Metered usage

This topic introduces metered usage, which is supported by the Metered usage V1 and V2 REST APIs (see Metered usage V1 and Metered usage V2).

❗ Important Metered usage v2 is currently in Early Availability status. Features in Early Availability status are only available in production to a limited number of customers based on fit with specific use cases. For more information about Early Availability status, see Product lifecycle phases. If you would like to use the product capabilities described here during the Early Availability phase, contact your AppDirect technical representative.

AppDirect marketplaces support metered usage billing, also known as usage-based billing, which is how marketplaces or Developers charge users for their variable use of a product during each billing period. Developers configure metered usage through pricing settings for each product edition and add-on product. Typically, you use the unit that you set within the pricing settings to measure and charge for usage, for example each gigabyte, hour, or user license that a user uses.

When you enable metered usage pricing, AppDirect marketplaces expose an API endpoint that you can use to report usage to the marketplace that owns the user's (customer's) account. For example, you can report the number of gigabytes of storage that users use, and the marketplace charges them for it based on the preconfigured or custom price that you define per gigabyte.

Metered usage submission and processing status

Metered usage is submitted and managed differently for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) products—Google Cloud Platform, Azure, and Amazon Web Services pay-as-you-go—and all other products.

After usage is submitted, you can check the status of usage processing, view error messages, and fix errors, in the user interface. (You can also use the API to check the processing status of usage submitted with the Metered usage v2 API. For more information, see Fetch usage processing status.)

The following table provides a comparison of submitting and managing metered usage for IaaS and other products.

💡 Tip Metered usage is submitted to marketplaces with API requests (or Kafka requests, when AppDirect submits usage data for IaaS products).

Metered usage submission for IaaS and other products

| | IaaS billing products| All other products | | | ------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | For products | Google Cloud Platform, Azure, and Amazon Web Services pay-as-you-go | Owned by Developers and marketplaces | | Usage is submitted by | AppDirect on behalf of vendor | Developers and Marketplace Managers | | Submitted with | Not applicable | Metered usage V1 or V2 REST APIs | | Submission structure | Usage submitted in runs.Each run includes one or more Kafka data submission requests.Each request includes one or more usage events (individual usage records). | Usage submitted with API requests.Each data submission API request includes one or more usage events (individual usage records). | | Processing status and errors visible in user interface | For Marketplace Managers: Yes, for all usage submitted to the marketplaceFor Developers who belong to the company that owns the marketplace: NoFor Developers who belong to a Developer company that owns IaaS products: Yes, for all usage for their products submitted to the marketplace | Metered usage V1 API submissions: NoMetered usage V2 API submissions: - For Marketplace Managers: Yes, for all usage submitted to the marketplace- For Developers who belong to the company that owns the marketplace: No - For Developers who belong to a Developer company that owns products: Yes, for all usage for their products submitted to the marketplace | | Processing status and errors can be retrieved by API | No | By Developers who submitted the usage with the Metered usage V2 API: YesFor Metered usage V1 API submissions: No | | Who manages submission errors | AppDirect | Marketplace Managers and Developers who submitted the usage |