Open source
The code costs nothing and you host it. You pay in server time, database growth, RADIUS tuning and someone on the team who can read the source.
Free ISP billing software
Free until it isn’t
Four ways to bill subscribers for nothing. Each is free for a different reason, and each stops working at a different point. The one that catches most ISPs is not the licence. It is the hour a day someone spends matching payments to subscribers by hand.
Where free comes from
Free ISP billing comes in four shapes, and each is free for a different reason. The reason tells you how long it lasts.
Bundled with the router
MikroTik ships User Manager with RouterOS at no extra licence. It authenticates subscribers and issues vouchers; it does not invoice or reconcile payments.
A free tier
A vendor gives you the platform up to a subscriber count. It works until you cross the line, which is usually the month the network starts paying for itself.
A free trial
The whole product for a fixed window, so real subscribers move onto it before you commit. Centipid runs 14 days with no card, and only an ISP that stays is billed for them.
Where free stops
A free system rarely fails at billing. It fails either side of billing, where the money and the network actually have to meet.
Reconciliation
Matching a mobile-money message to the right subscriber’s invoice is the work. Doing it by hand is the cost that free hides.
Reconnection
A subscriber pays at 23:00 and expects to be online at 23:01. That loop has to run without a person standing in it.
Upgrades
Self-hosted means you own the RADIUS tuning, the database growth and every upgrade that touches subscriber access.
Someone to call
When authentication stops on the last day of the month, free software has no support queue and your subscribers do.
Free MikroTik billing
MikroTik gives you the network side for nothing. What it does not give you is the business side that has to sit on top of it.
What RouterOS does
PPPoE and Hotspot access, speed profiles, and User Manager as a bundled RADIUS server with vouchers. No licence beyond the router itself.
What it leaves you
Invoices, payment matching, subscriber balances, reminders, agent voucher stock and reporting stay manual, or move into a spreadsheet.
Where Centipid joins
Centipid drives the same RouterOS features through RADIUS and adds the billing loop around them, with unlimited routers on every plan.
What Centipid costs
There is no free tier here. The trial is the full product, and if you stay, you pay on what the network collects from the first day of it.
Trial
14 days
Every feature on your own routers, no card. Leave within 14 days and you pay nothing; stay and your first invoice covers those days, with a $5 minimum (KES 500 in Kenya).
- Hotspot Of what the hotspot collects.
- 3%
- PPPoE Per active subscriber each month.
- $0.25
Where to go next
The pages that carry this further, from the billing model to what it costs.
Common questions
Yes, several. They divide into open-source platforms you host yourself and vendor free tiers capped at a subscriber count. Both are genuinely free to licence; the cost moves to your servers, your upgrades and your team’s time.
The network side is. RouterOS includes PPPoE, Hotspot and User Manager, a bundled RADIUS server that manages subscribers and vouchers at no extra licence cost. Invoicing, payment reconciliation and subscriber balances are not part of it.
No. Centipid is 3% of hotspot revenue or $0.25 per active PPPoE subscriber each month. Try it for 14 days with no card. If you stay, your first invoice covers those 14 days at the usual rates, never less than the $5 monthly minimum (KES 500 in Kenya). Leave within 14 days and you pay nothing.
Yes. In India Centipid collects through Razorpay, whose payment links take UPI, cards, netbanking and wallets, and each confirmed payment reconnects the subscriber on its own.
When reconciling payments and reconnecting subscribers takes up a person’s day, or when one missed reconnection costs more in support and churn than the platform would.
Yes. Subscribers, their packages and passwords import from a spreadsheet, and dedicated onboarding support is included on every plan.
Try it before you pay. Try it for fourteen days.
Move a few real subscribers across and see the reconnection loop run on your own network.