1 min lesson
Showback, chargeback and unit economics
Choose two examples from the table in "Showback, chargeback and unit economics" and explain what each teaches you to do.
Step 1 of 2
Showback, chargeback and unit economicsfrom totals to behavior change
- Model
- Showback
- What it does
- Shows each team its spend; no money moves
- When it's the right call
- Early - build awareness and trust before you bill anyone
- Model
- Chargeback
- What it does
- Bills the spend to the team's budget
- When it's the right call
- When teams have budgets and the data is trusted enough to defend
- Model
- Unit economics
- What it does
- Cost per meaningful unit (per DAU, per 1K completions)
- When it's the right call
- When you need to reason about whether a feature is even affordable
| Model | What it does | When it's the right call |
|---|---|---|
| Showback | Shows each team its spend; no money moves | Early - build awareness and trust before you bill anyone |
| Chargeback | Bills the spend to the team's budget | When teams have budgets and the data is trusted enough to defend |
| Unit economics | Cost per meaningful unit (per DAU, per 1K completions) | When you need to reason about whether a feature is even affordable |
Most orgs earn the right to chargeback by running clean showback first.
Unit economics is the framing that matters most for Cursor. A raw total tells you the bill grew. Cost per 1,000 completions tells you whether it grew because you have more users (good) or because the inference path got more wasteful (a problem to chase). That ratio is the language a cost-aware infra engineer speaks.