Self-collected dataset · Validated

The State of SaaS Pricing 2026

Why this project exists, what the data says, and whether the widely-cited industry numbers hold up.

191 companies analysed (of 198 attempted · 96%) · 11 categories · snapshot August 2026 · Ajay Karthick

1. Why this project exists

In 2026, two questions dominate SaaS pricing: is per-seat pricing dying, and how should companies charge for AI? The industry answers with confident statistics. A widely-cited one, from an ICONIQ Capital survey published by BCG, is that 68% of vendors charge separately for AI or restrict it to their premium tiers.

The trouble is these estimates measure different things and don't agree — and the highest, most-repeated figures come from aggregator pages with no stated method. Line up the two sources that do name a method:

Source	What it measures	Figure
Kyle Poyar, Growth Unhinged (survey, n=230)	Actually meter AI via credits	~29%
ICONIQ Capital (via BCG, 2025)	Charge separately for AI, or restrict it to premium tiers	68%

That is more than a 2× gap between two named sources, driven mostly by definition — one counts a live AI usage meter, the other also counts “AI is only in the premium tier.” And unattributed aggregator pages push the figure as high as 73% with no stated method at all. No single number is settled, and there was no public dataset to check them against.

So the project's purpose was not to produce charts. It was to build the missing evidence: go to 200 live pricing pages, record what they actually say, and publish a dataset anyone can open and argue with.

2. What we did

Sample: 198 recognisable B2B SaaS companies, 18 in each of 11 categories, so no segment dominates the result.
Collection: each company's live pricing page was read and converted into 23 structured fields — pricing model, tiers, entry price, how AI is charged, where SSO sits. Prices normalised to USD per month.
Recovery: pages that block scrapers or render prices in JavaScript (Salesforce, OpenAI, Adobe, Canva) were recovered with a real browser and manual verification, lifting coverage from 80% to 96%.
Result: 191 usable companies. The 7 unresolved are explained, not hidden: 3 were acquired mid-study (Coda, Airbase, Drift); 4 publish no public price at all (Workday, Namely, Iterable, Paylocity).

3. What we found

42%

charge primarily per seat

34%

charge extra for AI

69%

gate SSO to the top tier

82%

show a real public price

57%

offer a free tier

87%

mention AI on the page

Finding 1 — Per-seat pricing is now a minority, but it is not dying

Primary pricing model	Companies	Share
Per-seat	81	42%
Hybrid (seat + usage)	44	23%
Contact-only (no public price)	25	13%
Usage-based	23	12%
Flat-rate	18	9%

Per-seat is still the largest single model, but a majority of companies now price some other way. The detail that matters: the second-place model is hybrid, not pure usage. The market is not swapping seats for meters — it is layering usage charges on top of a seat-based base. More companies hide their price entirely (25) than run a pure meter (23).

Finding 2 — AI is mentioned everywhere but charged for rarely

How AI is charged (of the 166 that mention it)	Companies	Share
Bundled — included in the plan you already buy	94	57%
Metered AI credits / tokens	35	21%
Only in a more expensive tier	17	10%
Sold as a separate add-on	12	7%
Unclear from the page	8	5%

87% mention AI, but only 34% of all 191 companies actually charge extra for it. Bundling (94 companies) outweighs all three paid mechanisms combined (64). And among those who do charge, metering is the clear preference — selling AI as a separate add-on is the least common approach of all.

Finding 3 — The “SSO tax” is standard practice

Single sign-on is a basic security feature. Of the 124 companies that offer it, 86 (69%) require their top paid tier or an Enterprise contract to get it.

Cheapest plan that unlocks SSO	Companies	Share
Enterprise / contact-sales tier	57	46%
Top paid tier	29	23%
Mid tier	25	20%
All tiers	12	10%

This is a floor, not a ceiling. When a page doesn't mention SSO we record it as “not mentioned” rather than assuming it's gated — so the true rate can only be higher than 69%, never lower.

Finding 4 — Benchmarks that didn't previously exist

Median company offers 4 tiers, discounts annual billing by 20%, and starts paid plans at a median of $10 per month. 82% publish a real price, yet 85% still keep a “contact sales” tier above it.

