Stripe on Monday unveiled a preview of a new feature designed to assist AI startups and other companies in transferring the costs of AI model usage to their customers.
Stripe’s feature extends beyond just passing through token costs. It enables startups to impose a markup percentage on token usage. This means a company can automatically add, for example, 30% to the token cost that the startup pays the model maker.
As Stripe described, “Imagine you’re developing an AI app: you aim for a consistent 30% margin over raw LLM token costs across providers. Billing automates this process.”
The billing feature allows startups to choose the AI models they use, tracks those models’ API prices, records customer token usage, and automatically applies the profit-margin markup.
As we’ve previously reported, AI startups have various charging methods for their services. Many of them employ tiered monthly subscriptions with usage-rate limits; surpassing these might result in additional charges for the subscriber.
For example, Cursor last year changed some of its tier pricing from unlimited use to rate-limited, with fees for excess consumption.
Without a usage cap, users could incur large bills for a startup with the model makers, potentially causing the startup to operate at a loss. This issue is particularly significant for agentic startups. Increased customer use of their agents consumes more tokens from the underlying model provider, whether it’s OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic, or others — making it crucial to make informed pricing and business model decisions.
Stripe has also rolled out its own AI gateway, a tool providing access to multiple models, helping users choose the most suitable one. The billing tool is compatible with popular third-party gateways like those from Vercel and OpenRouter, as mentioned in a tweet by a Stripe product manager.
Other startups also offer AI model cost management features with their gateways. OpenRouter, for instance, provides access to over 300 models and charges a flat 5.5% markup on token fees for its first-tier plan, along with budget controls.
Stripe isn’t currently imposing its own markup on the gateway, the product manager stated on X. The feature is still in waitlist mode. Regardless, if Stripe can streamline tracking and billing for this expense into a profitable process for startups, it could be transformative. Stripe did not immediately comment on when the feature will be widely available.