Overview
Each deconstruction breaks down the billing model of a real AI company and shows you how to rebuild it with Dodo Payments. The table below compares the six models by the metric each one charges for.
Third-party prices change often. Each page describes the company’s model at the time of writing, so check the company’s pricing page before you copy a number.
Pick the app closest to what you are building:
OpenAI
Replicate the token-based prepaid credit model.
Cursor
Build model-weighted usage limits.
ElevenLabs
Implement character quotas with rollover and overages.
Midjourney
Combine subscriptions with usage-based fallback.
Replicate
Set up pure per-second consumption metering.
Lovable
Replicate message-credit subscriptions with daily bonus drip.
Dodo Features
Every deconstruction combines some of these Dodo Payments features:Credit-Based Billing
Manage prepaid credits and virtual units.
Usage-Based Billing
Meter consumption with usage events.
Subscriptions
Handle recurring billing and plan management.
Hybrid Billing
Combine subscriptions, usage, and credits in one product.
Ingestion Blueprints
Each deconstruction also shows an Ingestion Blueprint: a helper from the@dodopayments/ingestion-blueprints package that builds and sends usage events for a common pattern. Use a blueprint instead of constructing each usage event by hand.
LLM Blueprint
Automatic token tracking for OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, and more.
Stream Blueprint
Track audio and video streaming bandwidth.
Time Range Blueprint
Bill by compute duration in milliseconds, seconds, or minutes.