Stripe Integration for Laravel Applications

Laravel Cashier abstracts a meaningful amount of Stripe Billing — subscriptions, invoices, and webhook handling come largely pre-wired — but its conventions assume a fairly standard subscription model. Custom pricing logic (usage-based tiers, non-standard proration rules, multi-product bundles) often needs to extend Cashier or bypass it for the specific piece that doesn't fit.

When to Extend Cashier vs. Go Direct

• Standard per-seat or flat-rate subscriptions: Cashier's conventions fit well with minimal customization
• Usage-based or metered billing: usually needs direct Stripe Billing API work alongside Cashier, not purely within it
• Webhook handling: Cashier's controller covers common events; less common events still need custom listeners
• Multi-product or bundled subscriptions: often cleaner built directly against the API than forced into Cashier's single-subscription-per-model assumption

We treat this as a genuine architectural decision made once, upfront, rather than defaulting to Cashier and discovering the mismatch mid-project — reversing that choice after subscribers exist is significantly more expensive than choosing correctly the first time.