Kill Bill
Kill Bill is an open-source billing and payment platform enabling subscription, usage-based, and marketplace monetization through Java-based event-driven architecture, OSGi plugins, and complementary paid Aviate enterprise tooling and support plans for Fortune 500 and growth-stage customers.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2010
- HeadquartersSan Francisco, United States
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Kill Bill does
Kill Bill is an open-source billing and payment platform founded in 2010 by Martin Westhead, Pierre-Alexandre Meyer, and Stéphane Brossier as an open-source project at Ning. The platform provides subscription billing, usage-based metering, payment orchestration, and back-office administration for companies running subscription, marketplace, consumption-based, and AI-monetization business models. The customer base spans Fortune 500 enterprises (Groupon, CARFAX, HP, Square, Rakuten, Rocket Lawyer) and SMBs across SaaS, eCommerce, AI/ML, NeoCloud, fintech, IoT, and telecom verticals, with thousands of global installations and billions of dollars in revenue processed annually.
The core platform is a Java-based billing engine built on an OSGi (Open Service Gateway initiative) plugin architecture with event-driven real-time processing of subscriptions, invoices, and payments. It supports MySQL and PostgreSQL databases, exposes a comprehensive REST API (Representational State Transfer, a standard web-services interface) with client libraries for Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, and Node.js, and is backed by over 1,100 automated tests. Modular capabilities include Kaui (web-based admin UI), Usage Metering, Wallet & Credits, Catalog & Pricing, Tax & Compliance, Plugins & Integrations, and Enterprise Operations. Native payment gateway integrations span Stripe, Adyen, PayPal, Braintree, GoCardless, Coinbase, and Forte; tax integrations include Avalara AvaTax and Vertex; ERP/CRM integrations cover NetSuite, Salesforce, SAP, HubSpot, and QuickBooks.
Kill Bill operates a dual-revenue model: the core platform is freely available under the Apache 2.0 license, while monetization flows through the proprietary Aviate enterprise accelerator (cumulative capability tiers Entourage, Growth, Flock, Finance) and tiered support plans (Launch, Growth, Enterprise). Pricing is structured as fixed annual software fees with no percentage-of-revenue component, positioned against revenue-based SaaS billing vendors. Distribution is multi-channel: open-source self-hosting, AWS Marketplace (~USD 40/month), ChaChing-hosted managed platform, Bill Rush channel partner, and direct enterprise sales targeting companies at USD 250M+ ARR. The company is privately held, 100% remote, with 1-10 employees, and has no disclosed venture funding rounds.
Kill Bill firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Kill Bill
- Legal name
- Kill Bill
- Website
- https://killbill.io
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2010
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- Kill Bill is an open-source billing and payment platform enabling subscription, usage-based, and marketplace monetization through Java-based event-driven architecture, OSGi plugins, and complementary paid Aviate enterprise tooling and support plans for Fortune 500 and growth-stage customers.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Kill Bill industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Subscription Billing and Payment Orchestration Software
- NAICS
- Financial Transactions Processing, Reserve, and Clearinghouse Activities (52232)
- SIC
- Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Bill Pay, Invoicing & Payables Platforms (BPAMAFAF)
Keywords
Where Kill Bill is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- San Francisco
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices1 record
Markets served
Kill Bill business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure, Others
Revenue model
- Open-Source Software (Free): Kill Bill core platform is free under Apache 2.0 license. Revenue is not generated directly from the open-source software but enables upsell to commercial products.
- Aviate Software Tiers: Cumulative capability tiers (Entourage, Growth, Flock, Finance) adding operational tooling, metering, catalog management, coupons, tax, and finance-grade controls. Priced as fixed annual software fees, never percentage of revenue.
- Support Plans: Launch, Growth, and Enterprise support tiers with direct access to Kill Bill core engineers. Priced as flat annual fees with cooperative debugging and 48-hour SLA for critical issues in Enterprise tier.
- AWS Marketplace Deployment: Pre-configured Kill Bill distribution on AWS Marketplace with software fee (~$40/mo) plus customer AWS infrastructure costs.
- Hosted Platform (ChaChing): Fully managed Kill Bill deployment operated by ChaChing partner. Separate commercial model for startups and SMBs wanting zero infrastructure management.
