Your plans
Plan A
Plan B
Plan C
Leave the breakpoint at 0 for a single overage price. Prices are per unit, per month: an API call, a message, a gigabyte, a token.
Your customers' monthly usage
Usage is heavily skewed almost everywhere. If the top 10% of customers use 12 times what the middle one does, enter 12. Ratios of 5 to 20 are common.
Edit the plans and usage, then click Simulate.
Result
Revenue as usage grows
What stands out
How it is calculated
A customer's monthly bill is the platform fee, plus the first price for every unit above the included allowance up to the volume breakpoint, plus the second price for every unit above the breakpoint. Revenue is the sum of bills across your customers, cost is total units times your cost per unit, and margin is the difference. Usage described as a distribution is evaluated at 1,000 evenly spaced quantiles of a lognormal curve fitted to your median and 90th-percentile ratio, so results are reproducible and involve no random sampling. "Customers pick their cheapest plan" gives each customer the lowest bill among your plans. The growth table multiplies every customer's usage by 0.5, 1, 2 and 5 with the same prices.
Not modelled: churn, customers changing behaviour when price changes, discounts and annual commitments, free tiers and trials, taxes and payment fees. Unverified: checked by hand calculation and unit tests only; compare the numbers with your own billing data before changing prices.
Common questions
What is usage-based pricing?
Customers pay according to how much they use: API calls, seats-hours, gigabytes, messages, tokens. Most real plans mix a fixed platform fee, an included allowance, a per-unit overage price and sometimes a cheaper rate at high volume. This tool models exactly that mix so you can see what each shape earns from your own customer base.
How do I describe my customers' usage?
Either paste real monthly usage per customer, one number per line, or describe the shape: the number of customers, the median customer's monthly usage, and how much bigger the 90th-percentile customer is than the median. Usage is almost always heavily skewed, a ratio of 5 to 20 is common. Pasting real data is more accurate than the distribution.
What does the volume breakpoint do?
Above the breakpoint every extra unit is charged at the second, usually lower, price. It is graduated like tax brackets: units below the breakpoint keep the first price, so a customer's bill never falls as they use more.
Why does offering several plans lower revenue?
When customers can see every plan they tend to take the one that is cheapest for their own usage. The tool shows revenue if everyone takes your best plan and revenue if each customer picks their cheapest, so you can see how much a menu of plans gives away.
What is a customer 'below cost'?
A customer whose monthly bill is less than the cost of serving their usage, using the cost per unit you enter. A few are normal for a free tier. A large share means the included allowance or the platform fee is too generous.
What does this leave out?
Churn and how price changes behaviour (customers use less when a unit costs more), discounts and annual commitments, taxes and payment fees, free tiers and trials, currency, and the cost of building metering. It shows what a price shape earns from a fixed set of customers, not what customers will do.
Is my customer data uploaded anywhere?
No. Everything you type or paste stays in this browser tab. There are no accounts, cookies or analytics vendors.
Related tool: the SaaS feature packaging optimizer (which features go in which plan, and the plan prices, from a per-feature willingness-to-pay survey).
Related tool: the SaaS tier price optimizer (the Good-Better-Best price ladder that earns the most from a willingness-to-pay survey).