Why Brilo
Why Brilo
Building billing in-house sounds manageable — until it isn't. Proration logic, usage metering, invoice generation, plan versioning, and mid-cycle changes each seem like small problems until they compound. Brilo handles all of it, so your team doesn't have to.
The Problem With DIY Billing
Most teams start with a simple payment integration. That works fine for flat subscriptions. But the moment you need:
- Usage-based components (pay per API call, per seat, per GB)
- Tiered pricing with free tiers and overages
- Plan upgrades or downgrades mid-cycle with proration
- Grandfathering old customers on legacy pricing
- Real-time visibility into what a customer owes right now
...you're looking at months of custom engineering work that's easy to get wrong and hard to maintain.
Brilo gives you that infrastructure out of the box.
What Brilo Is Built For
Flexible Pricing Models
Brilo supports the full spectrum of SaaS pricing:
- Flat fee — simple monthly or annual subscriptions
- Per-unit — charge per API call, per message, per seat
- Tiered — different rates at different volume thresholds
- Volume discounts — better rates for higher usage
- Hybrid — a base fee with usage-based overages on top
You define pricing through the dashboard or API and apply it to customers without touching application code.
Real-Time Usage Visibility
Brilo tracks customer usage as it happens. Your team (and optionally your customers) can see:
- How much of a metric a customer has consumed in the current billing period
- What their estimated invoice looks like right now
- Where they sit relative to free tiers, caps, and overages
No waiting until the end of the month to find out what a customer owes.
Automated Billing Logic
Brilo handles the edge cases that make billing hard:
- Proration when customers change plans mid-cycle
- Grandfathering so existing customers stay on old pricing when you update a plan
- Auto-renewal and billing cycle management
- Draft invoice generation before invoices are finalized
- Credit application against outstanding invoices
Entitlement Enforcement
Brilo doesn't just bill — it also tells your app what a customer is allowed to do. Use the Check Feature Access and Check Metric Access endpoints to gate features based on their active plan, in real time.
Pricing Experimentation
Changing prices is risky without data. Brilo lets you:
- Run backtests to model how past pricing changes would have affected revenue
- Version plans so you can iterate without breaking existing customers
- Grandfather customers on old versions when you roll out new pricing
Who Brilo Is For
Brilo is a good fit if:
- You're a SaaS company with more than a handful of customers paying different amounts
- Your pricing is (or is becoming) usage-based in any dimension
- You want to iterate on pricing without a full engineering project each time
- You're tired of one-off billing logic scattered across your codebase
It's not the right tool if you only ever sell fixed-price, non-metered subscriptions with no plan changes — in that case, a payment processor alone is likely sufficient.
How It Integrates
Brilo is REST API-first. Integration requires two things from your backend:
- Send usage events as they happen (one API call per event)
- Query Brilo for access checks and subscription state
Everything else — aggregation, invoice generation, payment collection — is handled by Brilo and your connected payment processor.
Your Backend → POST /track (events)
Your Backend ← GET /feature-access or /metric-access
Brilo → Paystack/Flutterwave/M-pesa (invoices + payments)
Updated 4 months ago

