Why &AI Uses a Hybrid, Credit-Based Pricing Model

What happens when 14 people need access to a patent AI tool and the firm only bought 3 seats? The answer, at most organizations, is that 11 people go without.

&AI hears some version of it almost every week — from AmLaw 100 partners, from boutique litigation firms, from in-house teams managing sprawling portfolios. The common thread: when pricing is tied only to seats, patent teams end up rationing access to tools that should be available to everyone working the case.

There's nothing wrong with subscriptions. They give teams a predictable baseline and a clear budget. But in AI, where every prompt, workflow, and analysis carries real marginal cost, a subscription alone doesn't tell the full story. Pure seat-based pricing forces vendors to price in their heaviest users, which means many customers end up overpaying to subsidize usage they never create.

&AI uses a hybrid model: a subscription that includes credits, with the flexibility to scale usage up or down as the work demands. The subscription gives teams a predictable cost floor. The credits make sure that cost tracks the actual work being done.

Patent work is inherently variable

Anyone who's spent time in patent litigation knows the rhythm. One week the team is running a dozen prior art searches for a new case. The next week everyone's heads-down in depositions and the platform sits idle. The week after that, a new matter comes in and usage spikes again.

A flat subscription charges the same regardless of whether a team is in a sprint or a lull. When the platform delivers value, teams pay for it. When it doesn't, the credits roll over and the value carries forward.

Teams need flexible access

Think about who actually touches patent analysis on a given case. A partner reviews an invalidity chart before a filing. An associate lives in the platform daily during claim chart generation. An analyst runs search after search in focused bursts. A technical advisor checks in periodically.

All of them need access. None of them use the tool the same way. When pricing is purely per-seat, firms are either buying licenses for everyone — most of which sit underused — or picking winners and losers on who gets access. Neither option is great.

With &AI, a seat subscription funds the credit pool, but the credits themselves are available to anyone in the organization. The partner who logs in once a month and the associate who's in there every day both draw from the same pool.

Case complexity should drive cost

A single patent with a couple independent claims is a fundamentally different analysis than a complex multi-patent case, each with dozens of claims. Further, analysis breadth and depth may change depending on the case stage and lifecycle. Credits scale with the actual work performed.

&AI offers Lite and Max analysis modes — Lite runs a focused analysis, ideal for exploratory work, business development, or early case evaluation, while Max runs the strongest model. Either can be paired with the full pipeline: complete patent family, prosecution history, litigation history, prior PTAB proceedings. Different depths, different costs, transparent at every step.

Client pass-through becomes precise

Every action in &AI has a visible credit cost, and the Usage dashboard breaks down exactly what was spent, on which project, by whom. Pass-through to clients is precise and defensible — no allocating a flat software fee across matters, no guesswork.

Why this matters

When pricing locks teams into a fixed number of seats, there's a natural incentive to limit access. But limiting access means the tool never fully integrates into a team's workflow. It stays a side experiment that three people use instead of becoming infrastructure that the whole practice relies on.

&AI is designed to be infrastructure. The entire team — from the analyst running the first search to the partner reviewing the final chart — should have the tool at their fingertips. The hybrid model makes that possible: a seat subscription gives the team a home on the platform, the credits are shared across the organization, and unused credits roll over so value is never lost.

The &AI pricing model justifies everyone on the team to get access. No renegotiating contracts, no guessing how many seats to budget for next quarter. Value is retained.

Start a free 7-day trial for the whole team with included credits. Create an account to get started right now.