Metronome API base: https://api.metronome.com/v1. Authenticate with a Bearer token in the Authorization header. Always use Contracts (not legacy Plans) for new integrations.
Integration routing
| Building | Recommended API | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Ingesting usage events | POST /v1/ingest (batch) |
references/events.md |
| Defining what to measure | Billable Metrics API | references/events.md |
| Enterprise pricing agreements | Contracts + Rate Cards | references/contracts.md |
| Mid-term contract changes | Contract Edits | references/contracts.md |
| Invoice lifecycle and finalization | Invoices API | references/invoicing.md |
| Prepaid or postpaid commitments | Commits + Credits | references/credits-and-commits.md |
| Syncing invoices to Stripe | Stripe billing provider config | references/stripe-integration.md |
| Spend alerts and balance thresholds | Notifications API | references/credits-and-commits.md |
Read the relevant reference file before answering any integration question or writing code.
Critical rules
- Always use Contracts, not legacy Plans. Plans are deprecated and lack rate card overrides, commits, and flexible scheduling.
- Always use Edits, not deprecated Amendments, for contract modifications. Edits are the actively invested path and required for v2 subscription features.
- Always use batch ingestion (
POST /v1/ingestwith an array of events) for production workloads. Single-event ingestion is acceptable only for testing. - Always include a unique, deterministic
transaction_idon every event. This is the idempotency key that prevents double-counting on retries. - Never process multiple Metronome invoices for the same Stripe customer simultaneously. Concurrent processing causes race conditions on pending line items.
- Never hardcode pricing directly in contracts. Define pricing in rate cards and use contract-level overrides for custom rates. This ensures un-overridden pricing stays current when the rate card changes.
- Never finalize a Stripe invoice before tax calculation completes. If using Stripe Tax, Avalara, or Anrok, the tax provider must process the invoice before finalization.
- Never exceed 250 line items per Stripe invoice. Exceeding this limit causes all line items to collapse into a single entry, losing per-product detail. Plan product granularity and use composite products to aggregate high-cardinality metrics.
Key documentation
When the user's request does not clearly fit a single domain above, consult:
- Metronome Documentation — Start here for any Metronome question.
- API Reference — Full endpoint reference.
- LLM-friendly doc index — Machine-readable documentation index.
- Stripe Integration Guide — Syncing Metronome invoices with Stripe.