Glossary
Metered billing
Metered billing is a model where a customer is charged for the volume they actually consume, measured as usage events and priced at the end of each billing period.
Also called metering, usage metering.
A metered system records discrete events, such as an API call, a processed gigabyte or a minute of compute, then aggregates them against a pricing rule when the period closes. The invoice is a function of recorded usage rather than a fixed amount agreed in advance.
The hard part is rarely the pricing rule. It is ingesting events reliably at volume, handling late and duplicate events without corrupting a total, and being able to explain any line on an invoice back to the events that produced it.
Related terms