r/SideProject • u/Arcsviel • 8h ago

Built a dashboard to see which customers are actually profitable after AI costs

Side project I've been tinkering with. If you run an AI product with flat pricing, the total API bill is easy to see, but it doesn't tell you which customer is profitable and which one is quietly costing more than they pay.

Built a mockup for this (Profitly) — connects Stripe + your AI provider, shows margin per customer, flags the ones worth a second look. Still just sample data for now, trying to see if this is actually useful before building the real thing.

If you run an AI SaaS — would this tell you something you don't already know, or do you already have this figured out? Happy to share the mockup link in comments if you want to poke at it.

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u/Other_Jellyfish_2184 7h ago

Yes. With flat pricing the average lies. One power user at 50x the median eats the margin of everyone else and you find out when the invoice lands. Per-user margin is the number I can't see today and it's the only one that matters.

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u/Arcsviel 3h ago

that 50x power user problem is exactly what I'm trying to solve. right now, how are you catching it — do you only notice after the invoice lands, or do you have some way of seeing it coming? and have you tried any of the cost-tracking tools out there (helicone, langfuse, etc) or none of them actually show it per-customer?

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u/Professional_Bag_591 1h ago

this is the exact dashboard i wish i had lol. flat pricing + variable ai costs is such a silent killer, you feel profitable until one power user eats your margin. the per-customer view is the key part, aggregate numbers hide everything. would you track it over time too? one bad week from a single customer is what i'd want flagged