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Billable metrics define what you measure in your product. Every unit of consumption - tokens, compute hours, storage - starts as a metric.

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Core Concepts

A billable metric is simply a measurable unit. It doesn’t have a price - that comes later when you create plans. Each metric belongs to exactly one product and specifies:
  • Name - What customers see (e.g., “Input Tokens”, “GPU Hours”)
  • Unit - How it’s measured (e.g., “tokens”, “hours”, “GB”)
  • Mode - How it’s billed (flat or usage-based)
  • Aggregation - How to sum usage (currently SUM only)

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Billing Modes

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Usage Mode

Variable consumption tracked through events. Perfect for:
  • LLM tokens processed
  • Compute hours consumed
  • Data transferred
  • Queries executed
Report usage as it happens. Paygentic aggregates it per billing period.

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Flat Mode

Fixed charges billed once per period. Use for:
  • Seats or licenses
  • Platform access fees
  • Base subscriptions
  • Support tiers
Charged at the start of each billing cycle.

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Real-World Examples

LLM Service Separate input and output for different pricing:
  • Metric: “Input Tokens” (usage mode, unit: “tokens”)
  • Metric: “Output Tokens” (usage mode, unit: “tokens”)
  • Metric: “Fine-tuning Hours” (usage mode, unit: “hours”)
Data Platform Track different resource types:
  • Metric: “Storage” (usage mode, unit: “GB-hours”)
  • Metric: “Compute” (usage mode, unit: “vCPU-hours”)
  • Metric: “Queries” (usage mode, unit: “queries”)
  • Metric: “Active Users” (flat mode, unit: “users”)
Video Processing Measure processing and delivery:
  • Metric: “Minutes Processed” (usage mode, unit: “minutes”)
  • Metric: “Bandwidth” (usage mode, unit: “GB”)
  • Metric: “Transcoding Jobs” (usage mode, unit: “jobs”)

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Design Considerations

Granularity matters. Too many metrics complicate billing. Too few limit pricing flexibility. Think about pricing evolution. Can’t split a metric later without migrating customers. Customer clarity. Metrics should be intuitive and easy to understand on invoices.

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Common Patterns

Tiered Resources Create separate metrics for different resource classes:
  • “Standard Compute”
  • “Premium Compute”
  • “GPU Compute”
Direction-Based Split bidirectional operations:
  • “Data Ingress”
  • “Data Egress”
Quality Levels Differentiate service tiers:
  • “SD Video Processing”
  • “HD Video Processing”
  • “4K Video Processing”

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Reporting Usage

Once metrics are defined, you’ll report usage through events. Each event includes:
  • Metric ID
  • Quantity consumed
  • Customer ID
  • Timestamp
  • Optional metadata
Paygentic handles aggregation, rating, and billing automatically.

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Next Steps

After defining metrics:
  1. Create plans to group your offerings
  2. Set prices for each metric
  3. Report usage as customers consume resources