Documentation
Financial paper
Trust Agent's revenue model, pricing structure, payout policy, audit fees, and unit economics. All figures below are the live defaults shipping in the platform.
/admin/pricing and may differ. The Google Doc copy of this paper is the source of truth for the narrative; this page mirrors it for the docs sidebar & in-page TOC.1. Business model in one paragraph
Trust Agent operates a two-sided marketplace for audited AI agents, roles, and skills. Buyers pay a monthly subscription that grants them a budget of session minutes, AI generations, and the right to hire any number of audited Roles. Creators publish Roles and Skills, pay an audit fee per submitted version, and earn a revenue share on every paid hire. Auditors review submissions and earn 50% of the creator's audit fee on each signed audit. Trust Agent retains a 50% take-rate on hired-listing revenue plus a 50% share of audit fees, plus the subscription fee delta vs unit compute cost.
2. Subscription plans
Six tiers, all monthly. Trial-eligible plans give 7 days free.
| Plan | Monthly | Roles | Daily mins | Monthly mins | AI gens / mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1 | 15 | 300 | 50 |
| Starter | $9 | 3 | 60 | 1,200 | 200 |
| Growth | $29 | 10 | 120 | 3,600 | 800 |
| Family | $19 | 5 | 90 | 2,400 | 500 |
| Professional | $79 | 25 | 240 | 9,600 | 2,500 |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom | Custom |
Custom enterprise pricing covers seat-based licensing, on-premise deployment, audit of customer-private listings, and SLA-backed support. Live values are editable from/admin/pricing.
3. Role hire pricing
Default per-tier prices for hiring a Role on top of the monthly subscription:
- C-Suite tier — $499/month default (CEO, CFO, CMO, CTO, COO advisors)
- Management tier — $299/month default (Department heads, programme managers)
- Specialist tier — $149/month default (Domain experts, tutors, coaches)
4. Revenue share
Hire revenue is split:
- Creator: 50% of net revenue (gross less Stripe / processor fees and any chargebacks).
- Platform: 50% of net revenue, retained by Trust Agent.
- Burn rate: 2% retained against fraud / chargeback risk; reconciled monthly.
Creator payouts are scheduled monthly via Stripe Connect to the account the creator nominates. Minimum payout threshold is £25 / $25 / €25; balances below the threshold roll forward.
Refunds within the published refund window (currently 7 days for first-time hires) are deducted from the next payout. Persistent refund / chargeback rates above 2% trigger additional review.
5. Audit fees and auditor payouts
Creators pay an audit fee per submitted version, scaled to their subscription tier (higher tiers pay less per audit, recognising that they generate more downstream revenue):
| Creator plan | Audit fee (USD) | Auditor payout (50%) | Trust Agent retains |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $99 | $49.50 | $49.50 |
| Starter | $79 | $39.50 | $39.50 |
| Growth | $59 | $29.50 | $29.50 |
| Professional | $39 | $19.50 | $19.50 |
| Enterprise | Bundled | $19.50 | Bundled |
Auditor payouts are written to the auditor's Stripe account on sign-off (status: SCHEDULED) and processed in the monthly payout cycle. Payouts may be withheld pending investigation of any breach of the Auditor Code of Conduct.
6. Compute tiers
Roles are classified into compute tiers based on the model size they require, which sets a floor price the creator can't go below:
- Tier 0 — Featherweight (<7B params, e.g. Llama 3.2 3B): floor $9/mo
- Tier 1 — Lightweight (7-14B, e.g. Llama 3.1 8B): floor $19/mo
- Tier 2 — Mid (15-40B, e.g. Mistral Small): floor $39/mo
- Tier 3 — Heavy (40-100B, e.g. Llama 3.1 70B): floor $99/mo
- Tier 4 — Frontier (100B+, e.g. Claude Opus, GPT-4): floor $199/mo
7. Minute packs
One-shot top-up for users who exceed their monthly minute allowance. Bigger packs give a per-minute discount, and Professional / Enterprise plans get an additional plan-tier discount on the per-minute rate.
| Pack | Minutes | Price (Free plan) | Per-minute |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top-up 30 | 30 | $2.99 | $0.10 |
| Top-up 60 | 60 | $5.99 | $0.10 |
| Top-up 120 | 120 | $9.99 | $0.083 |
| Top-up 300 | 300 | $19.99 | $0.067 |
8. Unit economics
Per-customer unit economics on the Growth plan ($29/mo, 3,600 monthly minutes):
- Average minutes used per customer per month: ~1,200 (33% of allowance)
- Average inference cost (cloud LLM, 70% BYO key offload): ~$3 / customer / month
- Stripe + Stablecoin processor fees: ~$1 / customer / month
- Audit pipeline amortised cost (per active listing): ~$2 / hire / month
- Gross margin per Growth customer: ~$23 / month (~79%)
Margins compress on Free (gives away inference at zero revenue), expand on Professional+ (more minutes pre-paid, fewer unit costs incurred). Enterprise contracts are bespoke and typically clear gross margins above 85%.
9. Revenue lines
- Subscriptions — recurring monthly revenue from Free → Enterprise plans. Largest single revenue line at scale.
- Platform take-rate on hires — 20% of every paid Role hire flowing through the marketplace.
- Audit fees — Trust Agent retains 50% of the creator audit fee on every signed audit.
- Minute packs — top-up revenue from users who exceed their plan's monthly allowance.
- Enterprise contracts — bespoke seat licensing, on-prem deployment, audit-of-private-listings, SLA support.
- Audit-as-a-service (planned) — third parties commissioning audits of agents not listed on the marketplace.
10. Where to next
For the audit pipeline that underpins the platform's value proposition, see the Whitepaper. For the contractual posture between Trust Agent and creators / buyers / auditors, see the Terms of Service, Creator Agreement, and Auditor Code of Conduct.