Usage Metering & Billing Pipeline  ·  View 14 of 22  ·  Runtime

Meter Types

Five meter kinds, one pipeline, and the reason a new meter is configuration rather than a release.

Editable source SVG draw.io All views
Emit Window Aggregate Rate On the invoice Counter — API calls Event per call Hourly, event time Sum Graduated tiers Qty × tier rates Gauge — active seats Hourly snapshot Daily Time-weighted mean Per unit Mean seats × price High-water — storage Hourly sample Daily Maximum Volume tiers Peak GB × tier Unique entity — MAU Event per actor Monthly Distinct count Package price Band reached Dimensioned — egress Minute rollup at edge Hourly Sum per region Rate card per region GB × region rate Meter Types — How Each Reaches the Invoice One pipeline, five aggregate functions. A new meter is a configuration row choosing a lane, which is why packaging changes without a deployment. v 1.0 · owner Architecture Practice · date 2026-10

Decisions

  • One pipeline with five aggregate functions, selected by the meter's type field. A new meter is a configuration row choosing a lane, which is what lets packaging change without a deployment — and is the direct consequence of the pricing manager's goal in view 03.
  • Gauges are time-weighted rather than last-value, because a customer who ran 400 seats for one hour and 40 for the rest of the month should not be billed for 400.
  • The dimensioned lane shows where cardinality enters: a region-dimensioned rate card is cheap, a request-id-dimensioned one is ruinous.

Assumptions

  • 400 meters in total across the five types (stated assumption), with counters the large majority.
  • Unique-entity meters close monthly only; a daily distinct count at this volume is not affordable and nothing prices against it.

Risks

  • Unique-entity counting is not incrementally cheap and its state grows with the period. It is the one lane that could justify an approximate counter, at the cost of a figure that cannot be reproduced exactly — which this architecture otherwise refuses.
  • A meter whose type is changed after usage has been metered under the old one is a restatement, not an edit. Nothing in the model stops someone trying.
◀  Invoice Run All views Restatement and Evidence  ▶
Solution Architecture v1.0 · Amazon Web Services · Billing Platform Architecture · 2026-1014-meter-types