Autumn: Stripe Simplified for AI Startups

This podcast describes Autumn, a new service built on Stripe that simplifies pricing, metering, and usage control for AI startups. It addresses the complexity of Stripe for AI companies by streamlining subscription management, feature gating, and usage tracking with just three API calls, eliminating the need for extensive backend logic and webhooks. Autumn offers an open-source solution, enabling companies to easily model pricing plans, manage billing, track usage events, and verify feature access in real-time. The service is designed to make pricing changes painless, a common challenge for AI companies, and is already being used by Y Combinator startups processing millions.

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Frequently Access Questions

What problem does Autumn solve for AI startups?

Autumn addresses the significant complexity and time commitment involved in setting up and managing subscription and usage-based billing with Stripe, particularly for AI companies. Stripe, while powerful, is described as “low level” and requires extensive backend logic, webhooks, and database management to handle subscriptions, feature gating, and usage tracking. This becomes especially problematic for AI companies that frequently change their pricing models, as it often necessitates a complete re-architecture of their billing system.

How does Autumn simplify pricing and billing for AI startups?

Autumn acts as a dedicated database for a customer’s subscription state, feature permissions, and usage tracking, sitting as a layer on top of Stripe. It streamlines the entire process into just three API calls: /checkout for managing all billing events (new subscriptions, upgrades, downgrades, add-ons), /track for recording customer usage events, and /check for real-time feature access based on usage limits or paywalls. This significantly reduces the need for complex backend logic, webhooks, and manual database management, making it 10x easier to set up and manage free/paid plans.

What are the key features and functionalities offered by Autumn?

Autumn provides a comprehensive set of features for AI startups to manage their monetization:

• Pricing Plan Modeling: Allows users to define pricing, feature limits, usage-billing, and credits through a dashboard or CLI.
• Simplified Billing: The /checkout API handles all subscription-related actions.
• Usage Tracking: The /track API records customer usage events.
• Feature Access Control: The /check API provides real-time yes/no answers on whether a customer can access a feature.
• Easy Pricing Changes: Updates to pricing models can be done by simply updating the dashboard or configuration file, with built-in migration capabilities.
• Custom Enterprise Pricing: Supports setting custom pricing for enterprise customers.
• Open Source: The platform is open-source, promoting transparency and community contribution.

What kind of AI companies is Autumn best suited for?

Autumn is specifically designed for early-stage teams building LLM (Large Language Model) and image applications. Its focus on simplifying AI pricing, metering, and usage control makes it ideal for startups that need to quickly implement and iterate on their monetization strategies without getting bogged down by the intricacies of Stripe’s lower-level APIs.

Is Autumn open source and widely used?

Yes, Autumn is open source, with its repository available on GitHub. It is actively used in production by hundreds of developers, including YC (Y Combinator) startups that are processing millions of transactions, indicating a strong adoption and proven reliability within the developer community.

What is the background of the Autumn founders?

The founders, Ayush Rodrigues and John, were part of YC’s F24 batch, initially building software for banks before pivoting to Autumn the day before their demo day. Ayush previously worked as a PM at checkout.com (a Stripe competitor), while John studied computer engineering at Imperial College London and has six years of experience building dev tools. They are currently raising with the YC S25 batch, demonstrating continued backing from Y Combinator.

How does Autumn handle changes in pricing models?

Autumn significantly simplifies pricing model changes, which are common for AI companies. Instead of ripping out and replacing extensive code, product/price IDs, and database structures, users simply update their pricing in the Autumn dashboard or configuration file. Autumn then handles the necessary migrations for customers, making the process much less painful and time-consuming.

How easy is it to get started with Autumn?

Users have reported that Autumn dramatically reduces the time and effort required to set up Stripe integration. One user mentioned that Autumn made the process “a breeze,” saving the usual “minimum of 7 days to set up securely” with raw Stripe. Another user, with no prior Stripe experience, was able to set up billing in approximately 45 minutes with personalized onboarding from the founders, highlighting the ease of use, effectiveness of their npm package, and ergonomic design. Autumn also offers a free tier for “builders” to try it out.

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