Edition 2 (Q3 2026) · published · observed 21 Sept – 12 Oct 2026 · 75 products · current view

How to win on AI pricing

The rest of the Index says what the market does. This is what to do about it — the decisions every operator now faces, read straight off the data.

The rest of the Index is description: what 75 products charge, how they meter it, where the market is moving. This is the prescription — the decisions every operator now faces, and the way we'd make them. Not pricing theory borrowed from a textbook; what the data, read closely, actually teaches.

One framing runs underneath all of it. The meter changed — the unit, the burn rate, the bill — but the scaffolding didn't: still three tiers, still an annual discount, still a contact-us wall. So the work isn't to reinvent how software is sold; it's to get the few things that actually moved exactly right. Read the landscape first for the evidence, or jump to the playbook for the calls.

Start here — the landscape

The six findings the playbook is built on.

Read The AI pricing plateau One force pushes every AI product the same way; most get stuck on one rung; the model everyone expects has almost no one in it. Read from 52 pricing pages. Read Credits are how AI hides its prices AI pricing is moving from seats to credits — and credits hide the real price. What 52 products' pricing pages reveal, and how to buy around it. Read AI pricing is just COGS finally showing up Seats-to-credits is software gaining a real cost of goods sold for the first time — what it means for margins, software budgets, and old SaaS rules of thumb. Read The price didn't change. Your bill did. How AI tools raise prices without touching the sticker — by changing how many credits an action costs — and the one quarterly check that catches it. Read “Unlimited*” — the asterisk is the business model Across 52 AI products, “unlimited” almost always hides an asterisk: fair use, a slow lane, select models, or a hard cap. What the word really means. Read Almost no one can charge for outcomes Everyone says AI will be sold by results. Of 52 products, only two charge per outcome — and both were born there. Why the frontier is sealed.

The playbook

Six chapters, in order — five for the seller, one for the buyer.

Part 1 Should you meter at all? Metering AI feels mandatory because inference costs money. It isn't. When a flat seat still wins, when a meter earns its keep, and why most products do both. Part 2 What you charge for matters more than what you charge The unit you charge for outlasts every number you set: it must scale with value and stay predictable — and AI's 'credit' usually fails both tests. Part 3 How to move a meter without a mutiny Every change to a running meter is a trust event. How to set overage, top-ups, and expiry fairly — and reprice without the Cursor-style revolt. Part 4 The redenomination playbook An opinionated guide to changing an AI pricing unit without hiding it, from 75 pricing pages: what belongs on the card, in the table, in the FAQ and in help. Part 5 Who still gets to keep 75%+ gross margins? Software's 75% gross margin was a gift of near-zero marginal cost. AI took it back — here's who still gets to keep it, and the two gates they must clear. Part 6 How to buy AI without overpaying You don't set the meter, but you can refuse to pay for the dark around it. Seven price moves read off the Index, plus the rest of the buying checklist.

The Credit Index reads — category case studies

The framework applied — one category at a time.

Case study The Credit Index reads: the coding tools The hottest category in software quietly repriced its meter on everyone. How nine AI coding tools — Cursor to Lovable — made the same money buy less.

Then keep it honest — re-benchmark each quarter

Pricing is not set-and-forget, and the numbers here are the ones built to move. The Index refreshes quarterly, so re-benchmark your overage premium, your peg, and your burn rate against the moving median, and watch what's changing for repricing moves in the tools you depend on. And when you're ready to put your own numbers in — your costs, your model, your margin — that's what the AI Pricing Calculator is for, the companion to this Index. Open the calculator →