economics

Calculate the current unit economics for your AI product.

Steps

1. Get pricing from the codebase

Search for credit/pricing constants:

grep -rn "CREDIT\|credit_cost\|COST\|FREE_CREDITS\|signup_bonus\|price\|PRICE" --include="*.py" --include="*.ts" -i

Find:

• How much users pay (e.g. $5 = 100 credits → $0.05/credit)
• How many credits each action costs (generation, image, regen, etc.)
• How many free credits new users get on signup

2. Get current model pricing

Search the web for current pricing for every model you use. Common ones to look up:

• OpenAI: site:openai.com pricing
• Anthropic: site:anthropic.com pricing
• Google Gemini: site:ai.google.dev pricing

Get input $/1M tokens, output $/1M tokens, and image generation cost if applicable.

3. Estimate tokens per action

Make reasonable assumptions based on your prompts (or read the actual prompt files):

• A typical text generation call: X input tokens, Y output tokens
• An embedding call: Z tokens
• An image generation: flat cost per image

If you can find the actual prompts in the codebase, read them and estimate more precisely.

4. Calculate cost per action

For each user-facing action:

API cost = (input_tokens / 1M × input_price) + (output_tokens / 1M × output_price)
Revenue  = credits_charged × price_per_credit
Margin   = (revenue - api_cost) / revenue × 100

5. Output the table

UNIT ECONOMICS — [your product]
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
USER PRICING
  [price] = [credits] credits → $X.XX per credit
  Signup bonus: [N] free credits

ACTION ECONOMICS
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Action              Credits   Revenue   API Cost   Margin
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[action name]         [N]     $X.XX     $X.XXX     XX%
[action name]         [N]     $X.XX     $X.XXX     XX%
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

FREE TIER DAMAGE (N signup credits)
  Conservative user:   costs you ~$X.XX
  Typical user:        costs you ~$X.XX
  Heavy user:          costs you ~$X.XX

PAYBACK POINT
  One paying user covers ~X non-converting free users
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

6. Flag anything concerning

• Any action with margin below 50% — flag it prominently
• Free tier cost above $1 per signup — flag it
• If a model price changed since this was last run, call it out

7. Pricing sensitivity (if asked)

Show what margins look like at ±20% credit price. Helps decide whether to change pricing without rebuilding the whole spreadsheet.