UsageTap
Menu
Sign inStart free

Agentic API billing

Price and control machine-speed usage before it becomes margin risk.

Agent loops, background workflows, and customer integrations can create traffic faster than people can react. Enforce known boundaries at call start, then alert your team when usage or spend breaks from its learned pattern.

Start metering freeRead the integration guide
✓Pre-call policy checks
✓Burst and allowance controls
✓Confirmed email or Slack alerts
✓Forecast and runout signals

Before work

Authorize expensive activity.

Decide whether the customer is entitled to begin an agent action or API request before vendor cost is created.

  • Check plan and customer policy
  • Apply burst, allowance, and hard-limit rules
  • Return the action your product should take

After work

Meter the result, not only the attempt.

Connect a begin event to its completion so usage, cost, and the customer outcome remain reconcilable.

  • Record success, failure, and actual units
  • Use idempotency for retry-safe events
  • Attribute model, feature, and customer context

Before surprise

Set limits. Watch for what changes.

Hard limits protect the boundaries you can anticipate. Confirmed anomaly incidents surface the autonomous behavior you did not think to cap.

  • Predict allowance runout
  • Compare finalized usage and spend with a learned baseline
  • Route confirmed incidents to email or Slack

Implementation pattern

Begin → perform work → end → synchronize.

The same lifecycle supports AI calls, agent actions, background jobs, and custom API meters while Stripe or your internal commerce system continues to own invoicing and payment.

Measure provider calls first

Put commercial policy in front of autonomous traffic.

Instrument one high-cost workflow first and prove the usage record from entitlement check through billing output.

Start metering freeRead the integration guide