使用提供的客户端/ UI为API调用计费

Question

I have a general question regarding the approach of metering/billing.

We have a service and want to meter via api calls as well as have an optional reusable javascript UI component which customers can use. This UI component is a reusable one and has to be used by the leading UI web application.

This UI component internally makes call to the service using the same APIs.

For API integration api calls metering will be straight forward because the APIs will be used by the clients used/developed by the consumer.

How should the metering happen for the UI component because the UI component is internally making API calls. Do we need to have a separate commercialisation model for the UI consumption ?

Best Regards,

Saurav

Answer 1

This UI component internally makes call to the service using the same APIs.

You can't distinguish between the API calls your client made and therefore are not to be billed and the ones by any other user of the API endpoint.

The only way to I can think of you could achieve this is to embed some kind of secret into your client that can be presented to the server with the non billing requests. That is something that anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of how stuff works can find out .

That is why I would recommend to find a billing metric other than calls (requests):

• Time (monthly/annualy)
• Users
• Volume (requests per time)

I know that there is always a business guy that thinks no one has enough criminal energy to circumvent the system like this …

Do not compromise (you'll pay in the end...)