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.
Start free →You're shipping an AI, API, or SaaS product — often solo, often nights and weekends. Users want to pay per use. But rolling your own credit ledger is a "weekend project" that turns into months: idempotent metering, refunds, audit trails, entitlement checks on the hot path. And the usage-billing platforms built for this — Stripe Billing, Metronome, Orb — are enterprise-priced and sales-gated. That's the gap QuotaStack fills: the same primitives, self-serve, free until you're actually making money.
What QuotaStack removes for indie devs
$2 usage credit a month (~100k events), then $2 / 100k. No credit card, no plan to pick. Pre-revenue side projects pay $0.
Real numbers on the pricing page. No "contact sales" to find out what it costs.
Sign up, get API keys, send your first metered event. No demo, no onboarding call.
Credits, wallets, entitlements, and reservations out of the box, so you ship features instead of a billing ledger.
Every page has a .md twin and an llms.txt index, so Cursor and Claude Code wire the integration into your codebase.
Keep your own payment provider. QuotaStack is the billing/metering layer, not a payment processor.
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 — that's the whole loop. Walk it in the quickstart, or browse the concepts.
When QuotaStack isn't the right fit
If what you need is a merchant of record to handle global payments, sales tax, and chargebacks, use Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, or Dodo Payments — that's not what QuotaStack does. QuotaStack is the credit, metering, and entitlement layer that sits 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.
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 credit card. After that it's $2 / 100k. There is no plan to pick and no upgrade step.
Do I have to talk to sales?
No. Sign up and start self-serve. Pricing is public and usage-based. "Talk to us" is there if you want it, never required.
Is this overkill for a side project?
No. Start with one metered event and credits; reservations and entitlements are there when you need them. You only pay once you have real usage.
Do you handle payments, tax, or chargebacks?
No — QuotaStack is the billing and metering layer, not a merchant of record. Keep Stripe (or a merchant of record like Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, or Dodo) for payments and tax; use QuotaStack for credits, metering, and entitlements.
Can AI editors integrate it for me?
Yes. Every doc has a markdown twin and there is an llms.txt index, so Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, and Zed can read the API and drop the integration into your code.
Start free — pay when you grow.
$2 usage credit/mo (~100k events), then $2 / 100k. All the primitives, no credit card.
Start free →