Metered Pricing
Metered Pricing is a pricing model where you charge your customers based on the usage of your application. There are a few different pricing models unique to Usage Based Billing:- Unit Pricing
- Volume Pricing
- Graduated Pricing
Unit Pricing
Unit pricing is a simple pricing model where you charge a fixed amount for each unit of usage. For example:
This means that every unit of
prompt-tokens consumed by a customer will be charged at $0.10 and every unit of completion-tokens will be charged at $0.18.
It’s a linear pricing model, where the price per unit is fixed.
Volume Pricing
Volume pricing sets the rate from the total usage over the period, and that rate applies to every unit. Crossing a threshold lowers the price on all of it.Graduated Pricing
Graduated pricing charges each range at its own rate. The total is the sum across ranges.Defining tiers
Volume and graduated take the same tiers. Define one by an upper bound and a rate. The bound is inclusive, and each tier starts where the previous one ended. The last tier is always unbounded, since usage has no ceiling. A cap still limits what the customer pays. Example with tiers at up to 1,000: $0.10 per unit, and beyond: $0.08 per unit:- Volume: 1,400 units = 1,400 × $0.08 = $112. Every unit gets the lower rate.
- Graduated: 1,400 units = 1,000 × $0.10 + 400 × $0.08 = $132. Each range keeps its own rate.
Invoicing Customers for Usage
Our Usage Based Billing infrastructure is built to work with Subscription products out of the box.Add a metered price to your product
To charge your customers for usage, you need to add a metered price to your product. You’ll need to select the Meter and the Pricing model. A flat price per unit takes a single amount per unit; volume and graduated take a list of tiers.The price is always entered as the cost per single unit. How it is
displayed to customers — for example as
$20 / 1M tokens — is controlled by
the Unit setting on the meter.
Monthly Invoicing
If a customer has a subscription with a monthly billing period, usage is aggregated monthly and invoiced at the end of the month with the rest of the subscription.Yearly Invoicing
If a customer has a subscription with a yearly billing period, usage is aggregated yearly and invoiced at the end of the year with the rest of the subscription.Usage Charges and Subscription Cancellation
When a subscription is canceled, it generally remains active until the end of the current billing period (known as the grace period). During this grace period, all accumulated usage-based charges continue to be tracked. A final invoice will be issued at the end of that period to cover the consumed usage, even if the subscription will not be renewed. This ensures no pending usage charges are lost.Customer Portal
Customers can view their estimated charges for each meter in the Customer Portal.
