Usage metering for AI agents | Clocknext
Meter what your agents actually do
Send one event per billable action. Clocknext turns it into credits drawn, outcomes billed, and usage you can show a customer.
Every billable action, captured once
A signal is any event worth charging for: an agent run, a tool call, a batch of tokens, a resolved ticket. Define it once, send it from wherever it happens, and it flows into pricing, wallets, and margin without a second pipeline.
Decide what counts as billable
Define a signal and what it draws: one credit per agent run, a credit per thousand tokens, a unit per document. Change the rate later without re-instrumenting anything.
Signal definition
| Signal | Draws | Used in | Active | Ingest | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| agent.run | 0 credit per run | 0 plans |
Send events from anywhere in your stack
One endpoint takes events from your backend or straight from your agent framework. Same signal, same result, whichever path it arrives on.
| Event | Endpoint | Signal | Customer | Accuracy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| POST /v0/events | agent.run | acme |
Charge once, even on a retry
Send an idempotency key with each event. A retried call is recognised and rejected rather than billed twice, so a network blip doesn't turn into a refund conversation.
Duplicate check
| Idempotency key | First seen | Billed | Rejected |
|---|---|---|---|
| run_0f2a | 0:22:05 | Once |
How an event becomes a line on an invoice
Four steps, from your code to their bill.
- Define the signal
Name the event and say what one of them draws down. - Emit it from your product
Send the event when the action happens, with a customer ID and an idempotency key. - Clocknext prices it
The signal is matched to the customer's plan and converted into credits, outcomes, or units. - It lands on the invoice
Usage rolls up per cycle, with provider cost attributed to the same signal.
Part of a bigger set of primitives
Usage metering is part of a bigger platform designed to make AI billing a breeze.
Pricing experiments
Build a plan from priced, billable components and change it without a deploy.
Margin control
Provider cost attributed to every signal you bill for, so margin is never a guess.
Bill for what happened, not an estimate
Usage metering ships with Clocknext's other primitives, ready to feed pricing, wallets, and margin.