How do we price an AI feature that costs us per token?

Usually a base subscription plus metered overage, so the floor covers your fixed cost and heavy users pay for what they consume. Model the underlying spend first — the cost estimator is a reasonable starting point — then decide the margin.

Can the agent see a customer's subscription state?

Yes, and it often should. An agent that knows a customer is on a plan without a given feature can say so accurately instead of promising something the account cannot do.

Payments · Integration

Alian AI for Stripe

Subscription metering, usage-based AI pricing, and finance ops automation.

Stripe is where the AI economy gets real — usage-based billing for AI features, subscription metering, automated reconciliation. We ship Stripe integrations that scale with your AI product, not against it.

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Things we've built on Stripe

Usage-based AI feature billing
Customer subscription state in agent prompts
Automated invoice reconciliation

How the integration actually works

Usage-based AI billing runs on Stripe Billing with Meters: you report usage events, Stripe aggregates and prices them. Everything else arrives as webhooks — subscription changes, payment outcomes, plan upgrades — which your system reacts to. Because Stripe retries webhooks and can deliver the same event more than once, every handler has to be idempotent, and every payload's signature has to be verified before it is trusted.

What to watch for on Stripe

The constraints that decide whether this ships in weeks or drags — worth knowing before you scope, whoever builds it.

Idempotency is not optional: Stripe retries on failure and can deliver an event twice. A handler that grants credits without deduplicating on event ID will eventually double-credit an account, and you will find out from the customer. Key every side effect on the event ID.
Verify the webhook signature: A webhook endpoint is a public URL that grants account changes. Without signature verification, anyone who finds it can post a forged payment-succeeded event. It is a small amount of code and a large hole if skipped.
The billable unit is a product decision: What counts as one unit — a message, a token, a resolved ticket — shapes how customers reason about cost, and it is painful to change once they are on it. Model the meter before building it.

Questions we get about Stripe

How do we price an AI feature that costs us per token?: Usually a base subscription plus metered overage, so the floor covers your fixed cost and heavy users pay for what they consume. Model the underlying spend first — the cost estimator is a reasonable starting point — then decide the margin.
Can the agent see a customer's subscription state?: Yes, and it often should. An agent that knows a customer is on a plan without a given feature can say so accurately instead of promising something the account cannot do.