---
title: "Usage-Based Billing for Indie & Solo Developers"
description: "Credit-native usage-based billing for indie and solo developers — credits, metering, and entitlements without building a ledger. Free until you're billing real money."
---

# Usage-based billing for indie & solo developers

Credits, metering, and entitlements without building a ledger — **free until you're billing real money**. No sales call, no monthly minimum.

You're shipping an AI, API, or SaaS product — often solo. Users want to pay per use. Rolling your own credit ledger (idempotent metering, refunds, audit trails, hot-path entitlement checks) turns a weekend into months. The usage-billing platforms built for this — Stripe Billing, Metronome, Orb — are enterprise-priced and sales-gated. QuotaStack fills that gap: the same primitives, self-serve, free until you're actually making money.

## What QuotaStack removes for indie devs

- **Free until you're billing real money** — $2 usage credit/mo (~100k events), then $2 / 100k. No card, no plan to pick.
- **Transparent, public pricing** — real numbers, no "contact sales".
- **Self-serve in minutes** — sign up, get keys, send your first event.
- **Credit-native primitives — no ledger to build** — credits, wallets, entitlements, reservations out of the box.
- **Agent-native docs** — .md twin on every page + llms.txt, so Cursor and Claude Code wire it.
- **No payment lock-in** — keep your own payment provider; QuotaStack is the billing/metering layer.

## Ship in a handful of API calls

Create a customer, define a metric, set pricing, grant credits, check an entitlement, record usage, verify the balance. See [the quickstart](/docs/quickstart.md) and [concepts](/docs/concepts/).

## When QuotaStack isn't the right fit

If you need a **merchant of record** for global payments, sales tax, and chargebacks, use Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, or Dodo Payments. QuotaStack is the credit/metering/entitlement layer on top of your payment provider — many indie devs run a merchant of record for checkout and QuotaStack for usage-based billing logic.

Building the ledger yourself? [How to build a credit system for an AI SaaS](/how-to-build-a-credit-system.md).

## Indie dev FAQ

- **Is there really a free tier?** Yes — every account gets $2 of usage credit each month (~100k events), all core primitives, sandbox, no card. After that it's $2 / 100k. No plan to pick.
- **Do I have to talk to sales?** No. Self-serve, public pricing. "Talk to us" is optional.
- **Is this overkill for a side project?** No — start with one metered event; reservations/entitlements are there when you need them.
- **Do you handle payments, tax, or chargebacks?** No — QuotaStack is not a merchant of record. Keep Stripe or an MoR for payments/tax; use QuotaStack for credits, metering, entitlements.
- **Can AI editors integrate it for me?** Yes — markdown twins + llms.txt let Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, and Zed wire it.

Start free — $2 usage credit/mo (~100k events), no card: https://platform.quotastack.io/signup