AI infrastructure companies face distinct billing requirements. Token consumption, GPU hours, API requests, model inference, and compute workloads can generate substantial usage data across multiple products, customers, and pricing dimensions. Turning that activity into accurate customer charges requires metering, configurable pricing, credit management, and connected finance workflows.
A usage-based billing engine connects product activity with commercial terms and invoices. Reliable usage and cost data also helps companies understand the relationship between infrastructure expenses, customer consumption, and revenue.
This guide examines 10 usage-based billing platforms through the lens of AI infrastructure requirements, including metering architecture, pricing flexibility, prepaid credits, historical adjustments, enterprise contracts, customer transparency, and finance integrations.
Key takeaways
- AI infrastructure requires flexible metering and pricing: Token usage, API calls, GPU hours, and compute activity involve multiple pricing dimensions, variable workloads, and customer-specific commercial terms.
- Orb provides connected revenue infrastructure: Its standard architecture retains raw usage events and supports custom SQL metrics, dimensional pricing, historical simulations, billing adjustments, invoicing, and finance workflows.
- Billing platforms serve different requirements: Some emphasize enterprise contracts, while others focus on subscription management, open-source deployment, AI cost attribution, prepaid wallets, or quote-to-cash operations.
- The billing market has undergone consolidation: Stripe acquired Metronome in January 2026, Salesforce completed its acquisition of m3ter in July 2026, and Adyen completed its acquisition of Orb in July 2026.
- Total cost extends beyond platform fees: Usage ingestion, billing calculations, implementation, integrations, customer visibility, and finance operations contribute to the overall billing environment.
What AI infrastructure companies need from usage-based billing software
AI infrastructure billing must account for variable activity across customers and workloads, including input and output tokens, GPU hours, API requests, and compute usage. Billing systems need to translate these measurements into accurate charges while supporting flexible pricing and finance workflows.
Usage ingestion and metric flexibility
Metering infrastructure should support high-volume event ingestion, customer attribution, deduplication, configurable billable metrics, and multiple pricing dimensions.
OpenTelemetry instrumentation supports collecting application telemetry, while billing systems connect usage data with customer accounts, pricing rules, and invoices. Historical usage analysis and late-event corrections also help maintain billing accuracy.
Credits, commitments, and customer visibility
AI companies often combine usage charges with recurring fees, prepaid credits, and enterprise commitments.
A prepaid credits system manages balances, drawdowns, expiration, and usage eligibility. Customer dashboards and spend alerts provide visibility into consumption, remaining credits, and accumulated charges.
Historical adjustments and finance workflows
As AI products evolve, billing infrastructure must accommodate pricing updates, delayed usage, and contract amendments.
Maintaining billing accuracy requires alignment between usage records, pricing rules, and invoice adjustments. Connected finance workflows then carry calculated charges into invoicing, collections, revenue recognition, and financial reporting.
1. Orb
Orb provides revenue infrastructure for AI companies, cloud infrastructure providers, and developer platforms managing usage-based and hybrid pricing.
The platform connects usage metering, pricing configuration, invoicing, customer-facing billing experiences, and finance workflows. Its standard metering architecture retains raw usage events, allowing billable metrics and pricing calculations to operate over historical usage information.
This architecture supports granular billing analysis, eligible historical corrections, and price evolution as AI products introduce new models, usage metrics, and commercial agreements.
For high-volume workloads, Orb also provides Hosted Rollups, a separate ingestion approach that aggregates configured event streams during ingestion.
Key capabilities for AI infrastructure
Orb provides several capabilities relevant to AI monetization:
- Raw usage events: Standard metering retains granular event records that support historical analysis, backfills, billing corrections, and query-based calculations.
- Custom SQL metrics: Define billable quantities using SQL, including averages, maximums, minimums, conditional calculations, and custom aggregation logic.
- Dimensional price groups: Support pricing across multiple usage dimensions, such as region, instance type, and environment, using a single pricing configuration for dimension combinations.
- Hybrid pricing: Combine recurring platform fees, subscriptions, seat-based charges, usage charges, and customer-specific commercial terms.
- Prepaid credits: Manage purchased balances, drawdowns, expiration rules, and configured usage eligibility.
- Pricing simulations: Model proposed pricing against real historical usage before production rollout.
- Billing adjustments: Support eligible backfills, backdated changes, and invoice correction workflows.
- Enterprise contracts: Manage commitments, negotiated rates, scheduled pricing updates, and customer hierarchies.
These capabilities support AI products whose pricing depends on several measurements.
For example, an AI inference platform may charge different rates for input tokens, output tokens, model families, and service tiers. Custom SQL metrics and dimensional pricing allow those requirements to be represented through configurable billing logic.
