Per-seat pricing made sense when software was a productivity tool that each person used independently. In an AI platform where one user can accomplish the work of an entire marketing team, charging per seat penalises exactly the efficiency gains the product creates. Add a team member to review AI output and your bill goes up, even though the total AI usage has not changed.
We wanted pricing that aligned with value delivered rather than team size. The result is an energy-based credit system.
How energy works
Every AI operation in Cleo consumes energy credits. Generating a piece of content costs a certain amount. Composing an email campaign costs a certain amount. Creating an image costs a certain amount. The cost reflects the actual computational resources consumed - more complex operations that invoke multiple models and larger context windows cost more energy than simple ones.
Users receive a monthly energy allocation based on their plan tier. They can see their balance, understand what consumes energy, and plan their usage accordingly. When the energy is spent, they can wait for the monthly reset or upgrade their plan.
Why this aligns incentives
Energy pricing creates a natural alignment between our costs and our revenue. When a user consumes AI resources, we incur model inference costs. Energy credits map to those costs. This means we are never in the position of losing money when users are active - a problem that plagues flat-rate AI subscriptions.
For the user, energy pricing means their cost scales with the value they extract. A solopreneur who uses Cleo for a few social posts a week pays less than an agency managing campaigns for multiple clients. Both get the same platform, the same AI quality, the same tools. The difference is volume, and volume maps cleanly to cost.
Transparency as design principle
We show energy consumption in real time. Users see what each operation costs before they initiate it. They can see their usage patterns over time. There are no surprise charges, no opaque overages, no hidden multipliers.
This transparency is deliberate. We want users to develop an intuitive sense of what AI operations cost so they can make informed decisions about how to use the platform. An energy system only works if people understand it.
The plan structure
Our tiers are designed around usage patterns rather than feature gates. Every plan gets every feature. The difference is energy allocation. A starter plan gets enough energy for a small business's typical marketing needs. A pro plan gets enough for a more active marketing operation. A business plan gets enough for agency-scale work.
No feature is locked behind a higher tier. No capability is artificially restricted. The only variable is how much AI work you can do per month.
Pricing should reflect value, not headcount.
- Cleo's Team