Credit-Based Pricing
Pricing Model
An abstraction layer where customers purchase credits consumed at different rates depending on the operation performed. Often positioned as a simplification but typically introduces more complexity than it solves. Credits are NOT a value metric — they are a surrogate for an underlying metric that has been obscured. As a manipulation layer between consumption and price, credit-based pricing can work for or against the buyer depending on how the conversion rate and credit values are set.
Used in these articles
- The Value Metric Decision: How to Choose What You Charge For
- Credit-Based Pricing for AI Software: The Six Fatal Flaws
- Outcome-Based vs Consumption-Based AI Pricing | SPP
- GitHub Copilot Joins Atlassian and HubSpot in Repricing AI: Three Vendors, Three Different Metric Bets, One Structural Cause
- Margin-Calibrated Discounting: The Pricing Surface Software Should Have Inherited