What teams need
- Run any hybrid model on one engine
How Chargebee helps
- Subscriptions, usage, and prepaid credits run from a single catalog and native usage engine, so complex contracts work end to end without stitching platforms together.
Every Pricing Model.One Billing System.
How you price is shaped by the value you deliver and what the market will pay. Chargebee gives you the flexibility to build the model that fits and evolve it as your business changes.
Trusted by 6,500+ businesses globally 4.4 rating →
As agentic AI reshapes how customers use Zapier, Chargebee lets us simplify pricing to subscriptions plus PAYG, run rapid experiments, and support flexible enterprise contracts without tying up engineering. That transparency and agility across finance, product, and sales is critical to our scale.
Change How you Monetize Without the Downstream Complexity
Changing how you charge is a business decision with a long tail. The moment you make a move, it can ripple through plans, entitlements, invoices, customer experiences, and the numbers finance ultimately has to stand behind. That downstream weight is what can make a good pricing decision harder to put into practice.
Chargebee carries that weight underneath your monetization. Your commercial model can evolve with your product and market, while the billing underneath keeps charges accurate and the financial record governed. You get the freedom to make the commercial decision without having to untangle everything it sets in motion.
One platform, three capabilities
Prepaid Credits
Customers prepay for credits, then spend them across features at your set rates.
Works when
You have several compute-heavy features with different costs, and metering each one separately makes buyers do cost math before every click. One balance removes that friction and gets customers to commit cash upfront, before they consume.
Breaks when
The balance isn't visible in real time, so people either hoard usage instead of adopting freely, or run out mid-workflow and feel like the product failed rather than billed them.
Seen at
Most companies run more than one of these. The logos just show where each model is easiest to recognize.
Credit pool
25,000 / 25,000
Prepaid once. Spent anywhere.
Video render
40 credits / min
Agent run
12 credits / run
Enrichment
1 credit / row
Pay-as-You-Go
Customers pay only for what they consume, billed after the fact.
Works when
The buyer needs to try the product before committing to anything. It is a card swipe instead of a contract, so the only friction left is deciding to start.
Breaks when
Usage is volatile enough that one runaway account can generate a bill large enough to trigger a dispute. Light users can also churn because there is no minimum spend or contract to anchor retention.
Seen at
Day 1Metered continuouslyNo ceiling
Rate
$0.04 / request
Billed
After the fact
Outcome-Based
The customer is billed only when the product delivers a specific, verifiable result, not for the attempt.
Works when
The outcome is defined tightly enough that neither side disputes whether it happened. The invoice reads as proof of value, not a bill for effort, and your incentives stay aligned because you get paid when the customer gets the result.
Breaks when
Attribution needs human judgment to settle, since every invoice turns into a negotiation the moment “resolved” or “won” is debatable. It also breaks down when the product can't reliably improve outcomes, limiting the potential for expansion.
Seen at
Attempts in
Verified resolutions billed
0
of 0 attempts
0 × $0.99 = $0
Attempt, unbilled Verified resolution, billed
“Chargebee gives us the flexibility to innovate faster than legacy systems, scale sustainably, and align pricing with the real value we deliver. It lets us focus on innovation while staying confident in our pricing and billing operations.”
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AI Action-Based
The customer is billed per action, task, or workflow the AI executes, not per seat or per hour of access.
Works when
The product's value is in the work it does, not who has a login. When one agent does what a team used to, seats stop tracking value and actions start. Pricing the action keeps the price tied to value as headcount detaches from it.
Breaks when
An action's definition is fuzzy or splittable, since customers can restructure usage to dodge the meter or turn one valuable action into several cheaper ones.
Seen at
Who triggered the work
- Ana V.Teammate412
- Ravi K.Teammate96
- Triage agentAI agent1,248
- Maya O.Teammate37
- Sync agentAI agent205
Workflow engine · actions this cycle
412
Hybrid Pricing
Combines recurring revenue with a consumption layer. The most common design is included usage with overage: a platform fee covers seats, licenses, or an included allowance, and usage beyond it bills as overage.
Works when
You need predictability and margin protection. The recurring base anchors the contract, while the usage layer keeps revenue aligned with consumption as it grows.
Breaks when
The included allowance or overage rate is poorly calibrated. Set the allowance too low and customers hit unexpected charges, making the base fee feel like a way to get them in the door. Price overages too high and heavy users may limit usage or churn. Price them too low and you lose the margin protection you need.
Seen at
- Platform fee billed
- Overage billed
$35k$30k$25k$20k$15k$10k$5k$0k
Jan
60%
Feb
80%
Mar
96%
Apr
over
May
over
Jun
over
Usage (% of included allowance)
Platform fee
$20,000 / mo
Included
500k units
Overage
$0.01 / unit
Package Pricing
Usage is sold in fixed packages, with customers paying a flat rate for each package they consume. It is often layered inside a tiered or volume structure rather than standing on its own.
Works when
The underlying cost or product experience is genuinely chunky rather than continuous, and you want clean, predictable units instead of fractional billing. It also creates a natural minimum charge.
Breaks when
Package sizes are large relative to typical usage, because customers can end up paying for capacity they do not use. It also breaks when buyers expect to pay for precise consumption rather than unused capacity.
