Replace Stripe Billing / Chargebee with Self-Hosted Kill Bill
Enterprise open-source subscription billing and payment orchestration platform Stop paying 0.7%–0.8% of recurring billing volume (~$250+/mo at $35k MRR) ($250/mo for a 10-person team) and run Kill Bill on a $4.50/mo Linux VPS with full data sovereignty.
1-to-100 Seat Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Table
Comparing Stripe Billing / Chargebee (0.7%–0.8% of recurring billing volume (~$250+/mo at $35k MRR)) vs Kill Bill on Hetzner CX22 (4GB RAM / 2 vCPU).
| Team Size | Stripe Billing / Chargebee Cost | Kill Bill VPS | Net Annual Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Seat (Solo) | $250.00/mo ($3,000/yr) | $4.50/mo (CX22) | +$2,946 / year |
| 5 Seats | $250.00/mo ($3,000/yr) | $4.50/mo (CX22) | +$2,946 / year |
| 10 Seats | $250.00/mo ($3,000/yr) | $4.50/mo (CX22) | +$2,946 / year |
| 25 Seats | $250.00/mo ($3,000/yr) | $4.50/mo (CX22) | +$2,946 / year |
| 50 Seats | $250.00/mo ($3,000/yr) | $4.50/mo (CX22) | +$2,946 / year |
| 100 Seats | $250.00/mo ($3,000/yr) | $4.50/mo (CX22) | +$2,946 / year |
Production Docker Compose + Caddy Auto-SSL
Copy and run docker compose up -d on any Ubuntu 24.04 server.
# Production Docker Compose: Kill Bill (Replaces Stripe Billing / Chargebee)
services:
caddy:
image: caddy:2-alpine
restart: unless-stopped
ports:
- "80:80"
- "443:443"
volumes:
- ./Caddyfile:/etc/caddy/Caddyfile:ro
- caddy_data:/data
networks:
- stack_net
killbill:
image: killbill/killbill:latest
container_name: stack-killbill
restart: unless-stopped
environment:
- "KB_DAO_URL=jdbc:postgresql://postgres:5432/killbill"
- "KB_DAO_USER=postgres"
- "KB_DAO_PASSWORD=${POSTGRES_PASSWORD:-strongpassword}"
volumes:
- killbill_data:/data
networks:
- stack_net
postgres:
image: pgvector/pgvector:pg16
container_name: stack-postgres
restart: unless-stopped
environment:
- "POSTGRES_USER=postgres"
- "POSTGRES_PASSWORD=${POSTGRES_PASSWORD:-strongpassword}"
volumes:
- postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
networks:
- stack_net
networks:
stack_net:
driver: bridge
volumes:
caddy_data:
killbill_data:
postgres_data:
# Automatic Let's Encrypt HTTPS for Kill Bill
killbill.{$DOMAIN:yourdomain.com} {
encode zstd gzip
reverse_proxy killbill:8080
}
Why Teams Switch to Kill Bill
- ✓True Apache-2.0 open source
- ✓Multi-currency dunning & catalog trials
- ✓Real-time financial ledger
killbill/killbill:latest
Deploy Kill Bill in 60 Seconds
Sized automatically for Kill Bill (1024MB container RAM + OS overhead).
Get All 16 Pre-Built Production Stacks + Encrypted S3 Backups
Includes pre-tuned docker-compose.yml, Caddy Auto-SSL, AES-256 encrypted nightly S3/R2 Postgres backups, and Ubuntu 24.04 UFW/Fail2ban hardening scripts.