Credits and surrogate units

The frame

A credit is a surrogate unit: a vendor-defined billing unit that stands in for value the company cannot meter directly. The customer buys a balance, and each action draws it down at a rate the vendor sets. It is an accounting denomination and never a value metric, the unit of the customer’s work that a price attaches to, because nobody can count one in their own terms without the vendor’s conversion table. Vendors adopt credits because inference cost, what it costs to run generative AI behind a feature, moves with the model, the prompt and the task. One balance absorbs that volatility and holds one price list across models.

With an AI line, credits are the default you will inherit, because model providers bill in tokens. The price per credit will look stable. The price of the work moves in the conversion rate between credits and actions, which the vendor can revise without touching the published price. Expiration and pooling decide who bears the risk of credits bought and never used; both are licensing terms, and procurement reads them at renewal.

What a credit is in AI pricing argues that a credit denominates accounting and lists the questions to put to a scheme before adopting it. Credit-based pricing for AI software argues that credits are the infrastructure default inherited without the value metric work, and traces the flaws that follow. AI credit conversion rates argues that a credit pegged to the dollar is still a surrogate, because the peg prices the credit and the table prices the work. Hybrid pricing argues that an included allowance with metered overage moves the attach and opacity problems to renewal.

Can your customer say, before signing, what one credit buys them in their own terms, and who can change that answer after they sign?

Three things to say in the room this week

• A credit is an accounting unit we mint; the price of the work lives in the conversion table behind it.
• Before we adopt credits, name the value metric they stand in for, and say why we cannot meter it directly.
• Expiration and pooling decide who holds the risk of unused credits; those are licensing terms, and we choose them.