- Partner Services: Implementation and customization services through partners like Wovenware for plugin development and system integration work.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Freemium | Pay-as-you-go | Free open-source Kill Bill core with full billing engine capabilities |
| Subscription | Monthly | Pre-configured Kill Bill on AWS Marketplace (~40/month) |
| Subscription | Annual | Operational admin workspace for Kill Bill teams |
| Subscription | Annual | Catalog, pricing, and metering control plane |
| Subscription | Annual | Quote-to-cash commercial operations |
| Subscription | Annual | Finance-grade controls and governance |
| Subscription | Annual | Launch Support - Getting to production |
| Subscription | Annual | Growth Support - Running in production |
| Subscription | Annual | Enterprise Support - Mission-critical billing |
Go-to-market motion4 records
Distribution channels6 records
Marketing channels8 records
Kill Bill product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Kill Bill provides an open-source (Apache 2.0) billing and payment platform that processes subscriptions, invoices, payments, and usage metering for online businesses. Its offering spans a free open-source core, the Kaui web admin console, and the Aviate enterprise accelerator (a commercial layer adding production infrastructure, dynamic catalog API, metering, wallets, tax, coupons, and finance-grade controls) sold via fixed annual fees with optional support plans.
Product overview
Kill Bill is an open-source billing and payment platform available as a single unified core system with modular add-on capabilities. The architecture consists of: (1) Kill Bill Core Platform — the open-source billing engine processing subscriptions, invoices, payments, and usage metering; (2) Subscription Billing — catalog-driven engine for any pricing model (usage-based, prepaid, postpaid, hybrid); (3) Payment Platform — gateway-agnostic payment orchestration; (4) Kaui — web-based admin UI for back-office operations; (5) Aviate — enterprise accelerator adding production infrastructure, dynamic catalog API, metering, wallets, coupons, tax computation, and health monitoring; (6) Platform Capabilities — Usage Metering, Wallet & Credits, Catalog & Pricing, Tax & Compliance, Plugins & Integrations, and Enterprise Operations; (7) Kill Bill Hosted Platform — fully managed deployment via ChaChing partner. Companies can deploy self-hosted (free open-source), on AWS Marketplace (~$40/mo), or fully managed via ChaChing. Fixed pricing model vs. percentage-of-revenue alternatives.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- Kaui: Kill Bill Admin User Interface - a robust, user-friendly back-office web-based UI for customer success, finance, RevOps, and developer teams to manage subscriptions and payments.
- Aviate
Products and services
- Kill Bill Core Platform Open-source (Apache 2.0) billing and payment platform that powers back-end processing for subscriptions, invoices, payments, and usage metering. Battle-tested for 15+ years in PCI-compliant enterprise environments processing billions in revenue. Lets engineering and finance teams build custom billing solutions without vendor lock-in.
- Subscription Billing Catalog-driven subscription billing engine supporting any pricing model including usage-based, prepaid, postpaid, and hybrid configurations. Enables real-time invoice creation, automatic proration for plan changes, and multi-tenant white-label billing for managing thousands of tenants. Designed for SaaS, fintech, marketplace, cloud, and AI companies.
- Payment Platform Payment orchestration layer connecting to any payment gateway through a plugin API. Supports virtually all payment flows (banks, gateways, hosted payment pages, offline methods), multiple payment methods including credit cards, ACH, wire transfers, and cryptocurrency, and includes payment routing with real-time failover for maximum uptime.
- Kaui (Kill Bill Admin User Interface) Web-based back-office dashboard for managing accounts, invoices, payments, subscriptions, and tenant configuration. Enables finance, operations, support, and product teams to perform billing tasks without API access. Features user management with roles/permissions, subscription editing, customer service tools, advanced search, custom metadata, real-time KPIs, and audit/history tracking.
- Aviate Enterprise Accelerator Enterprise accelerator adding production-grade infrastructure, pre-built integrations (catalog, metering, wallets, coupons, tax, invoice sequencing), operational tooling, and enterprise support on top of Kill Bill open-source core. Features dynamic catalog management via API, usage metering with configurable billing meters, wallet with auto-replenishment, coupon/discount system, tax computation, and Aviate Health monitoring. Zero vendor lock-in with full data portability.
- Usage Metering Metering, rating, and usage-based billing module. Ingests raw usage events via API, applies aggregation rules (SUM, COUNT, MAX) and rates consumption metrics. Supports token-based AI billing, prepaid and postpaid models, and hybrid subscription+usage on single invoices. Horizontally scalable architecture that handles billions of metering events.
- Wallet & Credits Customer credit pool system enabling prepaid, postpaid, or hybrid billing. Each account gets a wallet for fund purchases and automatic top-ups; usage charges draw down balance in real time. Full double-entry ledger tracks every transaction with distributed locking. Auto-replenishment triggers top-up invoices when balance drops below threshold.
