The Molten Stack
Insights on AI billing, pricing strategies, and building AI-powered products. From the team at Lava.
What Is an AI Gateway? A Guide for Developers
An AI gateway is a proxy between your app and AI providers like OpenAI and Anthropic. Learn why you need one, how they work, and what to look for.
Mitchell Jones
The Best AI Tools to Use with Lava Spend Keys (February 2026)
A practical guide to the best AI coding assistants, chat interfaces, agent frameworks, and automation tools you can use with a single Lava spend key.
Mitchell JonesAll Posts
16 posts
Pricing AI Agents: 5 Models for Charging for Autonomous AI
AI agents are unpredictable by nature. Compare per-task, per-action, outcome-based, time-based, and credit-based pricing to find the right fit.
Mitchell Jones
The 5 Best AI Gateways (February 2026)
Compare Lava, Portkey, LiteLLM, Helicone, and OpenRouter. A practical breakdown of features, pricing, and which AI gateway fits your stack.
Mitchell Jones
The 5 Best AI Billing Platforms (February 2026)
Compare Lava, Stripe, Orb, Metronome, Autumn, and Flowglad for AI billing. Real-time enforcement, pricing, and which platform fits your needs.
Mitchell JonesHow to Bill Your Users for AI: A Guide for Platform Builders
You pay per-token to AI providers and need to pass those costs to your users. Here is what it takes to build platform billing for AI.
Mitchell JonesThe 5 Best AI Cost Tracking Tools (February 2026)
Compare Lava, Helicone, LangSmith, Portkey, and Keywords AI for tracking LLM costs. Features, pricing, and which tool fits your workflow.
Mitchell Jones
Outcome-Based Pricing for AI: When It Works and When It Doesn't
Outcome-based pricing sounds perfect in theory. Here is an honest look at when it works, when it falls apart, and what to do instead.
Mitchell Jones
The 5 Best AI Spend Management Tools (February 2026)
Compare Lava, Helicone, Vantage, Portkey, and CloudZero for managing AI spend. Budget controls, alerts, and which tool prevents cost overruns.
Mitchell JonesCredit-Based Pricing for AI Products: A Practical Guide
Prepaid credits are becoming the default pricing model for AI products. How they work, who uses them, and how to implement them right.
Mitchell JonesUsage-Based Billing for AI: What You Actually Need to Build
A practical guide to the four systems behind usage-based billing for AI products: metering, rating, collection, and visibility.
Mitchell JonesThe Hidden Costs of Running AI in Production
LLM API calls are just the tip of the iceberg. A practical breakdown of the real costs behind AI products, from token waste to billing infrastructure.
Mitchell Jones
AI Pricing Models: Which One Fits Your Startup?
Compare subscription, usage-based, outcome-based, and hybrid pricing models to find the right fit for your AI product.
Mitchell Jones
The Startup Founder's Guide to Smarter Pricing
Practical pricing principles for AI and SaaS founders, from value-based pricing to tier design and iterative experimentation.
Mitchell JonesChoosing the Right LLM: A Guide to GPT, Claude, Gemini, and More
A practical breakdown of GPT, Claude, Gemini, Llama, and Mistral to help you pick the best large language model for your use case.
Mitchell JonesStay in the loop
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