AI infrastructure capabilities
Orb connects historical usage analysis with pricing execution.
Orb Simulations allows product and finance teams to compare proposed pricing models against actual historical consumption. Teams can examine projected revenue differences, customer-level effects, and alternative pricing configurations before implementing updates in production.
These simulations provide modeled results based on historical data rather than guaranteed future outcomes.
Orb's price evolution capabilities support scheduled commercial updates, customer-specific pricing, and subscription migrations.
Its billing architecture also supports eligible historical corrections when usage data arrives late or requires adjustment. These corrections connect with the applicable invoice and finance workflows.
For customer-facing experiences, Orb's Experience Kit supports usage dashboards, pricing calculators, and checkout interfaces that reflect configured commercial terms.
Spend controls and alerts provide additional visibility as customers approach usage or budget thresholds.
Finance workflows and customer evidence
Orb connects metering and pricing with invoicing, accounts receivable, collections, and revenue reporting through its finance workflows.
Its NetSuite integration creates standard financial transaction records, including invoices, credit memos, and customer deposits. This supports finance teams using established accounting structures.
Orb's published customer stories document several outcomes:
- Vercel: Reported an 80% reduction in the time required to build and launch billing for new products after implementing Orb, as documented in its customer story.
- Supabase: Processes more than 1.5 million invoices monthly through Orb, according to its customer story.
- Stytch: Reported a 75% reduction in time spent processing bills and invoicing, according to its customer story.
These results reflect the respective customer implementations rather than guaranteed outcomes for other companies.
Organizational fit and pricing
Orb supports AI infrastructure companies managing granular usage data, evolving pricing models, enterprise contracts, and connected finance workflows.
Its pricing structure includes three custom-priced plans:
- Core: Real-time event ingestion, usage-based and hybrid billing, invoicing, automated pricing updates, and finance and tax integrations.
- Advanced: Adds data warehouse synchronization, Salesforce and NetSuite integrations, customer hierarchies, and premium support.
- Enterprise: Adds enterprise-grade service-level agreements and dedicated support.
Pricing is based primarily on billings and event volume, with additional platform fees applying to Advanced and Enterprise.
Adyen completed its acquisition of Orb on July 1, 2026. Orb continues to operate as a stand-alone product, with support for customers' preferred payment-processing partners.
2. Metronome
Metronome provides usage-based billing infrastructure for software companies managing metered products and enterprise contracts. Stripe completed its acquisition of Metronome in January 2026.
Primary focus
Metronome supports:
- SQL-based billable metrics and usage calculations
- Multidimensional rate cards
- Enterprise commitments and prepaid credits
- Customer-specific pricing and contract amendments
- Hybrid subscription and usage-based billing
- Customer dashboards and financial integrations
AI infrastructure considerations
Metronome supports AI products that combine variable usage with contracted rates, credits, and commitments. Its configurable billing rules accommodate both self-service pricing and negotiated enterprise agreements.
Organizational fit
Metronome serves companies managing product-led and enterprise billing models.
Its published entry-level pricing includes 0.8% of billing volume plus $0.04 per 1,000 ingested events. Custom enterprise pricing is also available.
3. Stripe Billing
Stripe Billing provides subscription management, usage-based billing, invoicing, and revenue recovery within Stripe's financial infrastructure ecosystem.
Primary focus
Stripe Billing includes:
- Subscription lifecycle management
- Usage metering through the Meters API
- Tiered and hybrid pricing
- Subscription schedules and prorations
- Automated invoicing and payment recovery
- Customer billing portals and APIs
Standard Billing includes basic usage-based billing with up to 100 million meter events monthly. Additional usage-based capabilities are available through Metronome.
AI infrastructure considerations
Stripe Billing supports recurring fees alongside metered API requests, token consumption, and other usage-based charges. Stripe Payments, Tax, and Revenue Recognition provide additional financial services under separate pricing structures.
Organizational fit
Stripe Billing serves companies managing recurring subscriptions and usage-based charges within Stripe's ecosystem.
Its published standard US pay-as-you-go rate is 0.7% of eligible Billing volume. Monthly plans under annual contracts start at $620, with payment processing charged separately.
4. Lago
Lago provides open-source billing software for usage-based, subscription, prepaid, and hybrid pricing. It offers self-hosted and managed deployment options.
Primary focus
Lago supports:
- Usage event ingestion and billable metrics
- Subscription and usage-based pricing
- Prepaid credits and customer wallets
- Minimum commitments and overages
- Customer entitlements
- Automated invoicing and payment integrations
AI infrastructure considerations
Lago supports billing for API requests, tokens, compute usage, and other configured metrics. Its credit and wallet capabilities accommodate prepaid usage arrangements.
