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You pay for what you actually consume — tokens, requests, or credits — instead of a flat subscription.
Most AI platforms meter you by units (input/output tokens, API calls, or abstract "credits") and bill the sum, so a heavy day costs more than a quiet one. This matters because costs scale with usage and can spike unpredictably under load, which makes monitoring and caps essential. Example: a coding agent that processes a huge repo might burn $5 of tokens in one run, while a one-line fix costs a fraction of a cent — same tool, wildly different bill.
Plainly
Think of Usage-based Billing / Credits as the checklist that keeps the app open for real people. You pay for what you actually consume — tokens, requests, or credits — instead of a flat subscription.
In practice
Use it when a change has to survive deploys, users, incidents, analytics, or billing reality. In practice, define the owner, input, output, and failure mode before you rely on it.