Orb is an enterprise revenue platform built for high-volume usage-based pricing with custom SQL metrics and end-of-cycle invoicing. Credyt is real-time billing infrastructure where customers prepay into multi-asset wallets and usage debits immediately. This article compares their architectures, pricing, and when each fits AI products.
At a glance
Orb: A revenue design platform for companies with complex usage-based pricing. Public customers include Vercel, Replit, Supabase, Neo4j, Redis, LaunchDarkly, Glean, and Fal. Orb raised a $25M Series B in September 2024 and launched Agentic Payment Methods and AR aging features in early 2026. Cloud-hosted, proprietary, with pricing set by sales.
Credyt: Real-time billing infrastructure for AI products. Every customer gets a multi-asset wallet that holds USD, tokens, credits, GPU hours, or any custom unit. Usage is authorized against wallet state before it occurs and debited the moment the event is recorded. Cloud-hosted, proprietary, designed to sit in front of an existing PSP.
What Orb does
Orb is a revenue design platform for teams that treat pricing as a core product function. It handles high-volume usage-based billing with custom SQL metrics, dimensional pricing, and pricing simulation against historical usage. Hosted rollups process millions of events per second. Orb covers enterprise contracts with commitments, multi-year amendments, and backdating, and integrates deeply with NetSuite, Salesforce, and data warehouses for finance reporting and revenue recognition.
In 2026 Orb extended into AI-native territory with Agentic Payment Methods (payment flows for AI agents executing payments on behalf of end users) and added AR aging and dunning for finance teams running collections inside the platform.
Where Credyt and Orb differ
Credyt differs from Orb on three architectural axes: when charges finalize, what a wallet holds, and whether the finance stack is replaced or extended. Orb finalizes charges through invoice cycles. Credyt authorizes and debits at the moment usage occurs.
Real-time wallet debit vs invoice cycle finalization. Credyt supports real-time authorization before use occurs and debits wallets the moment the activity is recorded. The platform decides whether to authorize or block; Credyt provides the real-time balance state that makes that decision possible. Orb meters usage during the cycle with hosted rollups and generates invoices at cycle end. Threshold invoicing can trigger an invoice when a customer crosses a dollar threshold mid-cycle, but charges still settle post-consumption.
AI companies use this approach to add a real-time billing layer without replacing their stack.
Wallet-native multi-asset architecture. Orb supports custom pricing units that convert to USD before invoice generation; the billing currency remains USD. Credyt wallets hold any asset natively: USD, tokens, GPU hours, or custom units, each with its own grants and lifecycle in the same wallet. For products where the unit of value is not a dollar, the customer sees and manages balances in that unit directly.
Extend vs replace. Orb is a full revenue platform. Adopting it routes event ingestion, pricing, invoicing, and revenue recognition through Orb, with deep integrations into finance systems. Credyt sits in front of a PSP (Stripe by default; external PSPs supported) and handles wallet state, authorization, pricing, and events. The existing finance stack stays in place.
Technical comparison
Credyt and Orb diverge most on billing model (real-time wallet debit vs invoice cycle), usage authorization timing (pre-usage vs post-usage), and wallet architecture (first-class primitive vs custom pricing units on an invoice). The table below compares twelve capability dimensions across both platforms.