Organizational fit
Lago serves organizations using open-source billing infrastructure or managed deployments.
Its open-source edition is available under the AGPLv3 license. Lago Premium offers cloud and self-hosted options with customized commercial pricing.
5. Chargebee
Chargebee provides subscription billing and revenue management software with usage-based and hybrid pricing capabilities.
Primary focus
Chargebee includes:
- Subscription lifecycle management
- Usage metering and tiered pricing
- Hybrid billing and credit management
- Automated invoicing
- Revenue recovery and dunning
- Customer portals and financial integrations
Its Flow billing offering includes up to 100 million usage events monthly.
AI infrastructure considerations
Chargebee supports recurring subscriptions combined with charges for API activity, model inference, and compute consumption. Its billing and revenue products connect these charges with subscription management and finance workflows.
Organizational fit
Chargebee serves SaaS businesses managing recurring revenue and usage-based billing.
Its published Flow pricing includes a $0 monthly option with a 0.80% billing fee and a $99 monthly option with a 0.65% billing fee. Enterprise arrangements and additional modules have separate commercial terms.
6. m3ter
m3ter provides usage mediation, metering, and rating infrastructure for B2B software companies. Salesforce completed its acquisition of m3ter in July 2026.
Primary focus
m3ter supports:
- Usage ingestion and data enrichment
- Configurable aggregations and billing metrics
- Multi-attribute pricing
- Enterprise commitments and prepaid balances
- Customer-specific billing calculations
- Usage analytics and CRM/ERP integrations
The platform retains processed, unaggregated usage measurements for billing analysis. Original raw inputs and processed measurements have separate retention arrangements.
AI infrastructure considerations
m3ter calculates usage-based charges across products, customers, regions, and service categories. Its integrations connect billing calculations with invoicing and financial systems.
Organizational fit
m3ter serves B2B software organizations managing usage-based pricing and enterprise commercial agreements, including Salesforce environments.
Pricing comprises a custom monthly platform fee with usage ingestion and bill calculation allowances. Integrations, additional processing capacity, support, and implementation services may be priced separately.
7. Maxio
Maxio provides subscription billing, accounts receivable, revenue recognition, and financial reporting software for B2B SaaS companies.
Primary focus
Maxio includes:
- Subscription and contract billing
- Usage metering and rating
- Prepaid usage and minimum commitments
- Automated invoicing and collections
- Revenue recognition
- SaaS metrics and financial reporting
AI infrastructure considerations
Maxio supports recurring subscriptions alongside variable product usage. Its billing and financial reporting capabilities connect customer charges with accounts receivable and revenue recognition workflows.
Organizational fit
Maxio serves B2B software companies managing subscription contracts, usage charges, and financial reporting.
Its published Grow plan starts at $599 per month for businesses with up to $100,000 in monthly billings. Scale uses custom pricing, with certain capabilities available through additional modules.
8. Amberflo
Amberflo provides usage metering, AI cost attribution, and billing capabilities. Its platform connects product consumption with infrastructure expenses and customer charges.
Primary focus
Amberflo supports:
- Real-time usage metering
- AI model and workload cost attribution
- Customer margin analysis
- Usage-based, hybrid, and credit-based pricing
- Customer-facing dashboards and spending alerts
- Automated invoicing and financial integrations
Amberflo also offers an AI Gateway for model access, routing, and cost monitoring.
AI infrastructure considerations
Amberflo supports cost tracking for AI applications using multiple models or infrastructure providers. Its attribution capabilities associate token consumption and other workload costs with customer activity and billing.
Organizational fit
Amberflo serves AI and software businesses combining usage billing with customer-level cost reporting.
Its pricing page presents Essential and Custom offerings without fixed monthly rates. Separate Startups and Growth listings display prices of $99 and $599 per month, respectively, although their relationship to the Essential and Custom offerings is not specified.
9. Credyt
Credyt provides wallet-based billing infrastructure for AI applications, including prepaid balances and real-time usage authorization.
Primary focus
Credyt supports:
- Wallet balance authorization
- Event-based billing
- Prepaid and multi-asset wallets
- Subscription and hybrid pricing
- Dimensional pricing
- Automated top-ups
- Customer billing portals and developer integrations
Balances can represent currency or configured usage units, including tokens and GPU hours.
AI infrastructure considerations
Credyt supports AI products that incorporate wallet balance checks before processing chargeable activity. Usage charges can then be applied against the customer's configured balance.
