What is AI unit economics?
Define the unit, the revenue, the variable model cost, and the contribution profit.
Learn
Make the profit formula boringly clear.
These guides explain what to calculate, which systems supply the evidence, and where the answer must remain unknown. No magic score, benchmark theatre, or token total pretending to be profit.
First principles
Practical questions every AI product eventually asks.
How do I calculate AI contribution margin?
Keep the numerator, denominator, time window, and customer population aligned.
What is AI cost per user?
Price cached and uncached tokens, failures, retries, and streaming usage correctly.
Why is token cost not profit?
Cost needs observed revenue and a trustworthy identity link before it becomes customer profit.
Gross margin or AI contribution margin?
Use each metric for the decision it can actually support.
Which customers are losing money?
Join payer identity and model usage without spreading unknown cost across every account.
Server recipe
OpenAI Responses streaming cost by account
Measure final streamed usage by account without collecting prompts or responses.
Server recipe
Anthropic cache read and write cost by customer
Keep cache reads, five-minute writes, and one-hour writes separate by customer.
Methodology
How Grow or Die versions model prices
Audit the effective price, billing mode, and fail-closed boundary behind every cost.
Revenue recipe
Link a Stripe customer to AI usage without email joins
Join Stripe customer revenue to AI usage through a stable internal account—not email.
Revenue recipe
Link Lemon Squeezy revenue to AI usage
Connect store-scoped Lemon orders, refunds, and AI usage without guessing identity.
Prefer the live formula?