UniBee

What UniBee does

UniBee manages subscription billing for businesses, from recurring plans and one-time purchases to usage charges, overages and tiered prices. It is aimed at international subscription companies, including mid-market SaaS and AI businesses and established enterprises.

Usage can be measured in real time for items such as API calls, tokens, events, credits, storage or compute time. The platform can also handle trials, plan changes, pauses, add-ons, prorations, coupons, entitlements, renewals and dunning workflows.

It generates invoices, applies taxes, sends invoices by email or PDF, and provides revenue reports covering MRR, ARR, churn rate and customer lifetime value.

Fees and plans

UniBee publishes fixed pricing and says it does not charge a percentage of revenue or hidden platform fees. The Open-source plan is free, billed at $0 a month, and is self-hosted with manual setup and community-only support.

Starter costs $99 a month. It is cloud-hosted, allows up to five billing admins, and includes core billing, financial analytics, advanced integrations and community support. Business costs $399 a month, allows up to 20 billing admins, and adds dedicated technical support.

Advanced is price on request. It includes custom admin roles, cloud or on-prem deployment, core billing, analytics, advanced integrations, dedicated support and custom deployment. UniBee also publishes a free trial.

Where it runs

UniBee is available through an API, a web-based service and self-hosted deployment. The managed option is cloud-hosted; the open-source edition runs on the customer's own setup. Advanced also offers on-prem deployment.

Self-hosting instructions require Docker, Docker Compose and Git, followed by starting the service with Docker Compose. The public API uses authenticated REST endpoints, separate production and sandbox hosts, Bearer API keys and webhooks.

The published platform list does not name iPhone or Android apps. No phone-specific functions are described.

Protection, as UniBee publishes it

UniBee's privacy policy says it uses organizational safeguards, security measures and encrypted connections when personal data is involved. It names GDPR, LGPD, CCPA/CPRA, PIPEDA and other regional privacy laws.

UniBee markets PCI DSS compliance, encryption and fraud-detection mechanisms for payment processing. These are statements from UniBee's own materials; no separate license, regulator, deposit-protection or two-factor sign-in claim is provided here.

For external gateway integrations, UniBee says payments do not run inside UniBee. The customer's backend must build and maintain that integration.

Strengths

UniBee covers several billing patterns in one platform, including flat-rate, tiered, volume, usage-based, per-seat, add-on and free-trial pricing. Hybrid billing can combine a subscription base with automated overage charges.

It supports multiple gateways, including Stripe, PayPal, Adyen and cryptocurrency gateways, with routing, fallback and simultaneous multi-gateway options. The site lists more than 25 integrations and says Zapier can add more than 3,000.

Developers get REST APIs, webhook endpoints, sandbox hosts and public SDKs for Node.js/TypeScript, Go, Java, PHP, Python and Ruby.

Catches and conditions

The free Open-source plan requires self-hosting, manual setup and community-only support. Cloud hosting and dedicated support begin on paid plans, while Advanced pricing requires a conversation.

External Gateway integrations leave payment processing to the customer's backend. That means the integration must be built and maintained outside UniBee.

Check gateway availability, supported countries and currencies before committing. The published facts confirm multi-currency billing but do not specify country coverage, currency lists, payment limits, minimums or hold rules.

The standalone deployment, API and portals use the GNU AGPLv3 license. The Node.js SDK requires Node.js 16 or newer and is MIT licensed.

Who may want another option

UniBee may not fit a business that wants a ready-made phone app, a fully managed service at no monthly charge, or payment processing handled entirely inside the billing platform. Its free option requires technical self-hosting, and external gateways require backend work.

Verdict

UniBee suits teams that need an open-source billing engine with both self-hosted and cloud choices, broad pricing models, usage metering, automated invoicing and developer access. The free edition keeps software charges at zero but leaves hosting, setup and support to the community.

Paid tiers provide cloud hosting and progressively broader administration and support, with Advanced adding on-prem deployment and custom roles. Businesses should weigh those plan differences against their gateway design, technical capacity, and country and currency requirements.

Questions