Consumption Curve Modeling
Seasonality and Spiky Demand in Credit-Based AI Products
Credit pricing absorbs AI's unpredictable usage spikes by decoupling payment from consumption.
Priya Subramaniam
· 11 min read
Credit pricing absorbs AI's unpredictable usage spikes by decoupling payment from consumption.
Pricing multi-modal AI products fairly requires credits weighted to actual compute costs.
Fine-tuned models need a new pricing architecture beyond tokens.
Credit-based products need activation redefined as actual consumption, not just login behavior.
Flat credit rates misprice requests across different model types and feature costs.
Why passing infrastructure costs directly to customers destroys both margin and trust.
How to design event schemas that survive late arrivals and billing errors.
How power users destroy flat-rate AI pricing and why segmentation is the only fix.