| Capability | Credyt | Orb |
|---|---|---|
| Target use case | AI products with real-time usage and prepaid credit models | Mid-market to enterprise with complex, high-volume usage-based billing |
| Billing model | Hybrid (real-time wallet debit + subscription entitlements) | Invoice (real-time metering; post-usage invoicing at cycle end) |
| Usage authorization | Pre-usage | Post-usage |
| Usage tracking | Real-time metering with immediate debit | Real-time metering with periodic invoice (hosted rollups) |
| Wallet architecture | First-class primitive | Add-on (credit pools inside an invoice-based system) |
| Multi-asset support | Native (USD, tokens, credits, GPU hours, custom units) | USD-with-labels (custom pricing units convert to USD before invoicing) |
| Payment processing | Built-in (Stripe); external PSP support available | Integrated (Orb Invoicing; Agentic Payment Methods added in 2026) |
| Customer portal | Drop-in branded portal with live balance and self-service top-up | Pre-authenticated portal showing usage and invoices; no self-service top-up |
| Auto top-up | Customer-controlled with threshold triggers | Platform-configured on behalf of customers; credits added to invoice |
| Integration model | Extends existing stack | Replaces stack (event ingestion, pricing, invoicing, revenue recognition on Orb) |
| Enterprise contracts | Not supported | First-class (multi-year contracts, commitments, backdating, multi-product deals) |
| Deployment | Cloud-hosted | Cloud-hosted |
Pricing
Credyt and Orb are priced for different parts of the market. The table below uses a canonical scenario: 100 customers at $20 average monthly spend, 100,000 monthly events, 5 platform seats, $2,000 total monthly revenue. Payment processing is pass-through on both platforms and excluded here to show billing infrastructure cost alone.
| Component | Credyt | Orb |
|---|---|---|
| Platform / base fee | $0 | ~$720 |
| Per-customer fees | $90 ($1/MAW × 90 paid wallets; first 10 free) | $0 |
| Seat fees | $0 | Not publicly documented |
| Event / data ingestion fees | $0 | $0 |
| Revenue % overage | $0 | $0 |
| Total monthly | $90 | ~$720 |
Orb no longer publishes pricing on its website. The estimate above is based on previously public Orb pricing captured by third-party analysis and may not reflect current rates; actual Orb pricing requires a sales conversation.
The two platforms target different segments. Orb is built for enterprise buyers and prices on a traditional PSP-style percentage of revenue, with the enterprise metering engine, pricing simulation, dimensional billing, contract machinery, and deep finance integrations that those buyers expect. Credyt is self-serve, quick to integrate, and prices by usage ($1 per active wallet per month) — a model earlier-stage teams tend to find more predictable at small and mid scale.
Source: Orb website (https://www.withorb.com), accessed April 2026.
When to choose Orb
Orb is the better fit when billing is predominantly invoice-based with a usage component, and the team has the engineering and finance resources to operate a full revenue platform.
- You run complex usage-based pricing with custom SQL metrics and dimensional rates across region, model, tier, or customer segment.
- You need pricing simulation against historical usage before deploying changes.
- You invoice at the end of the cycle and need hosted rollups that can reconcile late or corrected events before the invoice closes.
- You manage multi-year enterprise contracts with commitments, amendments, and multi-product deals.
- You need deep NetSuite, Salesforce, and data warehouse integration for revenue recognition and reporting.
- Month-end invoicing matches your collections workflow and AR aging is part of your finance operations.
When to choose Credyt
Credyt is the better fit when usage creates real-time cost exposure and you want to authorize usage before it occurs, not reconcile it on an invoice after the fact.
- You bill an AI product with per-request infrastructure costs that hit before revenue is collected.
- You want to authorize usage before it occurs rather than discover exposure at invoice time.
- You sell prepaid credits, tokens, or GPU hours, not primarily enterprise contracts.
- You need multi-asset wallets (USD, tokens, GPU hours, custom units) as a first-class primitive.
- Your customers need a live-balance, self-service top-up portal out of the box, with customer-controlled auto top-up thresholds.
- You want to extend your existing PSP and finance stack rather than replace it.
- You want transparent, public pricing at small and mid scale.
How do the architectures differ?
Credyt and Orb diverge on three architectural axes: when charges settle (real-time debit versus invoice-cycle finalization), how non-USD assets are held (native wallet versus pricing label), and whether the billing layer extends or replaces the existing finance stack. Each sub-section below takes one axis in turn.
Real-time authorization vs invoice cycle finalization
Orb: Meters usage during the cycle via hosted rollups and finalizes charges when the invoice generates. Threshold invoicing can trigger mid-cycle but is still post-consumption. The billing event is the invoice, not the usage event.
