Pricing models

Owostack pricing has three building blocks:

• Entitlement model: when usage becomes billable
• Rating model: how billable usage becomes money
• Resource shape: whether the feature is consumable usage or persistent capacity

That separation is why Owostack can support free quotas, pay-as-you-go APIs, tiered overage, credits, and seat-based products without a separate billing system for each one.

Start here

• If you want monthly included quota before charging, read Included vs usage-based
• If you want simple package pricing like "₦500 per 1,000 events", read Package pricing
• If you want staircase tiers where each band prices only its own units, read Graduated pricing
• If you want one reached band to reprice all billable usage, read Volume pricing
• If you want limits that block or charge after the included amount, read Overage
• If you want seats, workspaces, or projects, read Entities & seat-based pricing
• If you want prepaid balances, read Credits
• If you want plans managed from code, read Define plans in code

The model

1. Entitlement model

This decides what happens before billing kicks in.

• included
  • Customer gets a quota first
  • Example: 50,000 emails per month included
• usage_based
  • Billing starts from the first tracked unit
  • Example: every API call is billable immediately
• prepaid
  • Usage consumes credits from a stored balance
  • Example: AI runs consume credits bought in advance

2. Rating model

This decides how billable units are priced.

• package
  • Fixed amount per billingUnits
  • Example: ₦5 per 1,000 API calls
• graduated
  • Each tier prices only the units inside that tier
• volume
  • The reached tier prices all billable usage

3. Resource shape

This decides what the feature represents.

• Consumable metered features
  • Usage is tracked with track()
  • Examples: API calls, tokens, emails, GB processed
• Non-consumable entity features
  • Capacity is managed with addEntity() and removeEntity()
  • Examples: seats, workspaces, projects

Common combinations

• included + package
  • Monthly quota with simple overage
• included + graduated
  • Included usage, then staircase overage
• included + volume
  • Included usage, then band-based overage
• usage_based + package
  • Pure pay-as-you-go
• usage_based + graduated
  • Tiered pay-as-you-go
• usage_based + volume
  • Repriced pay-as-you-go bands
• entity + included
  • Seat caps or workspace caps
• prepaid + metered
  • Credits or stored-value billing

Important rules

• Tiered pricing works on billable quantity, not always total usage.
• For included, billable quantity is max(0, usage - included).
• For usage_based, billable quantity is all tracked usage.
• usage_based is effectively always chargeable usage, so overage settings do not control it.
• Entity removal is deferred. A removed seat becomes pending_removal and still counts until the end of the current billing period.

What to read next

• Included vs usage-based
• Package pricing
• Graduated pricing
• Volume pricing
• Overage
• Entities & seat-based pricing