Metered billing
A manifest flag, not a sprint
Declare billing.enabledand a price in your app manifest. Usage events, credit math, refund-on-failure, idempotency, and settlement are the platform's job — your code just does the work it charges for.
For AI SaaS builders
Your AI app costs money per call. Make it earn per call.
Every request your AI app serves burns API spend. SettleMesh gives you metered billing, per-user credit wallets, and payments out of the box — so users pay for what they use, from day one, without you writing a line of billing code.
End-user-pays
Users fund their own usage
Signed-in users spend from their own prepaid Aev balance — including the model calls your app makes on their behalf. No more eating the API bill for free tiers.
Transparent costs
Quotes before you spend
Everything is cost-plus with a published markup. Ask for a quote before an expensive job, read every charge back from the ledger, and cap blast radius with per-app allowances.
From code to a paid product
npm i -g settlemesh
settlemesh login
# manifest: stack.billing.enabled = true, price in Aev
settlemesh deploy # live URL + login + database + metered paymentsFAQ
How do I charge users for AI usage without building billing?
Deploy on SettleMesh with billing enabled in the manifest. Signed-in end users pay per use from their own prepaid Aev balance; usage metering, credit accounting, refunds on failure, and settlement to your balance are all handled by the platform.
FAQ
What does building metered billing yourself actually involve?
Usage events, aggregation, credit balances, top-up flows, refund-on-failure, idempotency, and reconciliation — typically two to four weeks of work before your first paying user. On SettleMesh it is a manifest flag.
FAQ
Who pays for the model API calls my app makes?
With end-user-pays, the signed-in user's balance funds the calls your app makes on their behalf — your margin no longer disappears into API bills for free riders.