Set up usage-based billing with rate cardsPrivate preview

Charge customers based on complex pricing models with rate cards and subscriptions.

You can use rate cards to set up usage-based billing and charge your customers as they use your service.

This guide uses a fictional AI company called Alpaca AI to demonstrate how to create a pricing model with rate cards, subscribe a customer to the rate card, and record usage with meters. Alpaca AI offers several different models and services. For example, for their Alpaca-0 model, they charge their customers 0.04 USD per hundred tokens. And for their Alpaca Chat service, they charge 0.02 USD for the first 80 messages, 0.05 USD for the next 100 messages, and so on. They bill their customers at the end of the month in arrears. They can add all of their models and services to one rate card.

Learn more about how rate cards work.

Private preview

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Before you begin

Rate cards use API endpoints in the /v2 namespace, such as Rate card subscriptions v2.

Learn more about the /v2 and /v1 namespaces.

Create a rate card

Use the Stripe Dashboard or API to create a rate card that includes different rates for each pricing option.

For example, Alpaca AI creates a rate card with:

Monthly service interval
USD currency
Tax not included in price
Metered price of 0.04 USD per hundred units
Monthly billing cadence

You need to associate each rate in a rate card with a meter.

Go to the Rate cards page. Click + Add rate card.
In the rate card editor, set up the rate card:
- Rate card name: Add a name for your rate card. For example, Alpaca AI.
- Service interval: Select a Service interval to define the time period for your customer’s access to your service. You can select one of the pre-defined periods or create a custom one.
- Currency: Select the Currency.
- Tax behavior: Select whether to Include tax in prices. The default is to not include tax in prices.
- Click Continue.
In the next screen of the rate card editor, add a usage-based item:
- Metered item: Enter a name for your item. For example, Alpaca AI tokens.
- Meter: Select an existing Meter or create a new one by clicking +.
- Price configuration: Select the Price type: Fixed rate, Volume, Graduated, or Overage. For example, Alpaca AI uses Fixed rate.
  - Select whether Sell as Individual units or a Packaged group of units. For example, Alpaca AI sells their tokens as packages of 1000 units, at 0.04 USD per package.
  - For packages, Enter the Units per package.
  - Select whether to round up or down for Partial packages. For example, Alpaca AI rounds up, so if a user uses 1,010 units, they’re charged 0.08 USD.
  - Enter the Price per package.
- (Optional) You can optionally configure Advanced settings for your item, like specifying a Product tax code, Unit label, Lookup key, and Metadata. You can also add metadata to the rate.
- Click Save.
Click + to add another rate.
Click Create rate card.

Subscribe your customer to a rate card

After you create rate card, you can start subscribing customers.

When you subscribe your customer to the rate card, you also define the billing cadence–how often to create invoices for your customer. When an invoice is created, the customer’s default payment method is automatically charged.

Go to the Rate cards page and click the rate card you want to subscribe your customer to.
In the rate card details page, click the overflow menu () next to Edit rate card.
In the rate card subscription editor:
- Find or add a customer.
- Define the Billing cadence, which is how often to and when to send an invoice to the customer.
- Click Create subscription.

Record customer usage

After you subscribe a customer to a rate card, you can record their usage of your service, by sending meter events to a meter.

Go to the Rate card subscriptions tab.
Click the subscription you want to record usage for.
Click the overflow menu () in the row of the item you want to record usage for, then click View meter details.
In the meter details page, click + Add usage then select Manually input usage.
In the Add usage dialog:
- Select a customer.
- Enter a Value for the usage.
- Select a date for the Timestamp.
Click Submit.