Orb vs Metronome: Adyen vs Stripe for AI agent billing

Who owns Orb and Metronome now?

Both of the best-known usage billing engines now belong to payment companies. That moves the first question from which engine has better features to which payment processor you want your billing tied to. Details come from the Stripe, Adyen and Orb announcements, checked November 10, 2026.

• Usage-based billing software compared

How do Orb and Metronome prices compare?

Metronome Starter charges 0.8% of billing volume plus $0.04 per 1,000 ingested events. Orb Business sells credits at $6 each, or less with volume discounts. One credit covers $1,000 of billings or 200,000 events, so the list rate is 0.6% plus $0.03 per 1,000 events, and Orb gives 100 free credits to start on Business. Both sell custom enterprise plans, and payment processing comes on top. Prices checked November 10, 2026.

AI agent products tend to send many events per dollar billed, because each tool call or model response is an event. In the second row, event fees make up most of the bill.

Which handles prepaid credits for AI agents better?

Both support prepaid credits that draw down in real time, top-ups at a threshold and balance alerts. Neither sits in the path of your API calls: your product sends events after usage happens and acts on the alerts.

In Metronome's prepaid model, Metronome charges the customer through your billing provider, most often Stripe, before it grants credits. It can recharge a balance automatically when it drops below a threshold, and it sends a webhook at zero so your system can cut off access. Its threshold notifications are evaluated at least once every three minutes. Stripe's LLM token billing, in public preview, runs on Metronome and keeps OpenAI, Anthropic and Google token prices in sync.

Orb Business includes prepaid credits with real-time drawdown, threshold billing, real-time usage and spend alerts, and pricing simulations on real customer data. Orb can trigger automated responses, such as cutting off access when a customer's credits run out. Commitments and minimums need Orb Enterprise.

What do Orb and Metronome leave to an AI agent product?

A billing engine prices the events you send it. When your customers' agents call third-party APIs, the rest of the work stays with you.

• An account, API key and payment method at each provider the agents use.
• Paying each provider's invoice and matching it against what you billed.
• Code that sends a usage event for every call, tagged with the customer, and retries without double counting.
• A rate for every endpoint, updated when a provider changes its price.
• A check in your request path that blocks a customer whose balance hit zero.
• Provider terms for customer-facing use, which can need a separate agreement.

Where does Locus Pro fit for AI agent products?

Locus Pro supplies the APIs and the per-customer billing together. Your server calls catalog endpoints with your Locus key and names the customer with the X-Locus-End-User header. Locus checks that customer's credit balance before the provider runs, returns HTTP 402 if it is short, and charges the catalog base price plus your markup. The ledger records each charge and your margin by customer, and signed webhooks report charges, low balances, top-ups and refunds.

You set the markup. Example from the Locus catalog on November 10, 2026: Brave web search costs 30.3 credits, or $0.0303. With a 20% markup the customer pays 36.36 credits, and 6.06 credits, or $0.00606, is your margin. If Brave search is your only paid call, it can cost less with your own Brave account and API key, especially at high volume.

Customer billing comes with Enterprise, $200 a month with $30 of credits included, or Enterprise Plus, $1,000 a month with $100. Locus Pro bills only calls made through it, so it does not replace a billing engine for seats, contracts or your own product's usage.

• Locus Pro for platforms
• Plans and prices

Orb, Metronome or Locus Pro: which should you choose?

Start from your payment processor, then from what your customers' usage actually is.

• Payments on Stripe and you want Stripe's token price sync: Metronome. Check the gaps first: Metronome has no Stripe Connect or Dashboard support, and Checkout needs custom work.
• Payments on Adyen, or on Adyen and Stripe both: Orb.
• Event-heavy agent usage at modest billing volume: Orb's list rate per event is lower, but ask both vendors for volume pricing.
• You want to test a price change on real customer data before launch: Orb, which includes simulations on Business.
• You want billing tied to neither processor: Lago, open source under AGPLv3, or OpenMeter, open source under Apache 2.0 and now part of Kong.
• Your customers' agents call third-party APIs that each customer should prepay for: Locus Pro Enterprise, next to Orb or Metronome if you also bill subscriptions.

• Stripe usage-based billing explained
• How AI credits pricing works