Organizational fit
Credyt serves AI applications using prepaid wallets and real-time usage authorization.
Its published pricing is $1 per monthly active wallet after the first 10 wallets, with one million events included monthly. Additional event charges apply above that allowance.
10. Alguna
Alguna provides quote-to-cash software connecting pricing, quoting, contracts, subscriptions, billing, and financial workflows.
Primary focus
Alguna supports:
- Product catalogs and pricing configuration
- Usage metering and hybrid billing
- Customer-specific quotes and CPQ
- Electronic signatures
- Automated invoicing and collections
- Revenue recognition
- CRM and ERP integrations
AI infrastructure considerations
Alguna supports AI products combining self-service subscriptions with negotiated enterprise contracts. Its quoting and billing workflows connect customer-specific commercial terms with recurring and usage-based charges.
Organizational fit
Alguna serves B2B software companies managing pricing, contracts, and billing through connected quote-to-cash workflows.
Alguna publishes three pricing plans: Starter at $0, Growth at $699 per month, and Enterprise Scale with custom pricing. The plans cover different combinations of usage-based billing, quoting, contracts, integrations, and revenue management capabilities.
How to evaluate usage-based billing platforms for AI infrastructure
AI billing requirements vary by workload. Token-based APIs need granular metering, while enterprise AI products may combine usage charges, commitments, credits, and finance integrations.
Metering architecture and historical data
Evaluate event attribution, deduplication, data retention, and late-arriving usage. Granular records support configurable metrics and historical corrections, while aggregation supports high-volume processing.
Pricing flexibility and customer spend
Billing platforms may combine subscriptions, usage charges, prepaid credits, and negotiated rates. Customer-facing spend controls provide visibility into consumption, balances, and thresholds. Historical usage also supports pricing analysis.
Unit economics and financial reporting
AI unit economics measure costs and revenue per token, API request, or compute hour.
Billing connects usage with invoicing, collections, and revenue recognition under ASC 606 or IFRS 15 requirements, as applicable. Connected finance workflows support consistent billing and financial records.
Why Orb supports AI infrastructure billing
AI infrastructure companies need revenue systems that connect granular product usage with evolving pricing models and finance workflows. Orb provides revenue infrastructure that brings together raw usage events, custom SQL metrics, dimensional pricing, prepaid credits, automated invoicing, and financial reporting.
With Orb Simulations, product and finance teams can evaluate proposed pricing against historical usage before rollout. Orb's price evolution capabilities also support customer-specific rates, scheduled pricing updates, and subscription migrations, helping companies manage changing commercial requirements within a connected billing environment.
For AI companies pricing tokens, API requests, GPU hours, and other infrastructure activity, Orb connects usage metering with customer billing and finance operations. Its configurable pricing tools, historical analysis, and enterprise finance integrations support the development and management of usage-based and hybrid revenue models as products evolve.
Frequently asked questions
What usage metrics should AI infrastructure companies track?
Relevant metrics include input and output tokens, API requests, GPU hours, compute time, storage usage, data processing, and completed operations. The appropriate measurements depend on the product's cost structure and pricing model. Additional attributes, such as model type, geographic region, instance type, or customer tier, can be used to calculate different rates for the same underlying activity.
How does Orb support usage-based billing for AI infrastructure?
Orb's usage-based billing engine connects raw usage events with custom SQL metrics, dimensional pricing, subscriptions, and prepaid credits. Its historical simulations support pricing analysis, while invoicing and finance workflows connect calculated charges with customer billing and revenue reporting. Orb also provides customer-facing usage experiences and spend controls that support transparency across AI workloads.
Can AI billing platforms combine subscriptions with usage-based pricing?
Yes. Hybrid pricing allows companies to combine recurring platform or subscription fees with usage-based charges. For example, an AI product may charge a monthly fee that includes a defined token allowance, with additional usage priced separately. Enterprise agreements may also include minimum commitments, prepaid credits, negotiated discounts, and custom rates.
How do prepaid credits differ from usage-based invoicing?
Prepaid credits represent balances available for eligible consumption. Recorded usage draws down those balances according to configured pricing and credit rules. Usage-based invoicing calculates charges from recorded activity, often over a billing period. Both can operate within the same hybrid pricing arrangement, depending on the contract and billing configuration.
What finance capabilities matter for AI usage-based billing?
Important capabilities include accurate invoice calculations, credit ledger management, historical corrections, accounts receivable, collections, revenue recognition data, and ERP integrations. Finance teams also need records connecting customer contracts, usage measurements, calculated charges, invoices, and payments. The appropriate workflows depend on the company's commercial agreements and accounting requirements.