Benchmark · Usage-based
Usage-based pricing, measured against subscription
Short answer: in this sample usage-based products report a median MRR of $1,387 (n=55), below subscription at $2,933 — but the top of the usage bucket is real, and 5 usage rows clear $10k. This page is about the distribution, not a recommendation to switch pricing.
- Benchmark snapshot · 2026-10-30
- 851 products
- 435 report MRR
- The aggregates here are a monthly rebuild of the counted population; live product cards, the board and the MCP carry a newer date of their own. Both clocks are on Method.
Usage-based products
64
of 738 published products
Report MRR
55
85.9%
Median MRR
$1,387
subscription $2,933
The short answer
- 01
Usage pricing is the third-largest bucket we can label: 64 products, against 461 subscription and 78 one-time. It is big enough to read, small enough that one new row moves the median.
- 02
The median is $1,387, about 47% of the subscription median. The 30-day amount median is $3,034, against $3,755.
- 03
The ceiling is not lower: 37 usage products clear $1k and 5 clear $10k. A median below subscription plus a top decile at $9,034 means the bucket is wide, not weak.
Sample definition
Every row is a published product in the library with a pricing-model classification of "usage". No row is added by hand and no usage product is excluded for being small. "Report MRR" counts rows whose MRR is present and greater than zero; a missing MRR stays missing and is never treated as $0. The 30-day amount is the provider-reported figure, not audited revenue.
Usage vs every other pricing model
| Pricing model | Products | Report MRR | Median MRR | Top 10% | ≥ $1k | ≥ $10k | Median 30d amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Usage-based | 64 | 55 | $1,387 | $9,034 | 37 | 5 | $3,034 |
| Subscription | 461 | 433 | $2,933 | $28,484 | 368 | 107 | $3,755 |
| Managed service | 29 | 18 | $2,287 | $20,612 | 14 | 5 | $2,994 |
| One-time sales | 78 | 32 | $245 | $1,276 | 5 | 0 | $1,789 |
| Platform fee | 49 | 24 | $3,234 | $27,033 | 17 | 7 | $9,341 |
| Freemium | 24 | 19 | $8,321 | $51,398 | 14 | 8 | $8,980 |
| Hybrid | 12 | 11 | $6,260 | $17,857 | 11 | 3 | $6,021 |
As of 2026-11-11. "Report MRR" is the denominator behind every median in that row. The pricing-model label says how the product charges; it is not evidence that the amount is recurring.
What the label does and does not say
- 01
It says how the product charges: metered usage, credits, seats per active user or processed volume. It does not say the amount was recognised against a usage event — the payment provider records an amount, the report carries the economic basis separately.
- 02
A usage-priced product can still earn most of its money from annual prepayments. The bucket is a pricing model, not a revenue-quality grade.
- 03
The subscription bucket is the comparison, not the target: its median is pulled up by products that have been selling for years, and this sample is self-selecting (products that choose to publish a number).
Known limits
- 01
No margin: usage revenue can carry a model or infrastructure bill that scales with it, and this dataset has no cost fields.
- 02
No retention: we cannot tell whether a usage spike is a durable customer or a one-off batch job.
- 03
No guarantee that the label is complete: 21 published rows carry no pricing label and are counted in the total, not in any bucket.
- 04
The service buckets are small; a single large row can move a median by a lot. Read the "Report MRR" denominator before comparing.
Usage-based products, by MRR
The 10 highest-MRR usage rows. They are not recommendations; they are the population we can measure, and each row opens its own report.
- 1
SaaS
$246,940
30d $515,796
- 2
$67,517
30d $97,394
- 3
E-comm
$29,489
30d $46,077
- 4
Marketing
$12,501
30d $11,479
- 5
$10,238
30d $13,912
- 6
Uncategorised
$9,055
30d $2,058
- 7
Content Creation
$9,003
30d $2,829
- 8
$6,925
30d $12,911
- 9
Dev Tools
$6,300
30d $9,742
- 10
Dev Tools
$5,448
30d $11,251
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Method
851 products in our library that publish revenue through a payment provider, crawled 2026-10-30. 435 of them report a non-zero MRR; medians and percentiles are computed on that subset only. Missing values are never treated as zero. This is the population that chooses to publish revenue — not the whole market.
Full method and limitsCross-check: the library-wide benchmark page uses 851 products as of 2026-10-30; this page recomputes its buckets from the live published rows, so the two totals can differ by rows published since that snapshot.
