⚠ OpenAI removed hard spend caps. We brought them back.

Stop eating your clients' AI bills. Meter them.

ClientMeter is the drop-in metering layer for n8n & Make agencies: see every client's LLM spend in real time, enforce hard budget caps, and rebill usage with your markup — in one click.

✓ You're on the list. We'll email you when the private beta opens — founding agencies go first.

No spam. Founding agencies get 50% off, for life.

clientmeter · live attribution
ClientWorkflowsSpend / moBudget
proxy latency +11ms · fail-open your margin this month $1,284.10
■ HARD CAP HIT Voicedesk AI paused at $250.00 — 17 requests blocked, client notified.
heard every week on r/n8n & the forums

Running AI workflows for clients without metering is how margins die.

"Our OpenAI bill went from $300 to $1,200 after a model switch. Nobody noticed until the invoice."

— agency owner, automation community

"Per execution? Per workflow? Per CLIENT? Complete blindness."

— n8n agency operator, 3am post

"A retry loop burned $800 in tokens overnight, doing literally nothing useful. There was no emergency brake."

— AI agency team, post-mortem thread

Paraphrased from public posts across r/n8n, r/automation, the n8n forum and the Make community, 2025–2026.

how it works

One base URL. Every cent attributed.

01 /

Swap your base URL

Point your n8n or Make credentials at your ClientMeter key — one per client, or per workflow. No nodes to add, no workflow changes, no SDK.

02 /

Watch costs split live

Every token is metered and attributed: per client, per workflow, per model, per day. Margins computed against each client's retainer.

03 /

Cap it. Bill it.

Set hard budget caps that actually stop the spend. Then send a white-label usage invoice with your markup — one click, via Stripe.

// in your n8n credential — the entire integration

https://api.openai.com/v1
 https://gw.clientmeter.app/v1/ck_acme_robotics_7f3a

# fail-open by design: if ClientMeter is ever down, requests pass straight through. Your workflows never break.

what you get

Trackers tell you what you spent.
ClientMeter stops the spend — and bills it back.

NOBODY ELSE HAS THIS [caps]

Hard caps per client

Monthly budget per client or workflow. Alerts at 50/80/100% — and at the cap, requests actually stop (or require your approval). The emergency brake OpenAI removed.

NOBODY ELSE HAS THIS [invoice]

White-label rebilling

One-click usage invoices with your logo and your markup — % or flat. Stripe Connect handles payment. Your client never sees an OpenAI invoice again.

[attribution]

Per-client cost, live

Real-time spend per client, workflow, model and day. Margin per client when you log the retainer. The dashboard that replaces your Google Sheet.

[providers]

Every provider, one meter

OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, OpenRouter — one proxy, one dashboard. Model pricing tables auto-sync, so you never maintain a rate sheet again.

[no-proxy mode]

Logging-only mode

Don't want a proxy on the critical path? Drop our n8n community node or Make module instead — async logging, full attribution, zero latency added.

[reports]

Client-facing reports

A shareable, read-only usage page with your branding: "here's what your AI consumed this month." Retention tool for you, transparency for them.

the part your accountant will love

Invoices your clients can read.
Margin you keep.

  • Markup, your way — percentage or flat fee per client, applied automatically to metered usage.
  • Stripe Connect built in — invoices are sent, paid and reconciled without leaving the dashboard.
  • PDF + hosted link — line items per workflow, so "what am I paying for?" emails stop coming.
INVOICE
AI usage · May 2026
Acme Robotics Ltd.
№ 2026-0512
Line itemTokensAmount
Lead-enrichment workflow — GPT-5.241.2M$236.80
Support triage agent — Claude Opus 4.818.7M$402.15
Voice transcripts — Gemini Flash96.4M$118.45
Embeddings + search210.1M$135.20
Total due$1,204.74
Your margin (35%, never shown to client)$312.40
Payment via Stripe · Net 14powered by ClientMeter — white-label
an honest comparison

Where ClientMeter sits.

Google Sheets
+ templates
Dev observability
(Helicone, Langfuse)
Cost trackers
(Administrate…)
ClientMeter
Per-client cost attributionmanualDIY tags✓ live
Built for n8n & Make operatorskind of— devs onlyn8n only✓ both
Hard caps that block at budget
White-label usage invoices + markup✓ Stripe
Maintenance required from youweeklysetup + codelownone

// Honest note: if you're a developer who wants traces and evals, Helicone and Langfuse are excellent. ClientMeter is for agencies who want margins, caps and invoices.

faq

Fair questions.

Does the proxy add latency or risk to my client workflows?+

The gateway runs on edge infrastructure (~10–15ms added) and is fail-open by design: if ClientMeter is ever unreachable, your requests pass straight through to the provider. You'd lose a few log lines — never a client workflow. If you'd rather skip the proxy entirely, the logging-only n8n node and Make module do attribution with zero latency added.

Do I have to modify my workflows?+

No. You change the base URL in your n8n/Make credentials — once per client key — and you're metered. Existing workflows, agents and nodes stay exactly as they are.

Which providers are supported?+

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini and OpenRouter at launch — which covers OpenRouter's 400+ models. Pricing tables sync automatically from maintained open-source rate data, so new models are priced the day they ship.

How does rebilling actually work?+

You connect Stripe (Connect), set a markup per client — say 30% or a flat platform fee — and at month end ClientMeter drafts a white-label invoice from metered usage, line-itemed per workflow. You review, click send, get paid. Your client sees your brand, not ours.

What will it cost?+

Free tier for one client (logging only). Paid plans land in the $29–79/month range depending on clients and features — under what one hour of unbilled API overage costs you. Founding agencies from this waitlist get 50% off, for life.

Who's building this?+

A solo full-stack developer, building in public, after watching agency after agency track five-figure AI spend in spreadsheets. The beta is being shaped by interviews with the operators who live this problem — if that's you, join the list and reply to the first email.

private beta · Q3 2026

Know your numbers.
Cap the chaos. Keep the margin.

Join the waitlist — founding agencies get early access, direct input on the roadmap, and 50% off for life.

✓ You're on the list. We'll email you when the private beta opens — founding agencies go first.

No spam, ever — just the beta invite and a couple of build updates.