Welcome to Lumen
Lumen is a modern billing and entitlements system that makes SaaS monetization simple. Lumen comes with a powerful credit and usage management system, feature based access and real-time usage tracking. Learn how to get started with Lumen in 5 minutes.
Quick Navigation
🚀 Get Started
Set up Lumen in your app in 5 minutes
💡 Learn the Basics
Understand how Lumen works and why it's different
📚 Browse Features
Explore plans, entitlements, credits, and more
🔧 API Reference
Complete API documentation and SDK reference
❓ FAQ
Common questions and accurate answers
Learning Path
New to Lumen? Follow this path to get up and running:
- Quickstart - Integrate Lumen end-to-end fast
- How Lumen Fits Together - Core concepts and mental model
- Features, Metrics & Events - Model what you sell and measure
- Plans & Pricing - Design your pricing structure
- Entitlements - Control feature access in your app
- UI Components - Add pricing tables and usage badges
Popular Guides
Build a Freemium SaaS
Create free and paid tiers with feature gates
Usage-Based Billing
Charge customers based on actual usage
Migrate from Stripe
Step-by-step migration from Stripe Billing
Auth Integration
Connect with Clerk, Supabase, or Better Auth
The Problem with Existing Billing
Most billing systems force you to choose between simplicity and flexibility:
- Stripe Billing: Great for simple subscriptions, but breaks down with complex pricing models, credit systems including real-time usage tracking, usage-based billing, and enterprise needs
- Custom billing: Full control but months of development, hundreds of edge cases, ongoing maintenance, and compliance headaches
- Enterprise solutions: Powerful but expensive, slow to implement, and over-engineered for most SaaS companies
How Lumen Solves This
- Pricing you can change anytime: Append-only plans & versions; flexible Price DSL (fixed, usage, seats).
- Real-time entitlements: Feature-based access with overrides; credits integrate with limits.
- Usage & credits built‑in: Idempotent Events API, QuestDB metrics, usage and monetary credits.
- Reliable billing: RRULE scheduling (timezones, DST), proration, invoice PDFs.
- Payments that just work: Stripe & Dodo, webhook failover, hosted payment links.
Common Use Cases
- Usage-based pricing (metered): Charge for API calls, storage, compute. Learn more: Usage-based billing, Events API, Features, Metrics & Events.
- Seat-based & org-level access: Add/remove seats mid‑cycle with proration; gate features per org/user. Learn more: Plans & Pricing, Entitlements.
- Credit-backed freemium & trials: Grant usage credits, auto‑renew/refill, convert trial to paid. Learn more: Credits, Build a freemium SaaS.
- Enterprise deals & overrides: Price overrides, plan versioning, safe migrations. Learn more: Advanced pricing, Plans & Pricing.
- Public pricing & multi‑currency: Publish pricing tables safely with a publishable key; support multiple currencies per plan. Learn more: Pricing Tables, Plans & Pricing.
- Migration from Stripe Billing: Keep what works, replace what hurts. Learn more: Migration guides, Compare with Stripe.
- Real‑time entitlements & limits: Feature-based access with overrides; usage tracking to enforce limits. Learn more: Entitlements, Features, Metrics & Events.