Plan Studio is the visual workspace where Product and Finance teams design pricing models, configure entitlements, and deploy rate plans to production — without writing code or filing engineering tickets. Changes are version-controlled, A/B testable in Sandbox, and deployed with a single click.
The workflow is simple: define what you measure (Meters), define what you charge (Rate Plans), and define what customers can access (Entitlements). Plan Studio orchestrates all three into a deployable Offering that maps to a subscription.
Every pricing plan in Aforo is composed of three building blocks. Understanding this anatomy is essential before creating your first plan.
RAW USAGE SIGNALS
Meters
Sensors that capture events from your infrastructure: API calls, tokens consumed, storage bytes, agent sessions. Meters are asynchronous and non-blocking. They feed the billing pipeline without affecting request latency.
MATHEMATICAL LOGIC
Rate Plans
The pricing rules that transform raw meter readings into monetary charges. Rate Plans support 6 pricing models (flat, graduated, volume, percentage, quota, per-unit) and can combine multiple meters into a single charge.
FEATURE GATES
Entitlements
Real-time access controls cached at the gateway edge. Entitlements determine which features a tenant can access, how much quota remains, and whether margin guards should intervene. Checked in <5ms.
INFO
Meters, Rate Plans, and Entitlements are independently versioned. You can change pricing without touching metering, or add a new feature gate without modifying the rate plan.
Plan Studio supports six pricing models out of the box. Every model is computed by the same 10-stage billing pipeline, so you can switch between models without re-engineering your billing integration.
ModelLogicBest For
Flat FeeFixed charge per billing period regardless of usageSaaS subscriptions, base platform fees, support tiers
Graduated (Tiered)Each tier charged at its own rate (staircase)API platforms with volume discounts, AI token pricing
VolumeEntire volume charged at the tier where total fallsStorage, bandwidth, wholesale pricing
Included QuotaN units free, then per-unit or per-block overageSaaS with usage caps, block-based overage pricing
HybridCombination of flat base fee + usage overage chargesFreemium with paid overages, enterprise commitments
Additionally, Aforo supports Per-Unit (linear rate times quantity) and Percentage (revenue share with optional minimum fee) models. The Included Quota model supports both per-unit overage and block-based overage (charge per full block of N units using the blockSize parameter).
Describe your pricing model in plain English, and the AI Pricing Architect will decompose it into the right metrics, rate plan configuration, and offering settings. Available as a floating panel across the Metrics, Rate Plans, and Offerings pages.
Three execution modes: Guide (step-by-step walkthrough), Pre-fill (populates the wizard for your review), or Auto-create (creates everything in draft). The AI asks smart follow-up questions for ambiguous descriptions and navigates you across pages as needed.
Every usage event passes through a deterministic 10-stage billing pipeline before it becomes a charge on an invoice. Each stage is independently configurable and auditable.
1Ingestion — Raw usage event received from gateway plugin, SDK, or REST API. Validated for schema compliance.
2Validation — Event checked for required fields, valid tenant ID, active subscription, and timestamp sanity (rejects >5min future, >90 days old).
3Deduplication — Idempotency key checked against a 24-hour sliding window. Duplicate events are silently dropped.
4Enrichment — Event decorated with billing hierarchy (API key → agent → team → customer) and product metadata.
5Quota Check — Current usage compared against entitlement limits. If quota exceeded, event routed to overage path or blocked.
6Aggregation — Events rolled up into billable units per meter, per billing period. Supports SUM, COUNT, MAX, UNIQUE aggregation.
7Rating — Billable units priced using the active rate plan. All 6 pricing models computed here (per-unit, flat, graduated, volume, percentage, quota).
8Discounting — Percentage and fixed-amount discounts applied. Capped at subtotal (charges cannot go negative).
9Taxation — Tax rules applied based on tenant jurisdiction. Pluggable tax engine (Avalara, TaxJar, or manual rates).
10Settlement — Charge routed to destination: POSTPAID → invoice accrual, PREPAID → wallet drawdown, HYBRID → wallet first then invoice for remainder.
Plan Studio allows you to A/B test pricing models in the Sandbox before rolling them out to production tenants.
The Sandbox environment is a fully isolated copy of the billing pipeline that processes synthetic usage events against your draft rate plans. You can simulate different usage patterns, compare revenue outcomes across pricing models, and validate entitlement behavior before a single production tenant is affected.
Draft Rate Plans
Create and iterate on pricing rules without publishing to production
Synthetic Events
Generate mock usage events matching any volume or pattern
Side-by-Side Compare
Run the same usage through two pricing models and compare revenue
One-Click Promote
When satisfied, promote the draft to production with version history
Every plan created in Plan Studio is automatically protected by the profitability circuit breakers configured by your Finance team. When a tenant's usage cost approaches the contracted revenue, Margin Guards intervene at the gateway edge before unprofitable traffic generates compute costs.
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Margin Guards: Profitability Governance
Configure 3-level circuit breakers to protect unit economics at the gateway edge.
For gateway-level integration details, see the , , and gateway guides.