Seen at
Packages billed · $30 per 1M tokens
Paid for, unused
Tokens consumed
Tiered Pricing
Usage is split into bands, with each unit billed at the rate of the band it falls into. Higher bands are cheaper, so the effective price per unit falls as usage grows without creating a sudden bill jump.
Works when
You want to reward growth without a cliff. Customers get the lower rate only on the units that reach that band, so moving into a new tier never re-rates what they already used.
Breaks when
Customers cannot see which band they are in or what the next one costs. The economics can be attractive, but the model feels opaque when the savings only show up on the invoice.
Seen at
Rate per call, band by band
First 100k
$10,000
Next 300k
$12,000
Next 400k
$8,000
Calls in the month
Volume Pricing
One rate applies to the entire purchase, set retroactively by the total volume threshold reached, so crossing a threshold reprices every unit, not just the units past it.
Works when
You want to reward commitment with one simple negotiation anchor: cross the volume threshold and the rate drops for every unit.
Breaks when
A threshold is close enough to game, since a customer just below it has every incentive to delay, split, or pad usage to cross it.
Seen at
One rate for the entire purchase
Before the threshold
every unit at $0.04
After the threshold
every unit at $0.025
Total volume committed
Stairstep Pricing
Price stays flat within a usage band, then jumps to a new bracket when usage crosses the threshold, rather than increasing unit by unit.
Works when
Predictability matters more than precision, and the buyer would rather know exactly what a month costs than do a per-unit calculation themselves.
Breaks when
Usage sits right at a bracket edge, since one extra message can double the bill for behavior that barely changed.
Seen at
Flat fee for the whole band
Up to 100k
100k to 500k
500k to 2M
Messages sent
Seat-based Pricing
Customers pay per user who can access the product. Different seat types can carry different usage allowances, but the price scales with the number of seats you buy, not with what any user actually consumes.
Works when
Value scales with the number of people using the product, and usage per person is steady enough that a headcount is a fair proxy for value. Buyers understand it instantly and can forecast it, which is why it's still the default for collaboration and productivity tools.
Breaks when
The product's cost or value stops tracking headcount. When one user or agent can consume more compute than a hundred light seats, a per-seat price either bleeds margin on the heavy users or overcharges the rest, and customers respond by sharing logins to dodge it.
Seen at
Seats added to the workspace
Full seat $18/mo
+ 3,000 AI credits / mo
Collab seat $6/mo
+ 500 AI credits / mo
Pricing Is Only One Part of theMonetization Puzzle
A contract is shaped by more than how you charge: the value you measure, what you package, what the purchase unlocks, how you sell and segment it, what you negotiate, and what happens when customers hit a limit. Chargebee lets you configure these layers natively, combine them freely, and evolve your commercial model as your business changes.
Value metric
The unit you meter and bet the business on.
The closer it sits to the value the customer actually gets, from raw usage to the action performed to the outcome delivered, the better your price tracks value. It is the one lever everything downstream depends on: get it wrong and you reprice from scratch.
“With Chargebee, we can seamlessly launch pricing that scales to millions of users. As we build AI into our product to deliver a seamless customer experience, Chargebee's forward-thinking platform and deep expertise have helped us execute complex pricing strategies with speed and precision.”
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Frequently Asked Questions
Chargebee supports a broad range of pricing models, including flat fee, per-unit, tiered, volume, stairstep, package, pay-as-you-go, hybrid subscription + usage, outcome-based, prepaid credits, AI action-based, and agentic pricing. These models can be combined and configured through the same product catalog, so you can build the commercial model around how customers actually buy and use your product.
Chargebee supports complex hybrid pricing models that combine recurring revenue with a consumption layer, such as a subscription with included usage and overage, or subscriptions combined with prepaid credits. Chargebee's product catalog supports these combinations natively, while giving you the flexibility to change pricing and packaging without a coding deployment and the downstream accuracy finance needs to close the books with confidence.
Yes. Chargebee supports pay-as-you-go pricing, where customers are billed for every unit they consume from the first unit, with no included usage quota. You can meter the usage, apply a per-unit rate, bill it, and expose usage and upcoming charges to customers.
Yes. Chargebee supports prepaid credits as a first-class commercial model. You can define credit units, configure credit grants and their frequency, set rollover policies, support top-ups, and bill for overage when the balance is exhausted.
Chargebee is designed to move pricing configuration into business-team workflows. Once usage events are instrumented, teams can define and iterate on metered features, pricing models, entitlements, packaging, and price variants through the system rather than requiring a new engineering project for every pricing change. Initial integrations and usage instrumentation still require engineering involvement.
Yes. Chargebee supports customer- and quote-level entitlement overrides, per-customer price overrides, plan-level usage limits, variant pricing, and grandfathering. This lets you run different commercial terms for different segments or individual enterprise customers while keeping them within the same catalog.
Yes. Chargebee supports usage-based and hybrid pricing in CPQ, including negotiated entitlements, multi-year ramps, approval workflows, and usage-limit overrides that flow into billing. This allows enterprise deals with custom usage commitments or other negotiated terms to run through the same commercial system rather than requiring a separate billing build.
Every Model Here. Plus the Freedom to Change Your Mind.
Any model on this page can run in combination with the others, end to end, on Chargebee. Pick the levers that fit how you grow, then change them when the market moves without waiting on an engineering release.