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Overview

Usage-based billing allows you to charge customers based on their actual consumption of your product or service, rather than a fixed subscription fee. This flexible pricing model is ideal for SaaS platforms, APIs, cloud services, and any business where customer value correlates directly with usage.

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Key Capabilities

With Dodo Payments’ usage-based billing, you can:

Track Any Metric

Monitor API calls, storage usage, compute time, or custom events with flexible data collection.

Flexible Aggregation

Count events, sum values, find maximums, or track unique occurrences using configurable meters.

Real-time Metering

Capture usage data instantly as events occur for accurate, up-to-the-minute billing calculations.

Advanced Filtering

Apply conditions to determine which events should be metered based on your business logic.

Accurate Billing

Generate invoices based on actual consumption with transparent usage reports and detailed breakdowns.

Automated Processing

Automatically process usage events and apply pricing rules without manual intervention.

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Core Components

The usage-based billing system consists of several interconnected components:

Events

Real-time data points that capture when usage occurs in your application. Each event contains metadata about the usage activity.

Meters

Configuration rules that define how events are aggregated, filtered, and measured for billing purposes.

Products

Billing entities that link meters to pricing rules, determining how usage translates to charges.

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Data Flow

The billing process follows this sequence:
  1. Event Generation: Your application sends usage events to Dodo Payments
  2. Event Processing: Events are validated and routed to appropriate meters
  3. Aggregation: Meters calculate usage totals based on configured rules
  4. Billing: Usage totals are converted to charges using product pricing
  5. Invoicing: Charges are included in customer invoices for the billing period

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Integration guide

Complete Integration Guide

Learn how to implement usage-based billing with step-by-step instructions for creating meters, linking products, and sending usage events.