For those who’ve built systems that need to charge by an ‘event’, like an API call, how did you meter usage and then bill customers?
How’s that system holding up today?
Ask HN: How did you set up usage-based billing?
1–7 of 7 posts
Re: Ask HN: How did you set up usage-based billing?
#2You should check https://hyperline.co, does everything (metering, subs, invoicing) and it's self-serve if needed
Re: Ask HN: How did you set up usage-based billing?
#3We used Stripe to build it. Something like:
- Set users to a subscription cadence once they upload a payment method
- Add a backend job that aggregates usage in the form that you're metering (with lots of lots of unit tests to make sure you know what to expect) and post that as an invoice item to the customers' account in Stripe, but don't collect
- Periodically have a subscription in Stripe (typically monthly) go and bill for all the open invoice items. This grabs all of the usage that hasn't been invoiced in the period and bills for it. If the total value is $0, skip that month.
- Let users manage receipts and invoices in Stripe, and make sure the line items on the invoices correspond with user meaningful usage metering
Re: Ask HN: How did you set up usage-based billing?
#4We used Stripe to build it. Something like: - Set users to a subscription cadence once they upload a payment method - Add a backend job that aggregates usage in the form that you're metering (with lots of lots of unit tests to make sure you know what to expect) and post that as an invoice item to the customers' account in Stripe, but don't collect - Periodically have a subscription in Stripe (typically monthly) go an…
This is really helpful thanks.
Do you actively monitor how much customers owe you or even cap the size of their bill before they need to pay you?
This would be in case they have a significant amount of usage in a period.
Re: Ask HN: How did you set up usage-based billing?
#5You should check https://hyperline.co , does everything (metering, subs, invoicing) and it's self-serve if needed
Great I’ll check them out!
Re: Ask HN: How did you set up usage-based billing?
#6We used Stripe to build it. Something like: - Set users to a subscription cadence once they upload a payment method - Add a backend job that aggregates usage in the form that you're metering (with lots of lots of unit tests to make sure you know what to expect) and post that as an invoice item to the customers' account in Stripe, but don't collect - Periodically have a subscription in Stripe (typically monthly) go an…
This is really helpful thanks. Do you actively monitor how much customers owe you or even cap the size of their bill before they need to pay you? This would be in case they have a significant amount of usage in a period.
Not at this point, usage never ends up being huge amounts of money because we have flat SaaS fees as well.
Re: Ask HN: How did you set up usage-based billing?
#7We used Stripe to build it. Something like: - Set users to a subscription cadence once they upload a payment method - Add a backend job that aggregates usage in the form that you're metering (with lots of lots of unit tests to make sure you know what to expect) and post that as an invoice item to the customers' account in Stripe, but don't collect - Periodically have a subscription in Stripe (typically monthly) go an…
I wrote an article this year about how to setup UBP with Stripe.
I hope it helps: https://openmeter.io/blog/implementing-usage-based-pricing-w...