40 open-source projects screened against three hard requirements: PayPal, recurring subscriptions, and invoicing. Almost everything fails the middle one — and the failure is quiet, because nearly all of them do one-time PayPal just fine. Both finalists below clear all three.
Built for exactly our business — selling and renewing hosted services, with clients, orders, invoices and provisioning already modelled. Recurring PayPal is proven in core source, not a vendor claim. Decisively: it uses PayPal Standard Subscriptions, which needs nothing but the Business account we already have. No approval queue, no waiting on PayPal.
Technically the nicer build — modern api-m.paypal.com with real
BILLING.SUBSCRIPTION.* webhooks, MIT licensed, faster release cadence (26/yr vs 7).
It loses on one practical point: recurring requires PayPal
Reference Transactions, which PayPal must switch on per-account. That's a gate we
don't control and can't schedule.
Verified by reading the source in the cloned repos, not vendor marketing. Both generate real PDF invoices via Dompdf, and both raise a fresh invoice automatically on every renewal — which is the part that matters for recurring revenue.
| Capability | FOSSBilling | Paymenter |
|---|---|---|
| PDF invoices | Yes — Dompdf | Yes — Dompdf |
| Auto-invoice on renewal | Yes | Yes |
| Tax / VAT engine | Yes — dedicated tax service | Yes |
| Overdue reminder emails | Yes — built-in templates | Basic |
| Client-facing invoice portal | Yes | Yes |
| Credit notes / refunds | Yes | Yes |
Edge to FOSSBilling on invoicing specifically: it ships dunning (overdue reminder) email templates out of the box, so unpaid invoices chase themselves. That is revenue you would otherwise lose to silence.
| Project | Subscriptions | PayPal recurring |
|---|---|---|
| WooCommerce + Subscriptions |
Official paid add-on | Proven — default path, no approval |
| nopCommerce | Built into core | Proven in 4.90 |
Manual (we'd run the scheduler) and it needs vaulting approval.
Neither knows what a hosting plan is — that's the reason I still lead with FOSSBilling.| Project | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Invoice Ninja | Card-vault only; PayPal wallet auto-bill unproven |
| Kill Bill | PayPal plugin archived 2021 — stops at KB 0.20, current is 0.24 |
| Lago | No PayPal at all |
| BillaBear | No PayPal (self-admitted) |
| djaodjin-saas | No PayPal · library, not an app |
| Medusa | Unproven — DIY recipe, community PayPal only |
| Vendure | Unproven — closest is Braintree |
| Bagisto | Vendor-claimed, code unverified · $199 |
| PrestaShop | Official module recurring unproven |
| Sylius | No PayPal recurring |
| Spree | No PayPal recurring |
| Saleor | Would need building both halves |
| Lunar | No — worst fit |
| django-oscar | No, explicitly |
| Crater | Abandoned — 720 days no push |
| Shuup | Abandoned — 869 days |
| Drupal Commerce | Abandoned — 2,124 days |