Economics

Economics

Pass-through provider prices, prepaid credits, and a visible platform fee on credit purchases. Ranking stays honest because the cheapest provider stays cheapest after routing.

Purchase fee, not take-rate

10% is charged when credits are purchased (top-ups). We do not add a markup on each routed request. Provider COGS stay pass-through: if Serper costs 0.65 credits and Exa costs 7, those are the amounts settled and the usage.cost reported.

Units

• 1 credit = $0.001 of pass-through cost
• Platform fee = 10% of the USD purchase (credit top-ups only)
• A $10 pack funds $9.00 of credits (9,000 credits)

Reserve, then settle

Routed engines hold the maximum eligible catalog cost before calling a provider. Success settles the exact winner cost and refunds the unused hold. Timeouts and upstream failures release the reservation so SearchRouter does not pay COGS without a matching debit. Concurrent holds and spend limits are atomic.

Stripe

Dashboard checkout creates a Stripe Checkout Session. The webhook /api/webhooks/stripe credits the ledger idempotently by Checkout session id and Stripe event id. Without Stripe keys, set SEARCHROUTER_ALLOW_STUB_PURCHASE=1 for local ledger testing only.