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A meter defines how you price and bill usage. Each meter has:

Meter slug

Unique identifier included in forward tokens to apply specific pricing

Fee model

Fixed credits per usage unit, or a percentage of provider cost

Usage units

What you’re measuring — tokens, characters, seconds, or requests

Pricing tiers

Volume-based rate schedules that reward higher usage
Meters define pricing. Plans link to meters and provide the credit balance that usage draws from. See How Lava Monetize Works for the full picture of how meters, plans, and customers fit together.

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Meter configuration

const meter = await lava.meters.create({
  // Required
  name: 'Chat Completion Tokens',

  // Optional — auto-generated if omitted
  meter_slug: 'chat-tokens',

  // Required — 'fixed' (credits per usage unit) or 'percentage' (markup on provider cost)
  rate_type: 'fixed',

  // Required — 'tokens_1m' | 'characters_1m' | 'minutes' | 'requests'
  tier_type: 'tokens_1m',

  // Required — at least one tier, first tier must start at '0'
  tiers: [
    { start: '0', rate: '5.00' },        // 5 credits per 1M tokens
    { start: '1000000', rate: '3.00' },   // 3 credits per 1M after 1M
    { start: '10000000', rate: '1.00' },  // 1 credit per 1M after 10M
  ],
});

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Usage units

Usage units define what metric drives pricing. Set via the field:
Unit typeLabelRate basisExample use case
tokens_1mTokenscredits per 1M tokensLLM APIs
characters_1mCharacterscredits per 1M charactersText-to-speech
minutesSecondscredits per minuteAudio processing, voice calls
requestsRequestscredits per requestImage generation, API calls

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Fee models

The field determines how fees are calculated.
Charge a fixed number of credits per usage unit (tokens, characters, time, or requests), regardless of the provider’s dollar cost:
credits_charged = rate × units
Example: 2 credits per 1M tokens with input+output basis
  • 500 input tokens + 200 output tokens = 700 tokens
  • Credits: 2 × 700 / 1,000,000 = 0.0014 credits

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Pricing tiers

Tiers let you offer volume-based pricing. Each tier defines a usage threshold and rate. As cumulative usage increases, later tiers apply.
At least one tier is required. The first tier must start at 0, and tier starts must be in ascending order.

Example: Three-tier token pricing

TierStartRate (credits per 1M tokens)
105
21,000,0003
310,000,0001
For a customer that uses 5M tokens total:
  • First 1M at 5 credits/1M = 5 credits
  • Next 4M at 3 credits/1M = 12 credits
  • Total: 17 credits deducted from their balance
Tiers accumulate per customer. Each customer tracks total usage across all requests to determine the active tier.

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Next steps

Checkout

Embed checkout to onboard paying customers

Gateway vs Post-Request

Choose how usage gets reported to Lava