How usage-based billing unlocks revenue for cloud infrastructure providers

Cloud infrastructure companies sell performance, not seats. But most billing systems weren’t built for the complexity of pricing compute time, storage, and API calls across regions, instance types, and features. As a result, many teams struggle with brittle, subscription-first billing tools that leak revenue and slow growth.

Usage-based billing offers a better approach: one that mirrors real product value, adapts with scale, and eliminates the need for constant billing workarounds. Here’s why it’s becoming the gold standard for modern infrastructure providers.

Why usage-based billing makes sense for cloud infrastructure

For infrastructure companies, usage-based billing isn’t just a better pricing model—it’s a competitive advantage. It aligns revenue with value, unlocks scalable pricing across products and customers, and removes the barriers that slow growth and create churn. By implementing usage-based billing, leading cloud infra providers like Supabase, Pinecone, and Materialize have been able to introduce complex pricing, improve billing accuracy, and unlock new revenue streams.

A better fit for complex infrastructure pricing

Cloud infrastructure pricing isn’t simple — it spans metrics like CPU time, bandwidth, storage tiers, and API throughput. Pricing often depends on region, instance type, feature flags, and even customer-specific contracts. Most legacy billing systems can’t keep up with this complexity.

When pricing logic lives in brittle spreadsheets or hardcoded scripts, companies face hidden risks: under-billing, over-billing, and engineering bottlenecks. Usage-based systems ingest real-time data and apply pricing rules dynamically, ensuring every invoice reflects exactly what was used.

Built for dimensional pricing at scale

Traditional billing models tend to flatten pricing into static tiers or matrix tables. But cloud infrastructure pricing is inherently multi-dimensional, shaped by factors like region, instance type, storage tier, project ID, and feature usage.

Usage-based billing systems are designed to support this complexity. They don’t just meter usage — they enable dimensional pricing, allowing you to define flexible pricing across many variables without hardcoding every permutation. For example, you can vary pricing based on where compute happens, how much storage is used, or whether high-availability features are enabled — all within a single model.

This flexibility isn’t just operational; it’s a growth lever. Pricing across the dimensions that reflect real customer value helps companies expand revenue as usage scales across products, teams, and regions.

With traditional matrix pricing, complexity becomes a constraint. It’s difficult to manage, slows down iteration, and often leads to undercharging. Dimensional pricing, enabled by usage-based billing, removes that ceiling. It ensures every invoice clearly communicates what the customer used and what they paid for, down to the last API call.

More revenue, less friction

When customers grow, adopt new features, or consume more resources, your operational costs rise. With flat-rate or seat-based pricing, your revenue doesn’t scale with your costs. In fact, as customers get more value out of your service, your margins get smaller.

Usage-based billing solves this by scaling your revenue with cost. As customers store more data, spin up new instances, or increase throughput, their bills support your growing operating costs. Your revenue grows as your customers’ usage grows — no sales motion or renegotiation required. That means healthier margins and a better alignment between product value and business results.

This model also reduces friction for initial adoption. Startups can start small with minimal spend, while larger customers scale naturally into higher usage and revenue over time. You stop leaving money on the table and start monetizing based on what customers actually use.

Pricing that matches value and builds trust

Pricing on usage does more than drive revenue; it also improves customer retention.

When customers see a direct connection between what they pay and the value they receive, billing reinforces product utility, not a source of friction. Usage-based billing lets you charge on value metrics that resonate, such as API calls, compute time, or data processed, rather than arbitrary units like seats or flat tiers.

This transparency builds trust. Customers are less likely to churn when pricing feels fair and predictable, especially as their needs change. They can scale usage up or down without feeling locked into contracts that no longer match their business.

Support every customer, without custom pricing workarounds

Cloud infrastructure providers serve many customers, from scrappy startups to global enterprises. Trying to force them all into the same pricing model rarely works.

Usage-based billing gives you the flexibility to support both self-serve and contract-driven customers without maintaining one-off pricing logic. Startups can pay as they go, scaling naturally with usage. Enterprises can commit to volume or negotiate custom terms, all within the same system.

Instead of building and maintaining separate pricing tracks, you configure dimensions, overrides, and templates that adapt to each customer’s needs. This reduces internal complexity while giving your customers a pricing experience that fits their stage, size, and usage profile.

It’s pricing that scales with your business and theirs.

3 real-life examples

The shift to usage-based billing isn’t theoretical. It’s already driving results for leading cloud infrastructure companies. Here’s how Supabase, Pinecone, and Materialize have used Orb’s usage-based billing platform to modernize their billing and unlock new revenue.

Supabase: Scaling billing to match rapid growth

Supabase, an open-source Firebase alternative, faced challenges with its existing billing setup as the company grew. Its system required constant engineering effort to support usage-based pricing, leading to inefficiencies and missed revenue.

By adopting Orb, Supabase eliminated billing bottlenecks and improved transparency. The company now processes over 1.5 million monthly invoices through Orb, with reduced overhead and more accurate billing.

We didn’t want to build a billing system. Billing is not our core product, and we didn’t want to deal with the level of complexity that building our own system would require. Choosing Orb was a no-brainer.
_{— Paul Copplestone, CEO at Supabase}

Pinecone: Streamlining billing for a multi-product ecosystem

Pinecone, a vector database provider, needed a billing system that could support multiple products, usage types, and contract models. The company’s in-house solution struggled to keep up.

Orb gave Pinecone a single source of truth for usage and billing, automated invoicing, and flexible pricing logic — all delivered in just three months.

Orb helps us stay ahead by empowering us to evolve our billing structure while retaining accuracy, visibility, and a trusted source of truth.
_{— Ifat Villaret, Director of Finance at Pinecone}

Materialize: Powering revenue workflows with accurate billing

Materialize needed a flexible solution to support usage-based billing without pulling engineers off product work. With Orb, the company implemented a scalable system that handles invoicing, reporting, and pricing, while giving finance teams full visibility.

Orb’s reporting dashboard is one of the foundations of Materialize’s finance infrastructure.
_{— Charles Horner, Head of Finance at Materialize}

Explore what usage-based billing can unlock for you

Orb gives cloud infrastructure companies the tools to scale usage-based pricing without the billing headaches. Whether you're supporting multiple products, complex metering, or enterprise contracts, Orb lets you ship pricing changes as fast as product updates and turn usage data into growth. Try our demo now.