New Pricing Options: Time-Limited Trials, Usage-Based Billing, and Overages

Today we're excited to announce powerful new pricing capabilities that give you more flexibility in how you monetize your API: time-limited trials, usage-based billing, and overages. These features open up new business models and help you better serve your customers while protecting your revenue.

Time-Limited Trials

Trials have been a long-time coming! You can now configure time-based trials for each plan you offer, granting immediate API access to your customers while deferring payment to a later date.

With time-limited trials, you can:

  • Reduce friction: Let customers experience your API's value before asking for payment
  • Increase conversions: Give users time to integrate and see results before committing
  • Build confidence: Demonstrate the quality and reliability of your API upfront

Free trials pair really nicely with usage-based billing, allowing customers to explore your API risk-free before scaling up their usage.

How It Works

Simply configure the trial duration for each plan in your pricing settings. When a new customer signs up, they'll get immediate API access and won't be charged until the trial period ends. It's that simple.

Usage-Based Billing

Also known as metered or pay-as-you-go billing, usage-based billing means there is no fixed cost. Instead, you configure a per-credit price on your plan, and we'll handle billing your customers for the number of credits they consume. No extra effort necessary on your part.

This pricing model is perfect for:

  • APIs with variable usage patterns: Customers only pay for what they use
  • Attracting smaller customers: Lower barrier to entry with no upfront commitment
  • Scaling with success: As your customers grow, your revenue grows proportionally

Usage-based billing is incredibly popular in the API economy because it aligns your success with your customers' success. They pay more as they get more value from your service.

Charging for Overages

Up until now, your plans had to be configured with a fixed number of credits included with your fixed price. Once a customer consumed all their credits, no further requests were permitted.

With the new overage settings, your business can offer:

  • Pure usage-based model: Charge only for consumption with no base fee
  • Hybrid model: Combine a base subscription price with usage-based charges for consumption above the included credits
  • Continuous service: Let customers keep using your API beyond their plan limits for an additional cost

This means your customers never hit a wall. They can continue making requests to your API above the included number of credits, ensuring uninterrupted service while generating additional revenue for your business.

Adaptive Billing Thresholds

Worthy of its own call-out is the addition of adaptive billing thresholds, specifically as they pertain to usage-based billing and consumer reputation.

It's well known that usage-based billing tiers and time trials are the target of many bad actors, and we'd be remiss if we didn't handle those bad actors for you—in the true QuickAPI way, fully hands-off.

How Adaptive Billing Works

This intelligent system adaptively regulates risky consumers with early invoices as the validation mechanism:

  1. Continuous monitoring: QuickAPI constantly monitors activity and identifies risky consumers based on behavioral patterns
  2. Early validation: Risky consumers receive an early invoice to ensure they're a legitimate, paying customer
  3. Immediate protection: If a user's early invoice charge fails, their account is frozen immediately, preventing fraud
  4. Transparent status: Consumer status can be displayed to help you understand your customer base

Peace of Mind, Zero Effort

This is an incredibly powerful system that gives providers all the peace of mind, with none of the effort. You don't need to manually monitor for fraud, set up complex rules, or worry about bad actors abusing your free trials or usage-based plans.

Adaptive Billing Thresholds will be fully rolled out over the next 30 days, and will work automatically to protect your business.

Getting Started

These new pricing features are available now to all QuickAPI users. To configure them:

  1. Navigate to the Pricing tab in your dashboard
  2. Select the plan you want to configure
  3. Enable trials, usage-based billing, or overages as needed
  4. Set your pricing parameters

As always, QuickAPI handles all the complexity behind the scenes—billing, invoicing, payment processing, and fraud prevention—so you can focus on building great APIs.

We're excited to see how these new pricing options help you grow your API business. If you have any questions or feedback, please don't hesitate to reach out to our support team.

Happy building!