Price for the Shape of the Cost
AI creates variable cost, so pricing has to acknowledge usage somehow. That does not mean every product needs per-token billing. It means the commercial model must stop unlimited high-cost behaviour from being sold as if it were fixed-cost software.
- Subscription with included usage
- Credits and usage packs
- Seat pricing
- Outcome pricing
- BYOK and hybrid models
The situation
Traditional SaaS can often support heavy product usage at very low marginal infrastructure cost. AI changes that assumption because one active customer may create real third-party spend every time they use the core feature.
The naive solution
Copy familiar SaaS pricing, add 'unlimited AI', and worry about cost later.
The hidden constraint
Unlimited usage is not a marketing phrase if the marginal cost is significant; it is a financial commitment. If customer usage has a heavy tail, a few accounts can erase the margin created by the rest.
The decision
Choose a pricing model that matches the economic shape without making the product unnecessarily complicated. For many products that means subscription plus included usage, then paid expansion or a higher plan. For technical customers, BYOK can shift model spend to the customer while the platform charges for orchestration and product value.
The implementation
I would model at least low, typical, and heavy usage cohorts before setting allowances. The included amount should be large enough for the product to feel useful but not so large that an extreme customer can consume multiples of their revenue in variable cost. Plans can differentiate model access, concurrency, autonomous-run budgets, premium modalities, retention, and support as well as raw usage.
The tradeoff
Usage-aware pricing introduces friction and can make comparison harder. The goal is not to expose the cost model mechanically; it is to keep the customer proposition simple while ensuring the business is not selling uncapped variable liability.
The evidence I would look for
I would track gross margin by plan and usage decile. If the top usage cohort is consistently negative margin, pricing or product controls need to change even if average account economics look healthy.
The reusable lesson
Do not promise fixed-price infinity on top of variable-cost infrastructure unless you have deliberately modelled the tail.
The consultant's questions
- What happens to margin when a customer uses the product ten times more than average?
- How much usage is included in the subscription and why?
- Would BYOK improve economics for technical or enterprise customers?
- Which expensive capabilities should belong to higher tiers rather than every plan?