- Catalog & Pricing Pricing catalog engine for defining plans, pricing tiers, add-ons, and promotions. Aviate Catalog adds API-driven CRUD replacing static XML. Supports flat, tiered, volume, staircase, and custom pricing models. Multi-phase plans with trial, discount, and evergreen phases. Versioned catalogs for grandfathering existing subscribers.
- Tax & Compliance Automated tax calculation with country-specific codes and rates. Integrates with Avalara AvaTax and Vertex for real-time tax lookups across jurisdictions. Custom invoice templates with localization. Multi-currency invoicing with timezone awareness. Immutable audit logs for compliance. Role-based access control with LDAP/Active Directory integration.
- Plugins & Integrations Extensible plugin architecture for connecting payment gateways, tax engines, ERP/CRM systems, and custom business logic. Plugins can be written in Java (OSGi) or Ruby (JRuby) with isolated classloaders. Real-time event bus for triggering custom workflows. Comprehensive REST API with client libraries for Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, and Node.js. Backed by 1,100+ automated tests.
- Enterprise Operations Operational tooling for production billing at scale. Horizontal scaling via stateless architecture. Multi-tenancy with isolated catalogs, plugins, and data per tenant. High availability with multi-AZ redundancy. Aviate Health monitoring for real-time metrics, stuck-event detection, and diagnostics. Dunning and entitlement automation for failed-payment retry logic.
- Kill Bill Hosted Platform (ChaChing) Fully managed deployment of Kill Bill operated by ChaChing, the exclusive hosted platform partner. Zero infrastructure to manage with production-ready billing. Same Kill Bill APIs, data model, and billing logic. Designed for startups and SMBs. Migration path to self-hosted or AWS Marketplace available.
- Kill Bill Support Plans (Launch, Growth, Enterprise) Tiered annual support plans with direct access to Kill Bill core engineers. Launch Support (~$2M-$10M ARR companies) provides Slack access and best-effort guidance. Growth Support ($10M-$50M ARR) adds cooperative debugging and upgrade recommendations. Enterprise Support ($50M+ ARR and regulated/mission-critical environments) provides priority queues, 48-hour SLA for critical issues, deep investigations, and proactive architecture reviews.
- Kill Bill on AWS Marketplace Pre-configured Kill Bill distribution on AWS Marketplace. Faster path to production while maintaining infrastructure control. Approximately $40/month software fee plus customer-paid AWS infrastructure costs. Auto-scaling, multi-AZ redundancy, and automated backups in customer's AWS account.
Quantifiable outcome
- 60-80% cost savings vs typical SaaS billing vendors at $25M ARR
- +3 more outcomes
Companies that use Kill Bill
Customer profileNamed customers22 records
Segments6 records
Ideal customer profiles4 records
Kill Bill technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration17 records
AI capability2 records
Feature8 records
Kill Bill partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Eleven partnerships are on record, tiered core.
- ChaChingcoreExclusive hosted platform partner operating fully managed Kill Bill deployment. ChaChing founders bring payment expertise. Provides zero-infrastructure option for startups and SMBs with same Kill Bill APIs and data model.
- WovenwarecoreSoftware engineering firm recognized by Forrester for computer vision. Helps customers determine plugins and customizations needed for Kill Bill implementation.
- AvalaracoreAvalara AvaTax integration calculates sales and use tax for Kill Bill transactions. Prebuilt connector enables real-time and on-demand tax calculations across jurisdictions.
- Bill RushcoreFully managed commercially supported Kill Bill distribution with enterprise-grade Kubernetes deployment, Angular admin portal, SSO, document archive, and centralized billing operations management.
- AWScoreAWS Marketplace listing for preconfigured Kill Bill distribution. Auto-scaling, multi-AZ redundancy, and automated backups in customer AWS account.
- StripecoreNative payment gateway plugin integration with Stripe. Full support for payment processing, subscriptions, and billing operations.
- AdyencoreNative payment gateway plugin integration with Adyen. Supports global payment processing and multi-currency transactions.
- PayPalcoreNative payment gateway plugin integration with PayPal. Supports PayPal payments and related billing flows.
- BraintreecoreNative payment gateway plugin integration with Braintree (PayPal subsidiary). Supports credit card and PayPal payments.
- NetSuitecoreERP integration via event bus and APIs. CARFAX uses NetSuite AR integration with Kill Bill for end-to-end quote-to-cash automation.
- SalesforcecoreCRM integration via APIs. CARFAX integrates Kill Bill with Salesforce for customer and sales data synchronization.
