Stripe and Mixed Billing Periods: How Nadles Bridges the Gap

Stripe is one of the world’s most trusted billing and payment platforms. Its payment processing, invoicing, fraud protection, and security features make it the go-to choice for SaaS businesses, startups, and API providers alike.

But Stripe has limitations when it comes to mixed billing periods within a single subscription.

The Problem: No Mixed Billing Periods in Stripe

Stripe (like most billing platforms) assumes that all components of a subscription share the same billing period. For example:

• If you charge an annual platform fee, it must be billed annually.
• If you also want to add monthly overage charges, you can’t combine them in the same subscription.

This forces businesses into workarounds such as creating separate subscriptions or invoices, introducing complexity for both you and your customers.

The Nadles Solution

Nadles augments Stripe by adding a flexible billing engine on top of it.

• Stripe continues to handle payment processing, invoicing, fraud prevention, and compliance.
• Nadles adds the missing monetization logic: multiple billing periods, advanced pricing models, and usage aggregation.

This engine has been in operation since 2022, powering real API businesses with needs that go far beyond one-size-fits-all billing cycles.

When Mixed Billing Periods Are Useful

Mixed billing periods unlock monetization strategies that better align with customer value. Here are some real-world examples:

• Annual platform fee + monthly usage fees
  → A developer tool charges a yearly “seat” license, but API calls are billed monthly.
• Setup fee upfront + recurring service charges
  → An AI SaaS charges a one-time onboarding fee, then bills a monthly subscription.
• Yearly premium plan + quarterly add-ons
  → An enterprise plan is billed annually, but optional add-ons (e.g. dedicated support, additional storage) are billed quarterly.

Without mixed billing, you’d need multiple subscriptions and invoices, which confuses customers and complicates reporting. Nadles makes this seamless.

Separate Aggregation and Billing for Pay-as-You-Go

Beyond mixed billing, Nadles also supports separate aggregation and billing periods for usage-based pricing.

This means you can:

• Aggregate usage data daily.
• Bill customers weekly, monthly, or on any schedule you choose.

Example: a messaging API might record SMS usage daily to monitor fraud and quota, but bill monthly for the total.

Reference: docs.nadles.com/pricing/create-price#separate-aggregation-schedule-for-usage-based-prices

Conclusion

Stripe is a world-class payments platform, but it wasn’t built to handle every nuance of API monetization. Nadles fills that gap.

By combining Stripe’s secure payments with Nadles’ flexible billing engine, you get:

• Subscriptions with mixed billing periods.
• Usage-based pricing with custom aggregation and billing cycles.
• A monetization layer that grows with your business.

If you need mixed billing periods or more flexibility in Stripe subscriptions, Nadles gives you the missing piece.