4. Are the other reports wrong?

This needs a precise answer, not a slogan.

We are not claiming the published reports are lying. We are claiming three specific things:

Credible sources disagree, and measure different things. A named 230-company survey (Growth Unhinged) puts it near 29%; an ICONIQ survey via BCG puts it at 68%; unattributed aggregator pages cite 73%. So no single figure is settled fact.
The high figures are not reproducible from public pricing pages. We checked 191 of them. If two-thirds of vendors charged extra for AI, it would be visible on those pages. It is not.
The gap is largely definitional. “Charges separately for AI” can mean “has any paid AI option anywhere in the company’s catalogue” — which is easy to satisfy. We measured something stricter and more useful to a buyer: “the pricing page shows you paying more because of AI.” Both numbers can be true; they answer different questions.

Supporting evidence that our number is the credible one: our measurement of 34% lands right next to the one rigorous independent survey — Kyle Poyar’s 230-company survey, in which ~29% actually meter AI — and at roughly half the self-reported 68% from ICONIQ/BCG. The number you can check tracks the independent survey; the higher figures rely on self-report and looser definitions.

5. Our answer

34%

On a checkable sample of 191 leading SaaS companies, roughly one in three charges extra for AI — not the widely-cited three in four. The most common decision in the market today is to bundle AI into the existing subscription and compete on it, rather than sell it as a separate line item.

And on the other headline question: per-seat pricing is not dying — it is becoming the base layer of a hybrid model. Meanwhile 69% of vendors gate basic security behind their most expensive plan.

What this is useful for. A product manager deciding whether to charge for a new AI feature now has a market answer: most competitors don't, and charging makes you the outlier. A founder setting pricing has benchmarks (4 tiers, 20% annual discount, $10 median entry). A buyer negotiating an Enterprise quote can see that the SSO upcharge is standard practice across 69% of vendors, not a special case. An investor can check whether a company's pricing is normal for its category. None of that was answerable from public sources before.

6. What we cannot claim

This describes leading SaaS, not all SaaS. The 198 companies were chosen for recognisability, not at random. Results describe the top of the market, not the median startup.
It is a single-day snapshot (August 2026). Pricing pages change constantly.
Category-level breakdowns are directional only. Some category bars rest on very few companies — the CRM SSO figure is 6 of 7 companies, HR is 2 of 8. Headline numbers use the full sample and are solid; category splits should not be read as precise.
Extraction is roughly 90% accurate at field level. Every row carries its source URL and a quoted snippet of the text it was read from, so any individual value can be audited.
We cannot prove intent. We can show that 69% gate SSO behind the top tier. We cannot prove from a pricing page why they do it.

7. Validation record

Every headline number was recomputed through three independent paths — a direct recount from the raw scraped files, the analysis pipeline, and the exported dashboard dataset. All agree exactly.

Metric	Raw recount	Pipeline	Dashboard CSV	Result
Usable companies	191	191	191	PASS
Per-seat	81	81	81	PASS
Mention AI	166	166	166	PASS
Bundle AI	94	94	94	PASS
Charge extra for AI	64	64	64	PASS
Mention SSO	124	124	124	PASS
SSO gated to top tier	86	86	86	PASS
Show a public price	157	157	157	PASS
Offer a free tier	109	109	109	PASS

Logic checks also pass: pricing models sum to 191; every company recorded as charging for AI also mentions AI; every SSO-tax record also offers SSO. Reproduce with scripts/aggregate_clean.py → scripts/analyze.py → scripts/verify.py.

Sources for comparison figures: ICONIQ Capital 2025 software survey, as published in BCG, Rethinking B2B Software Pricing in the Era of AI (2025); Kyle Poyar, Growth Unhinged — The 2026 State of B2B Monetization (survey of 230 companies, 2026). Higher unattributed figures (e.g. 73%) circulate via SaaS-management aggregator pages and are noted but not relied on. Primary data: this study, 191 companies, self-collected from live pricing pages, 2026.