What is metered billing?
Metered billing measures how much of a product a customer uses during a billing period and charges them for that consumption. The billing system ingests usage events as they happen, aggregates them per customer and period, and generates an invoice based on the total — the engine that makes usage-based pricing possible.
Free and open-source under AGPLv3 — self-host today, or talk to us about cloud.
Metered billing is the mechanism behind usage-based pricing. Where usage-based pricing is the commercial model, metered billing is the plumbing: capturing every billable event, attributing it to the right customer and subscription, and totalling it at the end of the cycle.
A metered billing pipeline has three parts. Event ingestion records usage as it happens — an API call, a gigabyte stored, a message sent. Aggregation rolls those events up by customer and billing period, applying any tiers or included allowances. Invoicing then turns the aggregated total into a transparent bill that shows exactly what was consumed, often alongside fixed charges in a hybrid plan.
Billing for the rest of us.
GetPaidHQ is open-source, self-hostable billing on any processor. Run it free, or talk to us about managed Cloud.
Free and open-source under AGPLv3 — self-host today, or talk to us about cloud.