What is a billable metric
A billable metric is a measurable quantity that captures how a customer uses a product or service. Rather than billing directly on individual usage events, Zenskar transforms these events into billable metrics using configurable aggregation logic. For example:- the total number of API calls made by a customer in a month
- the peak number of active users on any given day
- the sum of gigabytes of data transferred in a billing cycle
Relationship between usage events and billable metrics
Usage events record individual instances of customer activity. These may be granular (e.g., “User A made a request at 3:15 PM”) or aggregated at source. Zenskar allows you to define how to process these events into billable metrics using built-in tools. All billable metrics are defined using one of the following approaches:- a visual query builder for non-technical users
- a SQL-based builder for advanced and custom logic
sum, count, max, min, and distinct count.
Examples of billable metrics
| Example metric | Derived from usage events that track… |
|---|---|
| API calls | The number of API requests made |
| Monthly active users | The distinct count of user_id values per month |
| Peak concurrent sessions | The maximum number of simultaneous sessions |
| Storage consumption (GB) | The cumulative total of storage_used_gb over the billing cycle |
Why billable metrics matter
Billable metrics enable flexible and accurate pricing. They let you:- define what counts as billable usage
- align product value with pricing
- implement advanced pricing models (e.g., tiered, volume-based, thresholds)