MikroTik Billing: The Complete Setup Guide for Hotspot & PPPoE

MikroTik RouterOS is the backbone of most independent ISPs and WISPs across Africa. But RouterOS by itself doesn't handle billing, expiry, or payments — that's where a billing platform and, usually, RADIUS come in.

Hotspot vs. PPPoE — which do you need?

Hotspot mode is built for shared, captive-portal Wi-Fi: guests connect, see a login/payment page, and buy time or data via voucher or mobile money. PPPoE is built for dedicated broadband connections — each subscriber authenticates with a username and password and gets a stable, billed connection. Many ISPs run both: hotspot for walk-in and estate Wi-Fi, PPPoE for home and business broadband.

Where RADIUS fits in

FreeRADIUS handles authentication and accounting for PPPoE subscribers — checking credentials against your subscriber database and logging session start/stop and usage. A dedicated RADIUS instance (rather than MikroTik's built-in user manager) scales better once you're running more than one router.

Automating onboarding

Manually configuring hotspot profiles and PPPoE secrets on every router doesn't scale past a handful of sites. Platforms like Gradius generate a one-time setup script per router — deploy it once, and new packages, subscriber suspensions, and reconnections all sync automatically from your dashboard.

Health checks and online status

"I paid but I don't have internet" is the single most common support ticket for ISPs running billing separately from their router state. Aligning RADIUS accounting with router health probes — so your dashboard shows the same online/offline status the router actually sees — eliminates most of that friction.

Getting started

If you already have a MikroTik router running, you can typically go from zero to a published, sellable package in under 30 minutes with the right platform. Try it with Gradius — the free trial doesn't require a card upfront.