The Unprice manifesto
Every AI charge starts with an authorization.
An agent can spend a customer's credits before any invoice exists. A usage counter records the cost but can't stop the work.
So check the budget before the run, and deny the work the customer can't pay for.
cause: the billing decision happens after the cost
every answer yes · work runs
200
any answer no · denied before it runs
LIMIT_EXCEEDED
The check runs before the cost.
Unprice checks the plan, budget, and credits before the work runs. It stores that check with the usage, so you can explain the invoice later.
A deny returns LIMIT_EXCEEDED and nothing changes. An allow keeps the record of the check.
Run pricing like infrastructure.
PriceOps means treating pricing as versioned infrastructure. You can change a plan without changing product code.
- 01
Spend safety
Unprice rejects over-budget spend before the work runs.
stop cost before it exists
- 02
Runtime decisions
Unprice checks entitlements, budgets, and credits during the request.
decide during the request
- 03
Explainable charges
Every charge traces back to the usage and ledger entries behind it.
every charge carries evidence
- 04
Open and inspectable
Read the code that moves your money, or have your coding agent review it.
read it before you trust it
The billing layer you rent can be acquired. The money path you own cannot.
Four venture-backed billing vendors were bought or taken private in 2025 and 2026. If your billing runs on one of them, its new owner sets your roadmap.
Unprice is open source. Read it, fork it, and run it in your own Cloudflare account.
git clone github.com/jhonsfran1165/unprice
The team that builds the product should own its pricing.
- You shouldn't need a deployment to change a price.
- You shouldn't discover an over-budget customer at invoice time.
- You shouldn't reconstruct a disputed charge by hand.