Define what each customer can access and how much they can consume. Kaiten’s server enforces the limits on every usage report, and every crossing becomes an event your billing and sales tools can act on.
The mapping between 'what the customer pays for' and 'what they can actually do' is maintained by a spreadsheet, a Confluence page, or if statements buried in application code.
Revenue leakage
Expired trials still access premium features
Quota violations
No one knows limits are exceeded until the monthly invoice
Engineering overhead
Every new plan requires code changes and a deployment
Sales friction
'Let me check with Engineering' — every custom deal waits on a ticket
Four types. One grant model.
Boolean entitlements gate a feature. Numeric entitlements carry quotas and limits, and AI credits are a type of their own. Config entitlements carry a JSON value. Each license grant sets its own limit: hard, soft with an overage allowance, or unlimited.
Track consumption without building a data pipeline.
Your services report each instance’s usage to the Kaiten API — your own, if you self-host — which folds each report in as it arrives, with the method the entitlement declares — SUM, COUNT, MAX, MIN, AVERAGE or LATEST — over windows from an hour to a year.
Know the second a customer hits their limit.
When usage crosses the warning threshold, reaches the limit or goes past it, Kaiten emits one typed event per crossing, delivered at least once — a signed webhook on Kaiten Cloud, the event stream when you self-host. Point it at a Slack alert, an upsell email, an instance suspension or an overage charge.
Every usage report. Every limit decision. Recorded.
Every accepted or refused usage report commits its event with the change, and the audit trail is built from that event stream. Query it for debugging, support or your own compliance work.
One license change. Enforced on the next call.
Entitlements are granted by licenses. Move a customer's instance to another license version — an upgrade, a downgrade, a custom deal — and the next usage report or flag evaluation reads the new grants.
# Report one API call for the acme-production instance
curl -X POST https://app.kaiten.sh/api/instances/acme-production/entitlements/api-calls/usage \
-H "Authorization: Bearer ksh_your_token" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{ "value": { "type": "number", "value": 1 }, "behavior": "append" }'
# 200: the report is counted in the current window
→ {
"entitlementSlug": "api-calls",
"value": { "type": "number", "value": 67434 },
"limit": { "type": "number", "value": 100000 },
"currentPeriodStart": "2026-10-01T00:00:00Z",
"currentPeriodEnd": "2026-11-01T00:00:00Z"
}
# 409: the report would cross the license limit — refused and recorded, usage unchanged# Report one API call for the acme-production instance
curl -X POST https://app.kaiten.sh/api/instances/acme-production/entitlements/api-calls/usage \
-H "Authorization: Bearer ksh_your_token" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{ "value": { "type": "number", "value": 1 }, "behavior": "append" }'
# 200: the report is counted in the current window
→ {
"entitlementSlug": "api-calls",
"value": { "type": "number", "value": 67434 },
"limit": { "type": "number", "value": 100000 },
"currentPeriodStart": "2026-10-01T00:00:00Z",
"currentPeriodEnd": "2026-11-01T00:00:00Z"
}
# 409: the report would cross the license limit — refused and recorded, usage unchangedStoring a limit is easy. Everything around it is where in-house entitlement code grows: windows, overage, signals and an audit trail that has to agree with the server.
| Capability | Kaiten | Built in-house |
|---|---|---|
| Hard, soft and unlimited limits | Set per grant; 409 past the allowance | A branch per plan, in every check |
| Usage windows | Hourly to yearly, calendar- or license-aligned, gap-free | A scheduled job, and the timezone questions that come with it |
| Refused usage | Refused, recorded, stored usage untouched | Whatever each call site decided |
| Early warnings | Warning, reached and exceeded, emitted once per crossing | Deduplication you write and maintain |
| Flags that read the quota | Built into targeting rules | Another join between two systems |
| Audit trail | Every accepted and refused report recorded and attributed | Logs, if someone added them |
| Who maintains it | We do, and Kaiten’s own create path is built on it | Your team, for as long as the product lives |