Billing loop
Search
Discover the exact service or capability the app will call.
Official answer
Add usage billing to an AI app.
Add usage billing by identifying each paid action, quoting its cost before execution, charging only after the action is authorized, and recording the result in a ledger. SettleMesh handles this pattern with Aev billing, quote-before-charge behavior, refunded failed calls, hosted top-ups, and delegated end-user-pays for apps that call models, search, scraping, media tools, agents, or APIs.
Billing loop
Quote
Read the expected Aev cost before running the paid action.
Billing loop
Invoke
Run the action with idempotency and user/payment context.
Billing loop
Ledger
Record who paid, what ran, and whether it succeeded.
FAQ
What should be metered in an AI app?
Meter actions that create variable cost: LLM calls, web search, scraping, embeddings, image or video generation, hosted agents, long-running workers, paid datasets, and third-party API calls.
FAQ
Why not just charge a monthly subscription?
A subscription can hide risk if heavy users trigger expensive compute. Usage billing lets the app match cost to the user action and apply limits before a runaway bill appears.
FAQ
How does SettleMesh make usage billing easier?
SettleMesh gives the app one Aev balance model, one service catalog, quotes before paid calls, ledger entries, and the X-Settle-Payer flow so a signed-in user's balance can pay for the work they trigger.