Credyt: The platform queries wallet state through Credyt's Wallet API before each billable activity and decides whether to authorize or block. When the platform authorizes, Credyt debits immediately. The billing event is the usage event itself.
For AI workloads where a single inference can cost $1 or more, this difference is the reason teams reach for a real-time layer. Invoice cycles surface the overage after the compute bill lands. Real-time authorization stops the spend before it happens.
Multi-asset wallets vs USD-with-labels
Orb: Custom pricing units let teams name usage in tokens, GPU hours, or per-action credits, and convert to USD before invoicing. The billing currency is USD; the unit is a pricing label applied during rating.
Credyt: Wallets hold any asset natively. A customer can hold USD, image credits, GPU hours, and model tokens in the same wallet, each with its own grants and lifecycle. Products that want to bill customers in custom units rather than dollars price directly in the unit the customer understands.
When infrastructure cost per unit shifts with model choice or provider change, credits customers already purchased keep working because the unit is product-native, not currency-denominated.
Integration model: extend vs replace
Orb: A full revenue platform. Adopting Orb means routing event ingestion, pricing, invoicing, and revenue recognition through Orb, with deep integration into finance systems. The simplification comes from running a full revenue stack in one place.
Credyt: Sits in front of a PSP and handles wallet state, authorization, pricing, and events. Top-ups flow through Stripe Checkout by default; external PSPs are supported. The finance stack (invoicing, revenue recognition, AR, ledger) stays in place.
For teams that want real-time wallet control without a finance-stack migration, this is the path that adds the control layer without pulling the invoicing workflow apart.
Credyt vs Orb: the bottom line
Orb is an enterprise revenue platform that finalizes charges through invoice cycles, with strong metering, dimensional pricing, and contract primitives. Credyt is real-time billing infrastructure that debits prepaid wallets the moment usage occurs. The decision is architectural: invoice-cycle revenue versus real-time wallet control.
Frequently asked questions
Does Orb do real-time billing?
Orb does real-time metering with hosted rollups. Charges finalize at the invoice cycle. Threshold invoicing can trigger an invoice mid-cycle when a customer crosses a dollar threshold, but charges still settle post-consumption. Credyt authorizes and debits each usage event in real time, with no invoice cycle in the critical path.
Can my customers set their own auto top-up threshold in Orb?
No. Orb's auto top-up is platform-configured. The merchant sets rules on behalf of customers, and top-up credits are added to invoices when top-up occurs. In Credyt, customers configure their own thresholds and amounts in the self-service portal, and top-ups are charged automatically against their saved payment card when the threshold is reached.
What does Orb cost at small scale?
Orb no longer publishes pricing. Third-party analysis of previously public Orb pricing suggests roughly $720 per month at 100 customers and $2,000 in monthly revenue, though current rates may differ and require a sales conversation. Credyt is $90 per month at the same scenario, with public pricing of $1 per Monthly Active Wallet and the first 10 wallets free.
Can I bill customers in tokens or GPU hours with Orb?
Orb supports custom pricing units that convert to USD before invoice generation. There is no first-class multi-asset wallet primitive. Credyt wallets hold tokens, GPU hours, or any custom unit natively. Customers see and manage balances in those units, priced directly in the product's unit.
Does Orb's Agentic Payment Methods give me real-time wallet control?
Agentic Payment Methods (launched 2026) introduce payment flows for AI agents executing payments on behalf of end users. They are a payment primitive, not a pre-usage wallet debit, self-service balance UX, or customer-facing top-up portal. Teams looking for alternatives to Orb with real-time wallet authorization and customer self-service typically land on Credyt; real-time economic control is the category to evaluate.
Do I need to replace my existing billing stack to use Credyt?
No. Credyt extends the existing stack. Top-ups run through Stripe Checkout by default; external PSPs are supported. Finance workflows (invoicing, revenue recognition, AR) stay where they are.
Teams adding real-time authorization often follow a consumption-based pricing rollout that keeps downstream finance systems unchanged.