Products
Everything you sell on tiun is modeled as a product. Every product combines a product type — what you're selling, which determines how it's taxed — with a pricing model, which determines how and when the customer is charged. There are three pricing models available today, each matching a different access pattern, with usage-based billing on the way.
You set both in the same form when you create a product. Picking a pricing model changes the fields below it — an interval, a price and an optional trial for a subscription; a single price for a one-time purchase; an interval fee and a monthly limit for time-based billing.
Subscription
One-time purchase
Time-based billing
Interval
A count plus a unit — day, week, month, or year
—
Minutes only
Amount
Price, charged at the start of each interval
Price, charged once
Interval fee, charged at the start of each interval
Spending cap
—
—
Monthly limit, per calendar month
Trial
Optional — trial length and trial amount, charged upfront
—
—
Access
Continuous while the subscription is active
Permanent, never expires
While the billing session is active
You call
tiun.checkout({ productId })
tiun.checkout({ productId })
tiun.start()
Every amount is in your account's currency. Each pricing model is described in full below.
Subscription
Subscriptions charge users on a fixed schedule. You set the interval as a count plus a unit — day, week, month, or year — so every 1 month and every 3 months are both valid. The price is charged at the start of each interval.
A trial period is optional. When you enable it you set a trial length (a count plus a unit) and a trial amount, charged upfront: enter 0 for a free trial, or anything below the subscription price for a discounted one. The full price applies from the first interval after the trial.
Subscriptions fit SaaS, membership sites, and any product where access is continuous and priced like a membership.
Subscription products integrate through tiun.checkout({ productId }). See Checkout / How it works and Subscriptions for the flow.
One-time purchase
One-time purchases charge a single price, paid once at checkout. There is one field to configure — the price — and no interval, no trial, and no renewal. Access does not expire.
One-time products fit consulting engagements, lifetime licenses, a single course or report, and any deliverable that is bought once rather than rented.
One-time products integrate through tiun.checkout({ productId }) — the same call as subscriptions. See Checkout / How it works and One-time purchases for the flow.
Time-based billing
Time-based billing charges for time spent with your content rather than a flat membership. Billing is metered in minutes — the only interval unit for this pricing model. You set the interval fee, charged at the start of each interval, and a monthly limit capping what a user can be charged in a calendar month.
Time-based products fit news, podcasts, video streaming, magazines — anywhere value tracks engagement.
Time-based products integrate through tiun.start(). See Time-based / How it works for the flow.
Currency
Every price you set — a subscription price, a one-time price, a trial amount, an interval fee, a monthly limit — is denominated in your account's currency. You choose it during onboarding, based on where your business is located, and the new-product form shows it next to each amount rather than asking again per product.
This is separate from your payout currency — the currency your revenue is paid out in — which you set in your beneficiary details. See enable payouts.
You do not set a currency per product, and you do not price the same product in several currencies. See creating a profile for where this is chosen.
Tax category
Every product is filed under a tax category when you create it — the dashboard asks this as "What's the product you are selling?" and calls your answer the product type. tiun is the Merchant of Record for your sales, so this is what determines how the product is taxed in each jurisdiction — see Tax and Compliance in the FAQ for what that means for you.
The dashboard shows the available categories with a short description, guidance on where each one ends, and examples. Pick the one your product genuinely belongs to rather than the closest-looking match.
The list is closed — it is not free text, and there is no default.
If nothing on it fits what you sell, choose Something else in the new-product form at my.tiun.business and describe your product; tiun follows up with you rather than filing it under an approximate category. Something else is a dashboard-only option. It exists in the new-product form — it is not one of the categories offered over the MCP server, so an agent cannot select it on your behalf. When no category fits, the product has to be created in the dashboard; an agent should stop and hand that step back to you rather than settling for the nearest match.
A tax category is permanent. It is fixed when the product is created and cannot be edited afterwards — not in the dashboard, and not through the MCP server. The only way to correct one is to archive the product and create a new one, and archiving cannot be undone: there is no restore. Get it right at creation.
Product IDs
Every product gets a unique product ID like p-live-pro. The ID is stable and used everywhere you reference the product: tiun.checkout(), entitlement checks, analytics correlation.
Live and sandbox are independent parallel catalogs — you create products in each environment separately, and IDs never cross over. Product IDs are prefixed by environment: p-live-... for live and p-test-... for sandbox. See Sandbox for how the two environments work.
Find a product's ID on its detail or edit page in the my.tiun.business dashboard.
Mix and match
A single tiun account can include multiple pricing models at once — for example a subscription for your core SaaS, a one-time purchase for a lifetime license, and a time-based offering for premium media. Each product is configured and called independently.
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