Usage pricing

Who ran it

• Cursor · Enterprise push and consumption pricing · 2025 to now

  Usage pricing Primary

  In June 2025 Pro moved from request limits to compute limits with $20 of included usage, and a $200 Ultra tier was added. Cursor apologised that the change came as a surprise and offered refunds. The CEO later described the direction as a consumption model.

• Salesforce · Agentforce, digital labor and consumption pricing · 2024 to now

  Usage pricing Primary

  Agents are priced on use: $2 per conversation at launch, then Flex Credits at $0.10 per action from May 2025, with a Flex Agreement that shifts spend between user licenses and digital labor. The 10-K admits limited experience pricing consumption contracts.

• Figma · Platform seats, IPO and AI credits · 2024 to now

  Usage pricing Supporting

  AI credits came to all seats in 2025, with limits enforced and add-on or pay-as-you-go plans from March 2026. The second quarter of 2026 was the first full quarter of AI credit monetization.

• Twilio · Developer-first self-service and pay as you go · 2008 to 2015

  Usage pricing Primary

  Once the trial proves the product, customers pay based on usage, with prices that Lawson says start at a penny. The S-1 sums it up as acquiring developers like consumers and letting them spend like enterprises.

• Twilio · Platform by acquisition and the enterprise push · 2019 to 2021

  Usage pricing Supporting

  Self-serve pricing stayed public with tiered discounts. Larger customers moved to negotiated contracts with minimum revenue commitments, and Flex added per-user, per-month pricing.

• Datadog · Inside sales, enterprise team, and multi-product expansion · 2016 to 2019

  Usage pricing Primary

  Subscriptions commit to usage measured mainly by hosts or indexed data volume, and customers pay for usage above the commitment, so revenue grows as their cloud workloads grow.

• Datadog · Platform expansion and peak net retention · 2020 to 2022

  Usage pricing Primary

  The usage commitment model held, and revenue concentrated in larger accounts: about 2,780 customers above $100,000 in ARR made up 85% of ARR at December 2022.

• Datadog · Usage optimization, enterprise scale, and AI · 2023 to now

  Usage pricing Primary

  Usage pricing cut both ways. The FY2023 10-K blames the drop to mid-110s on slower usage growth from existing customers, and by 2025 an AI-native cohort that includes the largest customer added about seven points of Q4 revenue growth.

• Snowflake · Cloud data warehouse, sold on consumption · 2012 to 2018

  Usage pricing Primary

  Customers pay for the resources they consume, either from a capacity commitment at agreed prices or on demand billed monthly in arrears, instead of a fixed subscription.

• Snowflake · Land and expand, the IPO, and the Data Cloud · 2019 to 2021

  Usage pricing Primary

  Once a customer is live, the sales team's job is to expand its consumption. Capacity prices rose about 12% year over year through tighter discounting.

• Snowflake · The AI Data Cloud and agents · 2023 to now

  Usage pricing Primary

  AI features are consumed on the same platform and credited with new workloads and consumption. Capacity contracts run one to four years, and on-demand was about 1% of fiscal 2026 revenue.

• Anthropic · Partner network, three clouds, expansion · 2026 to now

  Usage pricing Supporting

  Enterprise is priced at $20 per seat per month plus usage billed at API rates, and admins can enable extra usage for individual users at standard API rates.

• Replit · Agent pivot to non-developer builders · 2024 to 2025

  Usage pricing Primary

  Agent work was billed at $0.25 per checkpoint, then from June 2025 by the compute each request used, so simple requests cost less and complex ones could cost more. Replit said the rollout did not meet its standards and issued credits.

• Replit · Enterprise through the product, marketplaces, and partners · 2025 to now

  Usage pricing Primary

  In February 2026 a $100 Pro plan with credit tiers up to $4,000 a month replaced Teams. From August 2026 Free Mode lets everyday tasks run without using credits, within usage limits.

• Notion · B2C2B: personal users carry Notion into teams · 2021 to 2024

  Usage pricing Tried, then dropped

  Notion AI was first planned as a charge per AI response up to a monthly cap, plus overages. Paying per query discouraged exploration, so weeks before general availability Notion switched to a flat monthly fee with no usage to track.

• Notion · AI in the business plans, enterprise sales, agent credits · 2025 to now

  Usage pricing Supporting

  Custom Agents launched in February 2026 on usage-based Notion credits sold on top of the seat price, which stayed the same with other AI features included. Paid credits went live in May 2026 at $10 per 1,000.

• Stripe · Payments for developers · 2011 to 2015

  Usage pricing Primary

  One published fee per successful charge, with no setup, monthly, minimum, or card storage fees and no charge for failed payments. Volume discounts were offered by email above $1 million a year.

