Usage-based billing charges customers for what they consume in a period, such as API calls, transactions or gigabytes, rated against a contracted price and usually invoiced in arrears.
A worked example
An example with made-up round numbers. A customer pays a $2,000 monthly platform fee that includes 100,000 API calls, plus $0.01 for each call above that. In March it makes 160,000 calls. The invoice issued on April 1 carries April’s $2,000 fee, billed in advance, and March’s overage, billed in arrears: 60,000 extra calls at $0.01, or $600. Three records have to agree: the meter that counted the calls, the rate on the contract and the invoice line the customer checks.
Before you price on usage
Usage billing needs three things a seat subscription doesn’t: a metering source you trust, a rating step that turns usage into money, and an invoice line that shows what was consumed. Decide early whether usage is billed in arrears, drawn down from a prepaid commitment or capped, because each choice changes the invoice and the revenue schedule. Hybrid is the common shape: in Kyle Poyar’s 2026 State of B2B Monetization survey, 37% of responding software and AI companies used hybrid pricing, such as a seat subscription plus consumption. Benchmarkit’s 2026 benchmarks show median net revenue retention of 108% for usage-based companies versus 98% for seat-based ones, a correlation rather than proof. At high event volume, ask any vendor for a load reference, not a demo. The B2B subscription billing guide covers all six billing models.
In Salesforce
Sales Cloud has no meter and no rating step: a product on a Price Book has a list price, not a usage count. The meter usually lives in your own product, so usage has to be summarized and brought to whatever system invoices. Salesforce supports consumption models in Revenue Cloud Advanced and positions Revenue Cloud Billing, sold separately, for usage rating, invoicing, payments and collections. Billing-first platforms such as Zuora have mediation and rating built in for very high event volumes, with the billing record on their side and a synced copy in Salesforce.
How Kugamon handles it
Kugamon supports usage billing with minimal customization; it isn’t out of the box. Out of the box, Kugamon bills what is on the Order, on the invoice schedule you choose (one-time, yearly, semi-annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly or daily), with volume or slab tiered pricing per Price Book and additional charges or credits on an Invoice. It has no built-in mediation or rating engine at the scale Zuora is built for. If you meter consumption at very high volume, confirm your metering volume and model in a demo and ask for a load reference.
Related terms
- Revenue recognition (ASC 606)
- Net revenue retention (NRR)
- Revenue leakage
- Quote-to-cash
- Revenue Cloud Billing
Source: www.benchmarkit.ai