Build a usage model with predictable spend and natural expansion
See how you can set usage quota, meter consumption in real time, alert your team as customers approach the limit, and let customers buy additional capacity when they hit the limits, all within Chargebee
In this model, customers pay upfront for a defined pool of usage, with a firm ceiling on consumption. When they reach the limit, you can prompt them to purchase additional capacity or block access without letting usage spill into overages or unexpected charges.
- The value metric has a natural ceiling customers plan around: words, API calls, documents
- Your buyers treat surprise invoices as a trust problem, not a billing inconvenience
- The sales motion depends on contract clarity at signing rather than end-of-month reconciliation
- Hitting the limit is a useful commercial signal: the account has grown into a larger tier
Here's what you need
Three objects in the Chargebee catalog. Define them once and they carry your commercial logic through every deal.
The subscription tier your customer commits to for the year. A plan can include multiple features, some metered with defined usage limits and others non-metered, such as feature access, premium support, or other entitlements.
Phrase offers several features. For this recipe, we're going to focus on two key features with usage limits: TMS Procesed Words and Strings Managed Words.
The amount of usage included in the plan. When customers reach this limit, you can listen for Chargebee webhooks and take the appropriate action—such as offering top-ups, restricting access, or prompting an upgrade.
Set up your features and usage limits
You define each plan’s default allowances once in Chargebee. TMS Processed Words and Strings Managed Words each get a default value and an entitlement set to “Restrict access.” Every new subscription starts from those defaults. Where your sales team negotiates a larger pool for a specific account, you override the entitlement on that subscription at signing. The plan stays clean and the override lives on the customer’s record.
The deal puts the ceiling in writing.
Your sales team quotes the deal in Chargebee CPQ, natively or through HubSpot or Salesforce. Northwind Labs translates at high volume and negotiates a larger TMS allowance. The quote carries both the plan price and the entitlement overrides, so the contract states the exact ceiling Northwind is buying before the subscription goes live.
On e-signature, Chargebee creates the subscription with the negotiated entitlements already attached. Every other Business customer keeps the catalog defaults. No new plan needed.
- Prepared by
- Sales
- Approved by
- Deal Desk
- Signed
- Northwind Labs · Apr 27, 2026
Illustrative figures. Overrides live on the subscription. Catalog defaults are unchanged for all other accounts.
Send the events. Chargebee keeps the count.
Every time Northwind submits a translation job, Phrase can send a usage event to Chargebee. Chargebee accumulates the count against the subscription entitlement in real time. Each event carries a deduplication_id, subscription_id, and millisecond usage_timestamp. If the same event arrives twice due to a retry or a pipeline failure, Chargebee records it once.
Before accepting a new job, Phrase can check the customer's remaining TMS balance through the entitlements API. If the balance covers the job's word count, the job can proceed. If not, the job can be queued, an upgrade prompt can be shown, or processing can be blocked, depending on the usage policy.
POST /usage_events { "deduplication_id": "dedup_4820f3a", "subscription_id": "sub_NL_4471", "usage_timestamp": 1736863320123, // milliseconds "feat_tms_words": 142800 }
The ceiling is reached. Sales adds capacity mid-cycle.
By October 2026, Northwind’s running total has reached the 6,000,000 TMS ceiling. New translation jobs are gated. Your sales team creates a mid-cycle capacity add-on directly on the subscription in Chargebee. No new quote is needed for a straightforward expansion. The additional 2,000,000 words are provisioned immediately and pro-rated for the remaining six months of the term.
Know who is close to the ceiling before they hit it
Configure usage alerts in Chargebee at 80 and 90 percent per metric. When a subscription crosses the threshold, Chargebee fires a webhook. Your product can warn the customer in-app, flag the account to the sales team, or queue jobs for later processing instead of blocking them outright. The earlier your team knows, the cleaner the upgrade conversation.
- Metered feature
- TMS Processed Words (feat_tms_words)
- Alert type
- Usage exceeds
- Threshold
- 80% of included usage
- Applies to
- All Business tier subscriptions
- Channel
- Webhook
Meter everything now.
Price what matters later.
In this example, Phrase's billing model tracks TMS Processed Words and Strings Managed Words. But translation pricing can evolve. Language pair complexity, source file size, character-based language premiums, or AI translation units could each become a pricing lever as your product matures.
Because Chargebee ingests raw usage events without a fixed schema, every dimension you send now is a monetization option you can switch on later, without rebuilding your instrumentation or redeploying your metering layer.
The price was agreed on day one. So is the invoice.
At renewal, the plan charge is unchanged. But because Northwind purchased a mid-cycle capacity add-on in October, the invoice carries two lines: the annual plan and the pro-rated add-on charge. Chargebee handles both automatically. When the add-on was created on the subscription, it was scheduled for the next billing date. No manual invoice editing, no separate charge to chase.
The consumption summary below the total shows what Northwind used against their expanded ceiling. It is informational and does not affect the amount due.
Your account team sees who to call
Every usage alert in Chargebee carries a Status Summary: subscriptions Within Limits and subscriptions In Alarm. For an account manager, the In Alarm list is the shortlist for this quarter’s expansion conversations.
Certainty becomes your competitive edge.
When customers know their usage limits upfront, they buy with confidence and scale predictably. Chargebee meters usage in real time, alerts you when customers are close, and handles mid-cycle purchases without manual work.