A UnitEconomics property references a document describing the per-unit cost model for an API — such as cost per API call, cost per gigabyte processed, cost per token consumed, or cost per transaction. Unit economics are a core FinOps capability under the Quantify Business Value domain. Publishing a unit cost breakdown alongside an API makes pricing structure discoverable by enterprise procurement, FinOps tools, and developers building cost-aware applications.

Also known as: Cost per Unit, Per-Unit Cost, Unit Cost Model

Example

- type: UnitEconomics
  url: https://developers.example.com/billing/unit-economics

Standards

• FinOps Foundation FinOps FOCUS Specification
• FinOps Foundation FinOps Framework — Quantify Business Value
• FinOps Foundation FinOps Framework — Unit Economics capability
• FinOps Foundation FOCUS columns — BilledCost, EffectiveCost, UsageQuantity, UsageUnit
• SaaS Metrics SaaS Metrics — CAC, LTV, Gross Margin
• schema.org schema.org UnitPriceSpecification
• UN/CEFACT UN/CEFACT Recommendation 20 — Units of Measure

Media Types

• text/html — Unit-economics dashboards are typically rendered as HTML.
• application/json — Machine-readable unit-cost feeds and FOCUS exports.
• text/csv — FinOps tooling commonly ingests CSV exports.

Governance Rules

• info-description (Spectral built-in) — API descriptions should document the billable unit (call, token, GB, row).
• operation-description (Spectral built-in) — Operations that bill differently than the API default need explicit notes.

Risk & Compliance

Compliance:

• SOX — unit-cost reporting feeds material financial disclosures
• IFRS 15 / ASC 606 — revenue recognition tied to billable units
• SOC 2 CC4.1 — internal controls over operational metrics

Security: Per-unit cost data exposes infrastructure efficiency and customer concentration. Restrict access at the same level as gross-margin and revenue data.

Tools

• CloudZero — Unit economics analytics
• Vantage — FinOps platform
• OpenCost — Kubernetes unit cost (Apache-2.0)
• Finout — FinOps platform
• Datadog Cloud Cost Management — Cost observability
• OpenMeter — Usage metering (Apache-2.0)

Suggested Metrics

• cost_per_request — Total cost divided by total billable requests.
• cost_per_token — Cost per input / output token for LLM and AI APIs.
• cost_per_gb — Cost per gigabyte processed or stored.
• cost_per_customer — Fully-loaded cost divided by active customer count.
• gross_margin_per_unit — Revenue per unit minus cost per unit.
• cac_ltv_ratio — Customer acquisition cost relative to lifetime value.

Example Implementations

• AWS — Per-service unit pricing exposed through the Price List API.
• Anthropic — Per-million-token unit economics with input / output / cached / batch differentiation.
• OpenAI — Per-token unit pricing per model family with batch and cached-input discounts.
• Twilio — Per-message and per-minute unit pricing across SMS, voice, and verify products.

Related Properties

• Pricing
• Chargeback policy
• Plans
• Rate limits
• Service level agreement

Tags

• Unit Economics
• FinOps
• Pricing
• Cost

All Common Properties