Welcome back to Good Better Best.

Each week, we break down real pricing, packaging, and product moves from SaaS and AI leaders and share the ideas worth stealing.

This week we’re breaking down how companies are using credit flexibility to drive the behaviors they want our of customers. Credits are way more flexible than traditional SaaS licenses, and offer many ways to incentive behavior without touching list prices. We’ll unpack 3 examples to show how to do it.

Before we get there, two updates from the PricingSaaS team:

Let’s get to it.

This week we observed 270+ changes. The highlights:

Check out more updates on PricingSaaS →

One of my favorite trends in AI monetization right now is how companies are getting creative with credits to encourage specific customer behaviors.

All three are using credit flexibility to drive behaviors without touching pricing.

It raises an interesting question for companies offering a credit model: how can you use credit flexibility to drive the behaviors you want?

More on each example below.

One of the hardest parts of building a credit model is deciding how flexible the wallet should be.

In our work tracking these models, we’ve found that companies tend to get more flexible over time. But rollover and top-ups are usually treated as policies that apply across the product.

Runway caught my attention because it puts flexibility directly into the upgrade path.

The Pro plan allows customers to top up credits, while Max allows unused monthly credits to roll over for one month, giving customers another reason to consider Max beyond the size of the credit allotment.

Think about someone making videos for client projects. Their usage might be heavy one month and light the next. A bigger monthly allowance only solves part of that problem. Having more time to use what they paid for could matter just as much.

I think that’s what makes this strategy interesting. Runway takes a frustrating part of credit pricing and turns relief from it into an upgrade benefit. Rollover won’t justify the higher price for everyone. But for heavy users with uneven workloads, it could make the top plan easier to commit to.

Framer uses credits to encourage a different behavior: choosing annual billing.

On its yearly plans, Basic and Pro offer 2× credits in the first month. Switch the billing toggle to monthly, and the bonus disappears.

The exchange is easy to understand. Commit to a year, and Framer gives you more room to use its AI features at the start.

I like this because it gives Framer another way to make annual billing attractive. Alongside the lower annual price, customers get extra capacity when they’re getting started. For someone building a site, that could be useful. The first month may involve more experimentation, revisions, and setup than the months that follow.

But there’s one thing I think could make the offer stronger: rollovers.

If the bonus credits carried forward, customers could access them later in their contract. That would make the reward useful even if their biggest project didn’t happen immediately.

Replit takes the same idea in another direction.

As I covered in Free Mode and the Future of Freemium, Free Mode gives paying customers everyday chat on a cheaper model without spending their paid credits.

Lovable’s daily credit grants serve a similar purpose: give customers a reason to keep coming back and using the product.

This matters because meters can change how people behave. If every interaction uses part of a limited balance, customers have a reason to pause before asking another question or trying another idea. That hesitation can get in the way of building a habit.

For Replit and Lovable, offering free access allows new users to test what’s possible without burning credits, which, should result in deeper product usage long-term.

With a traditional SaaS license, encouraging customers to upgrade or commit to a year often means changing the price or moving features between plans. Credits give you more ways to make an offer attractive: change when customers receive them, how long they can keep them, or which activities spend them.

Runway, Framer, and Replit each use that flexibility to encourage a different behavior. And they can do it without touching the actual price points.

If you’re offering a credit model, start with the behavior you want to incentivize. Do you want customers to upgrade? Commit to an annual plan? Use the product more often?

Then work backward to determine if there’s a way to use your credit model to make that behavior more attractive.

Thanks for reading! If you’re working on AI monetization and want to learn more about how we help, book time here.

Until next time,

Rob