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Selling software? Price a subscription per seat, per unit of usage, or both. Buyers pick their seats at checkout, your app reports usage through the API, and at the end of each billing period Pocketsflow charges what was used above the included amount, once, to the card the subscription already pays with.
Usage-based pricing is part of the Pro plan and above. Below Pro the editor shows the section locked, and the API answers 403 FEATURE_LOCKED.
1

Set it up on the subscription

In the subscription editor, open Usage & seats. Turn on Charge per seat and/or Charge for usage, then add a meter (for example api_calls).
2

Sell

Buyers choose their seats on the checkout page. The subscription price is charged for those seats every period, like any subscription.
3

Report usage from your app

Call POST /subscriptions/{id}/usage with an API key whenever a subscriber uses something billable. Send an idempotencyKey so retries never count twice.
4

We bill the overage

When the period ends we total each meter, take off the included units, price the rest and charge it with one payment. You get a usage.period_closed webhook with the totals and the charge status.

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Per-seat pricing

  • Price is the price of one seat. A buyer with 5 seats pays price × 5 every period.
  • Minimum / maximum seats bound what buyers can pick at checkout and in their portal. Leave the maximum blank for no maximum (up to 10,000).
  • Adding seats (from the buyer’s portal, your dashboard or POST /subscriptions/{id}/seats) takes effect at once. Seats above the number bought at checkout are billed at the end of the period, prorated by the time they were held: two extra 12seatsaddedwith24of30daysleftcost2×12 seats added with 24 of 30 days left cost 2 × 12 × 24/30 = $19.20.
  • Removing seats works down to the number bought at checkout. The subscription price already covers those every period, so going lower means cancelling and subscribing again with fewer seats.
  • License keys. Turn on Issue a license key per subscriber and each subscriber gets one license key whose activation limit is their seat count. When seats change, the limit follows. When the subscription is canceled or expires the key stops validating, and it turns back on if the subscription resumes (a key you switched off yourself stays off). Your app validates the key with the usual license endpoints (the productId is the subscription offer id).

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Metered usage

A meter has: All amounts are computed in integer cents and each line is rounded half up to the cent once.

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Tiers

Tiers count billable units — what is left after the included units.
  • Graduated: each tier prices the units that fall inside it. With tiers “up to 100,000 at 1/1,000"and"aboveat1 / 1,000" and "above at 0.50 / 1,000”, 150,000 billable calls cost 100+100 + 25 = $125.
  • Volume: every unit is priced at the tier the period’s total reaches. The same 150,000 calls cost 150 × 0.50=0.50 = 75.
  • A tier’s flat fee is added once when any unit lands in it.
Prices are copied onto each billing period when it opens, so a price change applies from the next period, never to usage already being counted.

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Billing periods

Usage periods follow the subscription’s renewal date (weekly 7 days, monthly 30 days, yearly 365 days). A report belongs to the period its timestamp falls in; a period’s end is exclusive. Once a period has closed, reports for it are refused with 409 PERIOD_CLOSED, so send usage promptly (or without a timestamp to use the current time).

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How the overage is charged

  • One off-session charge per period, to the card the subscription pays with, with the same platform fee as your other sales.
  • Exactly once: a period can only close once, and the charge carries a fixed idempotency key, so a retry is always the same payment.
  • A paid overage is a normal order: it appears in Orders and on the subscriber’s payment history as Usage (billingReason: "usage"), the buyer gets a receipt, and it counts in your analytics. The platform fee is stored on the order like on any other sale. Integrations (webhooks, Zapier) get the same invoice.payment_succeeded event as a renewal, with billingReason: "usage".
  • If the card can’t be charged the period shows Failed; if there is no saved card, payments are paused or the payouts account is missing it shows Due. Both are retried automatically 1, 3, 5 and 7 days after the first failure — the same schedule as a failed renewal — each retry once. After the last one fails the overage is Uncollectible: we stop trying and email you. Unpaid amounts appear on the subscriber page as Outstanding, and the usage.period_closed webhook tells you the status so you can follow up (for example limit the account in your app).

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Where to see it

  • Subscriber page: usage this period (a daily chart per meter), the line items with the upcoming overage, the seat changer and past periods with their charge status.
  • Buyer portal: the subscriber sees usage this period, can add or remove seats (from the signed portal link) and sees their license key.
  • API / MCP: GET /subscriptions/{id}/usage and the get_subscription_usage MCP tool return the same data.

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API

See Usage billing API for every endpoint with curl and SDK examples, and Webhook events for usage.recorded and usage.period_closed.