Today we are moving Kimpton to consumption-based pricing. Instead of charging for seats, Kimpton now uses credits that map cost to the research work your agents actually perform.
Every pricing model is a theory of where value comes from. Seat-based software priced access: the value was the room you logged into, and the fair unit was a person with a key. That theory held for decades because software mostly sat still and waited to be operated. The work was yours. The tool was just the place you did it.
Agents break that assumption. The product is no longer a room you enter. It is research that gets done on your behalf, and the amount of work varies enormously from one request to the next. A quick price check, a portfolio-aware report, a dashboard build, and a fully reasoned trade proposal are not the same act billed at the same rate. A flat fee per seat overcharges the analyst who asks one question a week and quietly subsidizes the one running research all day.
So we priced the thing that actually varies. You pay for output, not access. Credits track the work Kimpton does, so cost rises when the agents are earning their keep and falls when they are idle, with no contract to renegotiate when your usage changes and no penalty for a colleague who only checks in now and then.
How credits work
Every account has a credit balance. When Kimpton completes agent work, credits are deducted from that balance based on the work required. Lighter questions use fewer credits. Deeper research, reports, charts, and proposal workflows use more because the system is doing more work on your behalf.
- Free accounts receive 3,000 credits every day to try Kimpton with real workflows.
- Paid plans include a monthly credit grant that refreshes with the billing cycle.
- Purchased credits can be added any time and are used after daily and plan credits.
- Usage is visible from the Credits and Usage screens, including daily consumption and member-level breakdowns.
- Enterprise and custom deployments can still be structured around firm-level needs, permissions, support, and integrations.
Why we changed it
The old software model assumes that value is tied to seats. That works when the product is mostly a place where people log in. It is less accurate when the product is an agent doing variable amounts of research, synthesis, and artifact generation.
Consumption-based pricing gives active users more room to scale and gives lighter users a lower-friction way to start. You can use Kimpton more when the market is busy, back off when it is not, and keep the relationship between cost and output visible.
Built-in controls
Consumption pricing only works if customers have control. That is why the billing experience includes one-time top-ups, optional auto-recharge, and monthly spend caps for automatic top-ups.
Credits are used in a clear order: daily credits first, then monthly plan credits, then purchased credits. If auto-recharge is enabled, Kimpton can buy more credits when the balance falls below the threshold you choose. If a monthly budget is set, auto-recharge stops when that budget is reached while any existing credits remain usable.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Daily credits | A free daily refresh for signed-in users. |
| Plan credits | A monthly grant included with paid plans. |
| Purchased credits | One-time top-ups for heavier research periods. |
| Auto-recharge | Automatically adds credits when your balance is low. |
| Budget cap | Limits automatic top-up spend for the month. |
| Usage view | Shows daily and member-level credit consumption. |
What this makes possible
Kimpton is becoming a broader research operating system: deep research, trade proposals, reports, dashboards, chart workspaces, Vault context, email workflows, and scheduled skills. Those workflows should not all be forced into the same fixed allowance.
Credits let us keep expanding the agent surface while giving customers a pricing model that can adapt to the way they actually work. A portfolio manager who runs heavier research around earnings should be able to do that. A team experimenting with dashboards should be able to start smaller. A firm with shared workflows should be able to scale through a custom or enterprise arrangement.
Available now
Consumption-based pricing is live in Kimpton today. Existing users can see credits, top-ups, auto-recharge, and usage from Billing and Usage in Settings.
For firms that need pooled usage, team permissions, dedicated support, or custom integrations, contact demo@kimpton.ai.