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Usage monitoring helps you track customer consumption of metrics and send alerts when usage exceeds your set limits. You can monitor usage in two ways:
  • Poll usage endpoints: Make API requests to retrieve current and past usage data.
  • Subscribe to webhooks: Receive automatic notifications when usage crosses a threshold.
This page covers the polling approach. When you poll usage data, you retrieve current usage at frequent intervals, derive insights, and take appropriate actions. For example, if usage exceeds a threshold, you can restrict services or send alerts to customers. You can also review past usage to understand usage patterns and set thresholds.

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Get current usage

Use a valid access token and make a GET call to the /v1/commerce/billing/customers/{external_customer_id}/current_usage?subscription_id={subscription_id} endpoint. On successful request processing, PayPal returns current usage data for the customer. 
curl -X GET 'https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v1/commerce/billing/customers/5eb02857-a71e-4ea2-bcf9-1753826282/current_usage?subscription_id=sub_01H3YT8P7Q5R3S1T2U0V4W9X8' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-H 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS-TOKEN>'
For the exhaustive list of response parameters, see API reference.

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Get past usage

Use a valid access token and make a GET call to the /v1/commerce/billing/customers/{external_customer_id}/past_usage?subscription_id={subscription_id} endpoint.
This section documents only a subset of relevant query parameters. For the exhaustive list of query parameters, see API reference.
On successful request processing, PayPal returns past usage summaries.
Past usage data is available once a billing period closes, regardless of subscription status.
curl -X GET 'https://api-m.sandbox.paypal.com/v1/commerce/billing/customers/5eb02857-a71e-4ea2-bcf9-1753826282/past_usage?subscription_id=sub_01H3YT8P7Q5R3S1T2U0V4W9X8' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-H 'Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS-TOKEN>'
For the exhaustive list of response parameters, see API reference.