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"Why is our bill so high this month?!" If you’ve ever asked that question (or been the one forced to solve it) you know the pain of usage-based pricing.
For tech teams scaling rapidly, there are pros to transactional vs. non-transactional pricing but what starts as a lean and flexible cost model often becomes a volatile wildcard that wreaks havoc on financial planning.
Usage-based pricing, also known as transactional pricing, ties costs directly to the consumption of technology. The appeal is obvious: only pay for what you use. But as adoption grows, so does unpredictability. Teams push features, run experiments, and respond to customer demand—while backend bills spiral beyond forecasts.
This high-cost and often unpredictable approach to technology pricing, is one of several challenges of transactional pricing.
The Real Cost of Variability
The core budgeting issue with transactional models is inconsistency.
Billing fluctuates based on a series of external and internal factors, for example:
- A successful marketing campaign boosts user traffic to your website or app, increasing API calls and costs double overnight
- An integration loop fails in staging causing compute cycles spike
- Internal testing or sandboxed environments go unchecked, and usage starts to silently pile up
These swings are especially hard to manage when finance teams expect predictability quarter to quarter.
In worst-case scenarios, unexpected spikes trigger instant budget freezes, project slowdowns, or even re-architecture and deplatforming discussions. Suddenly, it’s more than just a tech cost problem—it’s a strategic one.
Why Traditional Budgeting Fails
Most B2B companies still rely on fixed quarterly or annual budgets. But usage-based pricing introduces significant uncertainty because of the lag time between spend and reporting, unclear billing structures that require technical decoding, and anomalies that can look like waste, but are often tied to real innovation efforts.
When finance can’t predict next month’s bill—or worse, doesn’t understand this month’s bill—it creates tension across departments. Engineering feels micromanaged. Product teams feel constrained. Finance feels like the last to know.
Location API Example
Location is everywhere—embedded in food delivery, logistics, real estate, travel, health tech, and nearly every data-driven product that needs to match people to places. Understanding location is therefore no longer a nice to have for businesses, it’s foundational to their operation.
But due to the complex infrastructure behind these services, including routing algorithms, geocoding, map tiles, data storage, and distance matrices, it is complex to build and maintain.
Providers have therefore turned location into a highly transactional product. Every API call is monitored. Every map tile is tracked. Every coordinate is billed. And most teams don’t realise what they've committed to until it’s too late.
TravelTime’s Fixed Price Model
TravelTime is the location API going against the status quo. We deliver key location services and intelligence for one fixed price, giving businesses the ability to scale on its own terms, without fear of big API usage bills.
Our pricing model has driven significant cost savings for our clients, including global workplace optimisation organisation, Vertis: “We have customers with hundreds of offices and tens of thousands of employees, and the projected price to run these scenarios through Google got pretty scary.”
ZenEducate, a temporary teacher-to-school matching company, whose CEO states: “We looked at alternatives but found them to be exorbitantly expensive and not as reliable as TravelTime.”
And Clarity, an events and meetings platform utilising location intelligence, shared: “Our Google costs had already jumped up massively when they switched from having a fixed licence fee to the usage-based model.”
It’s clear that location APIs are a vital but expensive service. TravelTime provides a clear location intelligence alternative.
Contact us for your custom pricing quote.
How to Regain Cost Control
Luckily, there are ways to regain cost control.
Here are four proven strategies:
1. Adopt FinOps Principles
FinOps is increasingly important for any team navigating metered pricing. It can be an expensive solution, but key practices include:
- Real-time monitoring and alerts
- Usage tagging by project/team
- Predictive cost modelling using historical trends
2. Negotiate Cost Ceilingss
The costs associated with usage-based pricing will spike and grow as you use the technology. However, some vendors may allow users to put cost ceilings in place:
- Monthly or quarterly usage caps
- Flat-rate tiers for predictable workloads
- Rollovers or credits for overages
- Even cloud-native providers are becoming more flexible—if you ask.
3. Set Limits on Internal Usage
Internal workloads e.g. staging, testing, integrations are often the biggest cost drains in with transaction-based models. Your teams can put boundaries in place in limit usage however this can damage innovation:
- Scale only when needed
- Audit dormant resources monthly
- Use sandboxed environments with prepaid limits
4. Seek Out Flat-Rate Partners
For foundational infrastructure—like your location data stack, observability tooling, or data pipelines—cost-effectiveness and predictability are key. It’s possible to look for providers who offer unlimited usage at a fixed cost. This simplifies budgeting, procurement and internal trust.
TravelTime is the first location API of its kind to have a fixed price model.
Rethinking Predictability in a Usage-Based World
The growing complexity of digital infrastructure demands pricing models that match the pace and ambition of modern teams. While transactional pricing can work at small scales, its volatility poses a serious threat to your costs, strategic planning, team innovation, and long-term growth.
Fixed-rate alternatives, like TravelTime, offer a refreshing shift from uncertainty to clarity and cost-effectiveness. They allow teams to focus on delivering value, not get stuck decoding invoices or justifying costs.
If you’re tired of reactive budget conversations, unpredictable API bills, and vendor pricing that punishes growth, it’s time to rethink. It isn’t just about accounting or helping the finance team sleep better at night—it’s about empowering your teams to build boldly.
Ready to remove the guesswork from your location data costs?
Get in touch to see how TravelTime’s fixed pricing can support your scale. Discover how TravelTime’s unlimited usage pricing gives tech teams the freedom to build without cost surprises.