explaingit

killbill/killbill

★ 5,515JavaAudience · pm founderComplexity · 4/5LicenseSetup · hard

TLDR

An open-source billing platform you host yourself to manage recurring subscriptions, process payments, generate invoices, and run financial reports, the self-hosted alternative to commercial billing services like Stripe Billing or Chargebee.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((Kill Bill))
    What it does
      Subscription billing
      Payment processing
      Invoice generation
      Financial reporting
    Key features
      Self-hosted data control
      Modular architecture
      Trials and discounts
      Real-time analytics
    Deployment
      AWS one-click deployer
      Free hosted sandbox
      Self-managed servers
    Business model
      Apache 2.0 license
      Commercial support
      GitHub Sponsors
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Code map

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Run recurring subscription billing for a SaaS product on your own servers without depending on a third-party billing vendor.

USE CASE 2

Add trial periods, promotional discounts, and multiple pricing tiers to a subscription business using the built-in plan configuration.

USE CASE 3

Use the free hosted sandbox environment to prototype and test billing workflows before deploying to production.

USE CASE 4

Pull real-time revenue and subscription analytics from Kill Bill's built-in reporting without a separate analytics tool.

Tech stack

Java

Getting it running

Difficulty · hard Time to first run · 1day+

Codebase spans many repositories in the killbill GitHub org, requires Java infrastructure and significant configuration before processing real payments.

Use and modify freely including in commercial products, Apache 2.0 requires keeping the copyright notice and stating any changes you made.

In plain English

Kill Bill is an open-source platform for handling subscription billing and payments. If you run a business that charges customers on a recurring basis, such as a software subscription, a membership, or any paid service that renews monthly or annually, Kill Bill provides the underlying infrastructure to manage those billing cycles, payment processing, invoicing, and financial reporting. The project has been in use for over ten years and positions itself as the open-source alternative to commercial billing platforms. One of its main selling points is that you host it yourself, either on your own servers or in the cloud, which means you keep control of your customer data and avoid being locked into a third-party provider's pricing or availability. Real-time analytics and financial reports are included out of the box. The platform is highly modular, built so you can disable parts you do not need or swap in your own systems for specific pieces. It supports trials, promotional discounts, and multiple subscription pricing models. A one-click deployer for Amazon Web Services is available for getting a live instance running quickly, and free hosted sandboxes are offered through the project's cloud portal for development and testing. Kill Bill is written in Java and the codebase is split across many repositories in the killbill GitHub organization rather than living in a single monolithic repo. The core platform is licensed under the Apache License 2.0, meaning you can use and modify it freely in commercial products. The project accepts financial sponsorships through GitHub Sponsors and offers commercial support packages. The project was founded in 2010 by three developers and is owned by The Billing Project, LLC.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
I'm building a SaaS product and want to self-host Kill Bill instead of using Stripe Billing. Walk me through the AWS one-click deployer and what I need to set up first.
Prompt 2
Help me design a Kill Bill subscription plan with a 14-day free trial, monthly and annual pricing tiers, and a launch promotional discount.
Prompt 3
Explain how Kill Bill's modular architecture works so I can understand which components I can swap out and which are core to how billing flows work.
Prompt 4
I want to run a Kill Bill sandbox to test my billing logic. What's the quickest way to get a working instance running for development without configuring production infrastructure?
Prompt 5
What's the difference between self-hosting Kill Bill and using a commercial billing platform like Chargebee? Help me build a comparison for a founder deciding which to use.
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