosted

Kill Bill: questions and answers

What is Kill Bill used for?: Kill Bill is an open-source subscription billing and payments platform written in Java, for online businesses that want to run and extend their own billing infrastructure. It is a good fit for SaaS companies running their own billing, e-commerce stores with recurring orders and teams avoiding billing vendor lock-in.
Is Kill Bill open source?: Yes. Kill Bill is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at killbill/killbill and is written mainly in Java.
Is Kill Bill free?: Yes. Kill Bill is open source, so the software itself is free to use. Paid plans are also available, starting at $40 per month.
Can I self-host Kill Bill?: Yes. Kill Bill can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Kill Bill an alternative to?: Kill Bill is an open-source alternative to Chargebee, Recurly, Zuora and Stripe. Other open-source alternatives to Chargebee include Lago, Meteroid and Flexprice.
Is Kill Bill actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Kill Bill was on 2 October 2026. The project has 5.8k stars on GitHub.