- Orb Billing Engine
- Usage metering
- Accuracy
- Security and compliance
- Spend controls
- Experience kit
- Invoicing
- Security and compliance
- Enterprise readiness
- Model pricing
- Credit pools
- Prepaid credits
- Seats & Licenses
- Hybrid Pricing
- Price evolution
- Simulations
- Finance workflows
- Invoicing
- AI contract ingest
- AR aging reports
- Automated collections
- Revenue recognition
- Netsuite
Teams
Segments
Hybrid Pricing
Capture value from both metered features and fixed seat or platform access fees, and tailor your pricing model to your GTM motion.
Why companies choose hybrid pricing
Hybrid price models are a popular choice for companies making the transition to usage-based billing. They allow companies to maintain their old seat-based motion while building trust for usage-based elements with customers and GTM teams.
Launch AI products faster
Offering an AI tool as a metered add-on lets companies test new ways to monetize without a lengthy overhaul of their GTM motion.
De-risk the transition
Changing price models can be a tough internal sell with sales teams. Hybrid models minimize disruption to commission structures and deal strategy.
More ways to monetize
Not all features are a good fit for being metered. A tiered seat or platform fee captures that value, while a usage-based fee helps cover your costs.
Hybrid pricing on a pricing page
- Tiers capture the value you build but can’t meter: Valuable, engineering-intensive projects like integrations or resource-heavy white glove support get gated behind more expensive seat fees.
- Usage-based fees pin prices to cost: Agentic products run up high bills for infra and base models. Charging by usage for just part of the platform helps ensure that these bills get covered with scaling adoption.
Key strategy considerations
Customer Value
Ask: Will customers adopt the usage-based component and trust what they're being charged?
- Choose a usage metric customers easily understand
- Make usage-based elements easy to adopt; if it's a net-new surface sold as an add-on, pairing with a freemium offering to drive trial
- Build trust with transparent invoices, usage dashboards, and alerts and guardrails that prevent overspending
End Result: Customers adopt the usage layer, understand their charges, and trust they won't overspend.
Finance
Ask: Is the usage metric aligned to real costs and easy to forecast?
- Choose a usage metric truly aligned to your costs
- Make sure it's a metric finance can forecast and reconcile
- Confirm variable charges won't create manual work at close
End Result: The variable layer covers cost exposure and finance can plan around it without surprises.
Go-to-market
Ask: Are your seat tiers and GTM motion set up to capture and sell the value?
- Set seat fee tiers that reflect upsell value and let you get paid for the engineering you invest in
- Align GTM on mapping new variable revenue to commission structures and rethinking deal strategy
End Result: The fixed layer captures upsell value and the GTM team is aligned and incentivized to sell the model.
Key technical Considerations
Make pricing flexible
Ask: Can your billing platform actually express the intricacies of this model, and the price model you'll want to message next?
Hybrid models combine fixed and usage components and tend to evolve, so the system has to model today's structure and adapt as pricing matures.
Ensure a direct connection between usage-based elements and finance
Ask: Will variable charges flow cleanly into revenue recognition, reporting, and month-end close?
Usage-based line items should feed existing finance workflows instead of creating manual reconciliation.
Dashboards should match the invoice
Ask: For pricing that includes tiers or bulk discounts, does the usage dashboard reflect the final invoice total? When it doesn't, customers dispute charges.
Estimating bills accurately or setting expectations with customers up front is critical for avoiding disputes. Testing pricing strategies ensures full visibility into what is being charged.
Ensure your system is adapatable
Ask: Can your billing system handle changes to seat counts or plan tiers in the middle of a billing period?
Hybrid models change mid-cycle often, and proration has to stay accurate when they do.
Keep billing audit-ready
Ask: Do you log the history of every plan and price, and which customers were on each at a given time?
Keeping that record is key to ensuring invoices stay defensible as pricing changes.
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