ProfitWell alternative
A ProfitWell alternative built for founders on Stripe
ProfitWell Metrics has been part of Paddle since the 2022 acquisition. It's still free and it still connects to Stripe — but it now lives inside Paddle's product family, where the commercial focus is Paddle's own billing platform and paid Retain add-ons. If you're a Stripe-native founder who wants revenue analytics from a company whose whole product is revenue analytics for Stripe, that's the gap Gleam Revenue fills.
This page is an honest comparison. ProfitWell is a mature, genuinely free product used by very large SaaS companies, and for some teams it remains the right choice. Here's how the two actually differ, verified against Paddle's own pages.
Last updated: July 19, 2026 · Competitor facts verified against their public pages
Feature comparison
| Gleam Revenue | ProfitWell Metrics (by Paddle) | |
|---|---|---|
| MRR / ARR tracking | Yes — computed from Stripe Price data, never invoice totals | Yes |
| Churn feed with per-customer detail | Yes — every cancellation with the reason the customer gave Stripe | Churn metrics and segmentation; churn prediction in paid Retain |
| Daily plain-English email digest | Yes — every morning, in your timezone | Weekly/periodic email reports |
| Month-end MRR forecast | Yes — with a stated confidence level | No equivalent built-in forecast |
| Stripe support | Stripe only — the entire product is built around it | Yes, among many billing systems |
| Read-only guarantee | Yes — zero-write contract enforced by automated tests; Gleam never writes to your Stripe account | Read access to billing data; no published zero-write contract |
| Benchmarking against other SaaS | No | Yes — benchmarks from 30,000+ companies |
| Mobile-first dashboard | Yes | Desktop-oriented web app |
| Owned by | Independent, founder-run | Paddle (billing platform vendor) |
Pricing comparison
| Gleam Revenue | ProfitWell Metrics (by Paddle) | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 14-day free trial | Free forever |
| Entry paid plan | $29/mo (Starter) | Metrics itself is free |
| Mid tier | $59/mo (Pro) | Paid products: Retain / Price Intelligently (custom pricing) |
| Top tier | $99/mo (Team, unlimited Stripe accounts) | — |
ProfitWell Metrics is genuinely free, and that matters: if $0 is the deciding factor and its metrics fit how you bill, use it.
Gleam charges a flat monthly price that never scales with your revenue. What you're paying for is Stripe-native accuracy (Price-object MRR, not invoice math), the daily digest, and a product whose roadmap answers to its users rather than to a billing platform's ecosystem.
Pricing verified July 2026 against each vendor's public pages.
Where ProfitWell is the better pick:
- You want free forever, full stop — no trial clock, no paid tiers for core metrics.
- You want industry benchmarking against a very large dataset of SaaS companies.
- You already use (or plan to move to) Paddle Billing, where Metrics is built in.
- You bill through multiple systems (Chargebee, Braintree, Recurly and others), not just Stripe.
Where Gleam is the better fit:
- You're on Stripe and want MRR computed from Price objects — never inferred from invoice totals, so metered noise and proration artifacts don't distort your numbers.
- You want a daily plain-English digest in your inbox instead of remembering to open a dashboard.
- You want a churn feed that shows who left, what they paid, and the cancellation reason they gave Stripe — the moment it happens.
- You want your analytics vendor independent of your billing vendor.
What the Gleam dashboard looks like
The mock below mirrors the real dashboard. The full interactive version — chart, churn feed, per-product breakdown, and a sample customer drill-in — is on the product tour, no signup required.
// Monday, March 30 · good morning
MRR / ARR
$8,340
↑ $89 from yesterday
Churn MRR
−$149
2 customers this month
Month forecast
$8,580
↑ 2.9% vs last month
Active subs
47
+2 this week
Churn Rate
2.1%
30-day rate · ↓ 0.3% vs last month
Recent churn
Frequently asked questions
Is ProfitWell still free?
Yes. As of July 2026, ProfitWell Metrics is free and operates as part of Paddle, which monetizes through its billing platform and paid products like Retain. Nothing on this page claims otherwise — the comparison is about fit and focus, not availability.
Does ProfitWell still work with Stripe?
Yes, ProfitWell Metrics integrates with Stripe alongside other billing systems. Gleam's difference is that it is built exclusively for Stripe: MRR is computed from Stripe Price data, the churn feed maps 1:1 to Stripe subscription events, and connecting is a two-minute read-only OAuth.
Can Gleam write to or change my Stripe account?
No. Gleam operates under a zero-write contract: it never calls a Stripe write endpoint against your account, and an automated test suite enforces that in the codebase. Disconnecting instantly revokes access.
How is Gleam's MRR more accurate for Stripe businesses?
Gleam derives MRR purely from Stripe Price objects (unit amount × billing interval, normalized to monthly), and excludes usage-based subscriptions from MRR instead of guessing. Tools that reconstruct MRR from invoice totals can drift when proration, credits, or metered charges appear on invoices.
How long does switching take?
About two minutes: sign in with a magic link, connect Stripe via OAuth, and the first sync starts immediately. There's a 14-day free trial and no credit card required — you can run Gleam alongside ProfitWell and compare the numbers yourself.
Know your real numbers
by tomorrow morning.
Connect your Stripe account in 2 minutes. Your first digest lands at 8am.
Secure OAuth access · No credit card · Cancel anytime