June 2026 Summaries

On June 11, 2026, Adyen announced its acquisition of Orb, a leading specialist in usage-based billing, which will integrate Orb's advanced billing engine into Adyen's extensive payment infrastructure. This move has implications for businesses evaluating usage-based billing platforms like Lago and Orb, particularly concerning vendor independence, payment service provider (PSP) neutrality, and the location of billing logic. Adyen's acquisition aims to provide a unified monetization solution, appealing particularly to existing Adyen payment users, though it raises questions about long-term PSP neutrality and strategic alignment. Lago, an open-source billing infrastructure, contrasts with Orb by offering self-hosted deployment options, maintaining PSP neutrality, and allowing greater control over billing logic through open architecture. While Orb's managed platform provides depth without operational overhead, its integration with Adyen may limit flexibility for businesses that prioritize independent billing strategies and customizable pricing models. The acquisition reflects broader trends in the industry, where billing platforms are increasingly aligning with payment processors, as seen with Stripe's acquisition of Metronome, prompting organizations to carefully consider their long-term billing needs and the strategic implications of their platform choices.

Many teams evaluate alternatives to Chargebee not out of dissatisfaction, but because their billing needs evolve beyond what Chargebee's subscription-first model was built to handle. Chargebee is a cloud-only, mature SaaS revenue platform with strong capabilities in subscriptions, usage billing, and financial operations, making it suitable for finance-led projects. However, when faced with complex billing requirements such as real-time credit management, custom enterprise rate cards, or self-hosting needs, teams often turn to Lago, an open-source billing infrastructure. Lago supports both self-hosted and managed cloud deployments, offering greater control over billing logic, which is critical for engineering-led teams, particularly in AI and API industries where usage-based billing, real-time credit enforcement, and payment processor independence are crucial. The recent acquisitions of Metronome by Stripe and Orb by Adyen have further differentiated the platforms, with Lago maintaining payment processor neutrality. Pricing models differ significantly, with Chargebee typically following a revenue-scaled fee structure, while Lago offers a flat fee or free for self-hosted options, making it a compelling choice for companies past the $3-5M ARR mark seeking cost predictability. Ultimately, the decision between the two platforms hinges on whether a team's billing logic needs to reside within their engineering stack or a managed SaaS suite.

For two decades, SaaS operated under the principle of prioritizing power users due to the negligible marginal cost of serving additional users, but the advent of AI products has disrupted this model. In AI-driven platforms, heavy users incur significantly higher costs as their engagement increases, leading to the "AI margin cliff" where the cost of serving a customer surpasses the revenue from their contract. Despite decreasing per-token prices, overall costs rise due to increased usage, similar to Jevons' observation that efficiency can increase total consumption. Token pricing appears linear but is complex, influenced by factors like output costs, model routing, and tool calls. To address the disconnect between static pricing and fluctuating costs, the Lago Agent SDK offers a solution by tracking the real cost of model usage and applying a markup, allowing for flexible pricing strategies like separate metering for premium usage, setting a margin floor, or billing based on actual spend. This approach aims to maintain predictability for customers while ensuring companies are aware of and can manage their margins effectively in the AI landscape.