• Shopify · Payments, paid search and the IPO · 2013 to 2015

  Usage pricing Primary

  Shopify Payments added a fee on every order processed, so revenue rises with merchant sales. Merchant solutions went from 36.5% of revenue in 2014 to 45.4% in 2015.

• Shopify · Shopify Plus, Unite and merchant solutions take over · 2016 to 2019

  Usage pricing Primary

  Merchant solutions became the larger revenue line, 51.6% in 2016 and 59.3% in 2019. The company says Payments needs far less sales and marketing spend than subscriptions and drives higher retention.

• Shopify · Pandemic surge and a better developer deal · 2020 to 2022

  Usage pricing Primary

  Merchant solutions reached 70.9% of revenue in 2021, with Shopify Payments processing 48.9% of GMV.

• Shopify · Enterprise push, merchant solutions and AI channels · 2023 to now

  Usage pricing Primary

  Merchant solutions are 76% of revenue, Payments penetration is 65.6% of GMV, and some subscription contracts now carry a variable fee tied to GMV.

• MongoDB · Atlas, usage pricing, and the licence change · 2016 to 2019

  Usage pricing Primary

  Atlas is charged monthly on consumption. Ittycheria says this solved the classic open source paywall problem, because a pay-as-you-go service can monetize everything.

• MongoDB · Atlas becomes the business, sold with the clouds · 2019 to now

  Usage pricing Primary

  Atlas was 73% of revenue in fiscal 2026, and MongoDB expects more Atlas contracts billed monthly in arrears on usage, with no upfront commitment.

• GitLab · AI agents and hybrid pricing · 2024 to now

  Usage pricing Supporting

  Seat pricing covers the platform and usage-based GitLab Credits cover Duo Agent Platform capabilities. Premium and Ultimate include monthly credits, and GitLab Flex puts seats and credits under one annual commitment.

• Asana · AI Studio, credits, and the agentic platform · 2024 to now

  Usage pricing Primary

  AI Studio is consumption-based: each paid tier includes a monthly credit allotment, and more credits can be bought. Moskovitz describes a platform fee with tokens and a la carte use after that. Aziz Megji, CFO since March 2026, frames consumption and outcome-based revenue as an expansion path alongside seats.

• Cloudflare · Developer platform on the network · 2017 to 2024

  Usage pricing Supporting

  Workers moved to CPU-time billing in 2023 while keeping a free plan. Enterprise contracts generally combine a base subscription with a smaller usage-based portion.

• Cloudflare · Contracted customers, channel and agents · 2025 to now

  Usage pricing Supporting

  Pay per crawl, in private beta, charges AI crawlers per request, with Cloudflare acting as merchant of record.

• monday.com · Hybrid sales-led GTM and the AI Work Platform · 2025 to now

  Usage pricing Supporting

  In May 2026 the company launched the AI Work Platform with native AI agents and a seats-plus-credits pricing model, which it calls a shift to consumption-based pricing. AI products were 17% of net new ARR in Q2 2026.

• Lovable · Credits, giveaways, and a community at scale · 2025 to 2026

  Usage pricing Primary

  Agent Mode, the default from 23 July 2025, charges less than one credit or several depending on complexity. Usage-based billing followed for hosting and AI in apps, then a single credit balance for building and running them. Plans are priced by credits, not seats.

• Vercel · Frontend Cloud for the enterprise: sales, partners, marketplaces · 2023 to 2024

  Usage pricing Supporting

  Pro moved to paying for exactly what you use in granular increments, with Hobby still free. The CEO describes pricing as infrastructure metering combined with the collaboration value of the platform.

• Vercel · v0: an AI product-led front door · 2023 to 2025

  Usage pricing Primary

  Usage moved from fixed message counts to input and output tokens converted to credits, with $5 of included credits a month on the free plan.

• Vercel · AI Cloud and enterprise AI governance · 2025 to now

  Usage pricing Primary

  Pro replaced included allotments across 20+ products with a flexible usage balance starting at $20 of credit a month, and compute moved to Active CPU billing for execution time rather than wall time.

• OpenAI · ChatGPT goes free, then paid, then to work · 2022 to 2023

  Usage pricing Supporting

  The ChatGPT model went on the API in March 2023 at $0.002 per 1,000 tokens, which OpenAI said was 10x cheaper than its existing GPT-3.5 models, and DevDay in November 2023 cut several prices again. Both were framed as passing savings to developers.

• OpenAI · Monetise every tier, sell through every cloud · 2025 to now

  Usage pricing Supporting

  The CFO describes consumer subscriptions, workplace subscriptions with usage-based pricing, and a platform business where API spend grows with the outcomes delivered.