Scale indicators11 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Kill Bill competitors and assessment
Company assessmentBroad incumbents
- Stripe Billing: Stripe's native subscription and invoicing product. Most well-funded competitor in the space with bundled payments advantage — directly comparable on subscription billing, though closed SaaS model differs from Kill Bill's OSS approach.
- Maxio: SaaS billing and financial operations platform (formerly SaaSOptics + BillingPlatform). Targets B2B SaaS companies needing subscription billing plus revenue recognition — directly competitive with Kill Bill's subscription + finance-grade controls.
- Recurly: Subscription billing and management platform focused on mid-market and enterprise recurring revenue businesses. Overlapping functionality with Kill Bill's subscription billing engine, though Recurly is fully managed SaaS.
- Chargebee: Established SaaS subscription billing platform serving thousands of B2B and B2C companies. Competes with Kill Bill on subscription management, recurring billing, and revenue operations, but as a closed SaaS with percentage-of-revenue pricing.
- Zuora: Enterprise subscription management and billing platform for large recurring-revenue businesses. Overlaps with Kill Bill's enterprise operations, multi-tenancy, and quote-to-cash capabilities at the high end of the market.
- Stenseek (Salesforce Revenue Cloud): Enterprise quote-to-cash and billing suite within the Salesforce ecosystem. Competes with Kill Bill's enterprise operations and finance-grade controls, particularly for Salesforce-native Fortune 500 deployments.
Emerging players
- Stigg: Pricing and entitlements platform with usage-based billing support for SaaS companies. Competes in adjacent catalog/pricing/entitlements space to Kill Bill's Aviate Catalog and pricing engine.
- Orb: Usage-based billing platform purpose-built for modern SaaS and AI companies. Competes with Kill Bill's Aviate Metering on ingestion, aggregation, and real-time rating for token/API/compute consumption.
- Metronome: Real-time usage-based billing platform serving high-growth AI and infrastructure companies. Overlaps with Kill Bill's metering and wallet capabilities, particularly for AI token and cloud compute billing.
Direct peers
- Lago: Open-source usage-based billing platform with similar self-hosted deployment model and metering/aggregation capabilities. Targets SaaS and AI companies with subscription + usage hybrid billing, making it the most directly comparable OSS peer to Kill Bill.
Market position
Strengths4 records
Weaknesses4 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks5 records
Key highlights6 records
Customer concentration
Kill Bill social profiles
Digital presenceKill Bill compliance and trust
Trust signalCompliance2 records
Kill Bill financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Kill Bill leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles7 records
Kill Bill funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Kill Bill M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Kill Bill
What does Kill Bill do?
Kill Bill provides an open-source (Apache 2.0) billing and payment platform that processes subscriptions, invoices, payments, and usage metering for online businesses. Its offering spans a free open-source core, the Kaui web admin console, and the Aviate enterprise accelerator (a commercial layer adding production infrastructure, dynamic catalog API, metering, wallets, tax, coupons, and finance-grade controls) sold via fixed annual fees with optional support plans.
Is Kill Bill a public or private company?
Kill Bill is a private company. It is classified as founder individual operated bootstrapped and is currently operating.
When was Kill Bill founded?
Kill Bill was founded in 2010. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is Kill Bill based?
Kill Bill is headquartered in San Francisco, United States, in the North America region.
How does Kill Bill make money?
Six revenue lines are on record. Open-Source Software (Free) is the primary driver. The others are aviate Software Tiers, support Plans, AWS Marketplace Deployment, hosted Platform (ChaChing) and partner Services.
Who are Kill Bill's main competitors?
Broad incumbents on record are Stripe Billing, Maxio, Recurly, Chargebee, Zuora and Stenseek (Salesforce Revenue Cloud). Emerging players are Stigg, Orb and Metronome. Lago is listed as a direct peer.
Does Kill Bill have an API?
Yes. Comprehensive REST API for creating subscriptions, generating invoices, processing payments, managing accounts, and querying data. Client libraries available for Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, and Node.js. Real-time event bus delivers billing events (invoice created, payment succeeded, subscription changed) as they happen via HTTP POST webhooks. Supports embedded deployment mode for high-performance or tightly coupled architectures with direct API calls without HTTP overhead. Developer documentation is at docs.killbill.io.
What industry is Kill Bill in?
Kill Bill's product category is Subscription Billing and Payment Orchestration Software. Its primary akta.pro industry code is BPAMAFAF, Bill Pay, Invoicing & Payables Platforms. Its NAICS code is 52232 and its SIC code is 7372.