Usage-based companies should offer in-app consumption dashboards to empower customers to monitor their usage and control spending. Key elements of a great usage dashboard include instant usage feedback, visualization of consumption, data granularity, allowing customers to set thresholds, enabling historical data access, highlighting tier limits, offering tips to reduce usage, forecasting future usage, and identifying trends. Building an effective usage dashboard requires real-time processing of usage data, visualization of usage, implementation of thresholds, and notifications. OpenMeter offers a consumer portal to streamline the creation of exceptional usage dashboards within applications.