Blog
Practical guides, architecture deep-dives, and decision frameworks for AI founders and engineers monetizing AI products.
Early-stage founders often see their small customer base as something to overcome. But when it comes to pricing decisions, having fewer customers creates specific advantages that become harder to maintain as you grow.
Four places where fraud and revenue leakage hit AI products using Stripe metered billing. Practical fixes from Radar to prepaid wallets.
Step-by-step breakdown of Stripe's metered billing: object chain, meter events, webhooks, pricing changes, and customer portal. With working code examples.
AI products incur real costs in real time, but most billing systems were built to record what happened. They can't control what happens next. As of Q1 2026, the gap between infrastructure costs and billing capabilities is one of the most common unit economics problems that AI companies discover too late. This article explains why billing and economic control are separate problems, and what it looks like when both are solved.
Stripe and Tempo launched the Machine Payments Protocol yesterday. The scope is deliberately narrow. Understanding precisely what it covers makes the adjacent problem more visible. This piece covers what MPP doesn't solve: wallet management, real-time balance tracking, and margin observability, and how the billing layer above the protocol needs to work.
Most companies don't replace their billing infrastructure. They evolve toward it. Shadow Mode, Hybrid Mode, and Full Wallet Control are three stages that let AI companies gain real-time economic control without the risk of a billing migration.
Clay overhauled its pricing model this week, cutting data costs by 50–90% and introducing a two-meter system that separates enrichment costs from platform work. The changes materially lower the barrier to entry and signal a deliberate bet on volume over margin. Here's the full breakdown.
AI coding tools created a new class of builders. They ship functional apps without engineering backgrounds. Then they hit a wall the moment they try to charge for what they've built.
Usage-based billing changes when revenue is recognized. Credits may look identical in product UI but behave differently under ASC 606 and IFRS 15 depending on whether they represent entitlements, commitments, or prepaid usage. This matters more for AI products where usage is spiky, costs are real, and regulators scrutinize when value is actually delivered.
Orb is an enterprise revenue platform built for complex usage-based pricing with sophisticated modeling and end-of-cycle invoicing. Credyt is lightweight billing infrastructure for real-time authorization and prepaid wallets. Find out where each product shines.
Instead of another step-by-step tutorial, say hello to Coffee Shop Tycoon! A browser game where players run a coffee shop using real wallet-based billing. One week, Godot 4.6, AI-generated pixel art, and a few Credyt API endpoints later, here's what happened.
Flexprice is an open-source billing platform that meters usage in real time and generates invoices at cycle end. Credyt debits prepaid wallets immediately without invoices. When to use each for AI products.
There is a special kind of energy when the whole team is finally in the same room. We were just in Berlin for our latest get-together: Coffee was flowing, snow was falling, ideas were flying, the view over Berlin Tiergarten was amazing and naturally, we couldn't resist a spontaneous mini-hackathon.
Real-time wallet billing vs invoice-based usage tracking. Credyt authorizes usage before costs are incurred with prepaid wallets. Stripe Billing meters usage and invoices at cycle end. When to choose each for AI products.
Custom assets launched today in Credyt. Teams can now bill customers in credits, tokens, GPU hours, or any product-native unit instead of dollars. This is how platforms like Midjourney and Lovable handle monetization so that when infrastructure costs shift or pricing evolves, the credits customers purchased still work because billing happens in product units, not currency.
Free to start. Live in hours. No engineering team required.
