A method, system, and computer program product that provide for more uniform pricing of utility computing resources, such as a computing grid. One aspect of the present invention is a method of calculating costs in a utility computing environment comprising receiving a request to process a work unit from a requester, generating at least one performance metric associated with the work unit, and debiting the requestor for processing the work unit based at least in part on the performance metric. The performance metric in this embodiment is related to an amount of resources required to process the work unit under predetermined conditions.