apidays Helsinki & North 2025 - Monetizing AI APIs: The New API Economy, Allan Knabe (apiable.io)

Monetizing AI APIs: The New API Economy
Allan Knabe, CEO & API Product Manager at apiable.io

apidays Helsinki & North 2025 - APIs for Innovation, Intelligence, and Impact
June 3 & 4, 2025

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Transcript

1. Monetizing AI APIs Apidays North June 2025 apiable.io = API + able + input/output
2. Infrastructure Layer Model Layer Application Layer Usage based pricing Usage based pricing Subscription based pricing Based on: How AI Apps Make Money Rule of Thumb/Palle Broe B2B Application Flow: Subscription-based pricing for AI application usage. $3 $5 $? Costs Number of Tokens consumed: 23,000 Number of Tokens consumed: ?
4. Infrastructure Layer Model Layer Application Layer Usage based pricing Usage based pricing Subscription based pricing Based on: How AI Apps Make Money Rule of Thumb/Palle Broe B2B Application Flow: Subscription-based pricing for AI application usage. $3 $5 $? Costs Number of Tokens consumed: 23,000 Number of Tokens consumed: ?
5. Infrastructure Layer Model Layer Application Layer Usage based pricing Usage based pricing Subscription based pricing Based on: How AI Apps Make Money Rule of Thumb/Palle Broe B2B Application Flow: Subscription-based pricing for AI application usage. $3 $5 $? Costs Number of Tokens consumed: 23,000 Number of Tokens consumed: ?
6. Finding #1: Limited pricing innovation "Lack of pricing innovation presents an opportunity for the second wave of AI apps" Source: How AI Apps Make Money Rule of Thumb/Palle Broe
7. Finding #2: Most companies are charging based on the number of users… Source: How AI Apps Make Money Rule of Thumb/Palle Broe E.g., Tokens!
8. Finding #2: …rather than the notion of digital "workers" doing jobs. Source: How AI Apps Make Money Rule of Thumb/Palle Broe
9. Risky: API access as a feature of the largest plan (Good-Better-Best).
10. Infrastructure Layer Model Layer Application Layer Usage based pricing Usage based pricing Subscription based pricing Based on: How AI Apps Make Money Rule of Thumb/Palle Broe B2B Application Flow: Subscription-based pricing for AI application usage. $3 $5 $? Costs Number of Tokens consumed: 23,000 Number of Tokens consumed: ?
11. Infrastructure Layer Model Layer API Integration Layer Application Layer Usage based pricing Own pricing Usage based pricing Usage based pricing Based on: How AI Apps Make Money Rule of Thumb/Palle Broe B2B2B API Flow: Usage-based pricing for AI API usage. $3 $5 $7 Costs https://www.jasper.ai/case-studies/bestplaces Number of Tokens consumed: 23,000 Number of Tokens consumed: 23,000
12. OpenAI Platform E.g., use the OpenAI Platform to create an Assistant. Technology Stack AI Token Based Pricing 1 2 3 4 Amazon API Gateway Generate each customer their own API credentials via the Amazon API Gateway. Apiable API Portal Create API Products on the API Portal Platform. Stripe Account Connect a Stripe account in order to charge the API Consumer. Skill set Community, Standard and Premier support are available. Ask your developer. Biz | Dev | Ops
13. OpenAI Platform https://platform.openai.com/ https://chat.openai.com/ B2B B2B2B
14. Assistant ID OpenAI Platform What you'll need: Secret Key 1 2
15. API Gateway
16. Why do I need to use an API Gateway? Amazon API Gateway
17. sk-Nm…Do-U Total Tokens: 89,500 Total Tokens: ??? Total Tokens: ??? Total Tokens: ??? Total: $??? Total: $??? Total: $??? sk-Nm…Do-U sk-Nm…Do-U sk-Nm…Do-U How would we track usage if we gave our consumers direct access to our OpenAI API key? What happens if one of our API consumers leaks the key?
18. sk-Nm…Do-U KtJU…fD4c1 aTjQ…pB367 WcIX…fT7c3 Total Tokens: 89,500 Total Tokens: 19,866 Total Tokens: 39,833 Total Tokens: 29,800 Total: $198.66 Total: $398.33 Total: $298.00 By using an API Gateway, we can give each API Consumer their own API Keys and track usage. Each key can be regenerated individually!
19. Usage-based Pricing
20. Graduated Price per unit increases with higher usage ​ (e.g. first 1k = $0.01, next 10k = $0.005) 01 Volume One rate applies based on total usage ​ (e.g. if you cross 100k calls, pay $0.003 per call for all) 02 04 Credit Burndown / Wallet Prepay with credits, deduct per use ​ (Ideal for flexible, prepaid usage models) 03 Usage-Based Pricing (Advanced Models) Flat Fee with Overage Fixed base + per-unit cost beyond quota ​ (e.g. $99/mo for 10k calls, then $0.01 per extra call) 🎯 Use usage-based pricing when flexibility or scalability is key.
21. Credit Burndown / Wallet 1. 2. Add credit to your balance to try our the API. Set "Auto recharge" to on when moving to production.
22. May the Demo Gods be merciful. 🙏 Quick demo
23. • • • When a customer buys credits, they’re paying upfront. But the company hasn’t delivered the full value yet — the service is only delivered when the credits are used. So, from an accounting perspective, the company is holding “unearned” revenue. Credit-burndown — Will Accounting hate us? 📌 Try to set an expiry date.
24. API Portal Config
25. Apiable - Resources How to
26. Questions?
27. Allan Knabe, CEO allan.knabe@apiable.io​ Let's talk.