From Tokens to Credits to Outcomes: Pricing AI Across Models, Applications, and Cloud Platforms

Pratik Gupta · 2026 · arXiv

DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2610.30701 · open-access PDF

Abstract

Between 2023 and 2026, AI changed how software is priced. Traditional SaaS charged per seat because serving one more user cost almost nothing. Model inference has non-zero marginal cost, and usage varies by orders of magnitude across customers, producing prepaid credits, metered usage, hybrid seat-plus-usage models, and outcome pricing that supplement, and in rare cases replace, seat-based pricing. These pricing models have not been systematically characterized. This paper presents a reproducible study of public pricing artifacts - pricing pages and documentation - across three cohorts: the fu

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