How to sell AI credits with Stripe

AI apps often need a unit system in addition to subscriptions. A user might buy a monthly plan, a one-time credit pack, or extra usage for generations, API calls, or compute-heavy actions.

Credits let your product represent those actions as units that can be checked and consumed from a backend flow instead of relying only on plan names or frontend state.

Stripe can collect the payment for an AI credit pack, but your product still has to answer runtime questions after checkout: whether the subject has access, how many units remain, and when a generation or API request should spend those units.

Licenzy connects the Stripe purchase to entitlement state, then exposes access checks and usage consumption through backend runtime endpoints.

1. 01Start checkout with POST /v1/checkout/session.
2. 02Let payment create or update the user's entitlement.
3. 03Check access from your backend with POST /v1/access/check.
4. 04Run the generation, API call, or compute action.
5. 05Consume units with POST /v1/usage/consume after the real work is accepted or completed.

• Tracking credits only in the frontend instead of in a trusted backend flow.
• Consuming credits before the generation, API call, or compute action completes.
• Retrying consumption without a stable idempotency key for the business event.
• Ignoring insufficient_usage instead of returning a top-up or checkout path.
• Assuming Stripe payment success is the same thing as current runtime access.

• Checkout session for starting the Stripe-backed purchase.
• Access checks for the runtime allow or deny decision before protected work.
• Usage metering for consuming AI credit units safely.
• Entitlements for the state layer that stores usable access and remaining units.
• Usage-based billing with Stripe for the broader usage-pack model around Stripe.