Core concepts
COGS types, tiers and user mix, blended economics, growth, dashboards, and where your data lives.
The ideas behind every panel in CostPad. Once these click, the numbers tell a clear story.
COGS types
CostPad separates cost of goods sold into three kinds so your per-user math stays honest as you scale.
- Fixed (
$/mo) — flat monthly costs that don't move with usage: hosting, databases, base subscriptions. - Per-user (
$/user) — costs that grow with headcount: seats, email delivery, support tooling. - Per-unit (
$/op) — metered costs: API calls, LLM tokens, storage, anything billed by quantity. - Categories — tag each item as Infrastructure, API & Services, Tooling, Support, or Other for a color-coded breakdown.
Tiers & user mix
Tiers define what you sell; the user mix defines how many sit in each. Keeping them separate lets you re-run the same pricing against different audience shapes.
- Pricing tier — a name, a monthly price, and the usage it allows (units per user), color-coded for the charts.
- User mix — the count of users in each tier. Revenue and margin update the moment you change a number.
Blended economics
Rather than reporting your best tier, CostPad blends every tier against your user mix into one set of numbers: COGS per subscriber, fees per subscriber, net revenue, and gross margin. Payment fees and free-tier drag are included so the margin is the one you'll actually see.
Growth & scale
Project forward from churn, growth rate, and new subscribers per month to see MRR, ARR, break-even month, and payback period. The "Monthly at Scale" panel models economics across subscriber milestones with a configurable paid-to-free ratio.
Dashboards
A product can hold many dashboards. Each dashboard is a free-form grid of panels you arrange yourself — drag to move, resize from any edge. Product data (costs, tiers, mix) is shared; dashboards only own their layout.
Your data
On the desktop and web apps, your model is stored locally — in your browser or app storage. No accounts, no telemetry. The optional Cloud plan adds cross-device sync and multiple products; everything else stays on your machine.