Transform raw usage events into billable quantities with aggregation and filtering.
Meters convert raw events into billable quantities. They filter events and apply aggregation functions (Count, Sum, Max, Last) to calculate usage per customer.
The unit label for invoices and reports. Examples: calls, tokens, GB, hours.
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Filtering (Optional)
Add conditions to filter which events are counted:
AND logic: All conditions must match
OR logic: Any condition can match
Available comparators: equals, not equals, greater than, greater than or equals, less than, less than or equals, contains, does not contain.Enable filtering, choose your logic, then add conditions with a property key, comparator, and value.
By default, meters charge customers per-unit in dollars (or your configured currency). You can instead configure a meter to deduct from a customer’s credit balance, so usage consumes credits rather than generating a monetary charge.
Credit-based deduction requires a Credit Entitlement attached to the same product. Create the credit entitlement first, then link it to the meter.
First, create a credit entitlement in Products → Credits. Define the unit (e.g., “API Calls”, “Tokens”), precision, and lifecycle settings (expiry, rollover, overage).See the Credit-Based Billing guide for detailed instructions.
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Create or Edit a Usage-Based Product
Go to your usage-based product and open the Meter configuration section.
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Add a Meter
Click the + button to attach a meter. Configure the event name, aggregation type, and measurement unit as usual.
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Enable 'Bill Usage in Credits'
Toggle Bill usage in Credits on the meter configuration to reveal credit settings:
Toggle 'Bill usage in Credits' to switch from currency-based to credit-based deduction.
The number of usage units required to deduct 1 credit. For example:
1 = each meter event deducts 1 credit
100 = 100 meter events deduct 1 credit
1000 = 1,000 API calls consume 1 credit
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Free Threshold and Credits
The Free Threshold applies to meters billed in money, not to meters billed in credits. When a meter bills in credits, every unit counts toward credit deduction.Example: With meter-units-per-credit of 1, a customer who makes 2,500 API calls has 2,500 credits deducted.
Once configured, the deduction pipeline runs automatically:
Events arrive — Your application sends usage events via the Event Ingestion API.
Meter aggregates — Events are aggregated per your meter configuration (Count, Sum, Max, Last).
Background worker processes — Every minute, a worker fetches new events since the last checkpoint.
Credits are deducted — Aggregated usage is converted to credits using the meter_units_per_credit rate and deducted using FIFO ordering (earliest-expiring grants consumed first).
Overage tracked — If the balance hits zero, further usage is recorded as overage and handled according to the configured behavior (forgiven at reset, billed at next invoice, or carried forward as deficit). Dodo Payments doesn’t block usage when the balance runs out. To stop access at zero, check the balance in your application.
Credit deduction runs asynchronously (every ~1 minute). There may be a brief delay between event ingestion and balance deduction. Design your application to handle this delay and don’t rely on real-time balance checks for access control on individual requests.
You can link multiple meters on the same product to the same credit entitlement. All meters deduct from one shared balance.Example: An AI platform with two meters:
text.generation — 1 credit per 1,000 tokens
image.generation — 10 credits per image
Both deduct from the same “AI Credits” pool. The customer sees a single unified balance in their portal.
Use different meter_units_per_credit rates across meters to express relative costs. Expensive operations (image generation) cost fewer meter units per credit than cheap ones (text completion).
List Customer Ledger
View the full credit deduction history for a customer.
Get Customer Balance
Check a customer’s current credit balance via API.
