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Estd 4.22.2023
Pricing can make or break any software product, but it’s even more critical for agentic software in the AI era. These AI-native tools act autonomously on users’ behalf, delivering game-changing outcomes. Yet most SaaS founders and product leaders quickly discover that traditional models, like flat subscriptions or per-seat pricing, don’t match the dynamic value or cost structure of these products.
A one-size-fits-all approach can:
- Undermine perceived value
- Leave significant revenue on the table
- Create misalignment between pricing and product outcomes
To price agentic SaaS effectively, you need a strategic, outcome-focused model rooted in how the product delivers value, not how it's consumed.
In this post, you’ll get:
- A clear definition of agentic software, with examples from the latest AI-native tools
- A breakdown of how these products differ from traditional SaaS in value creation and cost structure
- A fresh take on what “value” truly means in the context of autonomous agents
- A walkthrough of Monetizely’s 5-step pricing transformation framework
- Common pitfalls to avoid, like blindly applying usage-based pricing or reusing seat-based models for agentic workflows
By the end, you’ll have a practical playbook for confidently pricing your agentic product, and a clear next step to optimize your monetization further.
What Is Agentic Software?
Traditional software has always functioned as a tool, it executes explicit instructions, step by step. Users must click buttons, fill forms, and juggle multiple apps to accomplish their goals. This manual orchestration is time-consuming and error-prone. Even automation tools like scripts or basic bots only handle predefined tasks and often break when conditions change.
The pain point is clear: as workflows grow more complex and data-heavy, users spend too much time operating software, rather than deciding what needs to be done. This is where agentic software comes in.
Instead of making you do all the work manually, agentic systems allow you to express what you want, and the software figures out the rest. They shift the burden from the user to the system, reducing context-switching and repetitive actions.
Defining Agentic Software
Agentic software refers to autonomous (often AI-driven) systems that can understand a user’s goal and then act independently and persistently to complete tasks on the user’s behalf. Unlike traditional tools (or even classic AI systems that make suggestions), an agentic system has the agency to:
- Make decisions
- Execute multi-step actions
- Operate with minimal human oversight
Example: If you ask an agent to “schedule a meeting with client X next week”, it doesn’t just send a reminder. It will:
- Find calendar openings
- Send the invite
- Book a meeting room
- Handle all coordination, without needing you to micromanage
These systems are designed to think and adapt as they work. They:
- Break down goals into subtasks
- React to new information
- Keep working until the job is done
One definition summarizes it well: agentic AI performs complex, multi-step tasks in pursuit of defined goals, with limited to no human supervision. In short, agentic software is software with a will of its own, within the scope you set, and it actively pursues your intent from start to finish
Let’s look at how agentic software is already solving real problems across industries:
1. AutoGPT
AutoGPT, an open-source project that went viral in 2023, demonstrated how agentic software can take a user’s goal and recursively plan toward it. You give AutoGPT a plain-English objective like “help me grow my online business.” It:
- Breaks the task into subgoals
- Determines what needs to be done first, second, third
- Executes each step by calling tools or browsing the internet
Example: For the goal above, it might:
- Research market trends
- Find keywords
- Draft a marketing strategy
- Begin content creation, all autonomously
AutoGPT uses plugins, web tools, and APIs in a continuous loop, refining its approach as it goes. While experimental, it showed that AI agents can coordinate complex tasks like researching, reading, writing, and executing commands, with almost no guidance beyond the initial goal.
Pain solved: Manual research and planning is now offloaded to a persistent virtual assistant that keeps working toward the goal.
2. Adept’s ACT-1
Adept’s ACT-1 (short for “Action Transformer”) pushes this idea into the enterprise. It’s an AI model wired to understand and control software interfaces, essentially, a large transformer model connected to a UI. It watches your screen (via a browser extension). It can:
- Click
- Type
- Scroll, just like a human
You speak or type in natural language, and ACT-1 carries out the instructions across any web application or internal tool.
Example: A sales ops person says: “Pull the Q4 sales data and create a forecast chart.”
ACT-1 will:
- Navigate the CRM
- Export the data
- Open a spreadsheet
- Generate the chart, all without any manual interaction
In a demo, a task that usually took “10+ clicks in Salesforce” was reduced to a single sentence.
Key trait: ACT-1 persists across long sessions, even waiting for pages to load or switching tools as needed, and handles every step of execution based on your intent.
Pain solved: Tedious data entry and multi-system workflows are automated by a digital worker, freeing employees from repetitive chores and improving consistency.
3. Integrail’s AI Agent in Healthcare
In healthcare, administrative overload is a serious bottleneck. Integrail’s, agentic software takes over routine scheduling, record-keeping, and follow-ups, allowing staff to focus on patients.
Example: An AI scheduling assistant:
- Identifies the need for a follow-up in 6 weeks
- Books the appointment with the correct doctor
- Updates the calendar, without involving a coordinator
These agents go further:
- If a patient cancels, they notify someone on the waitlist
- Send reminders to patients
- Update EHRs
- Flag anomalies for doctor review
Pain solved: Hospitals no longer need to manually manage schedules and records. Agentic systems do it continuously, improving care and efficiency without added staffing.
4. ChatSpot by HubSpot
HubSpot introduced ChatSpot as a conversational AI assistant built into their CRM platform, allowing users to accomplish tasks through a chat interface instead of clicking through the usual menus. The idea is to provide an easier, more natural way to get work done in the CRM. In practice, a salesperson or marketer can type a request in plain language; for example, “Add John Doe from Acme Corp as a new contact and log a call reminder for next Monday,” and ChatSpot will execute those actions behind the scenes in HubSpot.
This “ChatUX” approach simplifies CRM usage, reduces training needs, and speeds up common workflows. It also pulls insights via OpenAI integrations, making it a true cross-functional agent.
What Makes Agentic Software So Powerful?
Across industries, agentic software consistently delivers four key capabilities:
1. Translates Intent into Action
Agentic software bridges the gap between what the user wants and the steps required to get there.
- You say: “Do task X in Salesforce.”
- The agent executes it: clicks, types, waits, without your help
This is a leap from traditional tools where users had to operate the interface themselves.
2. Freeing Up Human Time and Effort
Agents take over repetitive, intricate, or tedious tasks, at machine speed.
- Example: Healthcare scheduling agents keep calendars full without additional staff
- Business agents can compile overnight reports without anyone staying late
Fewer human touchpoints = less time, less error, fewer ops bottlenecks.
3. Working Across Systems and Tools
Agentic software isn't locked to a single app, it can move across platforms.
- ACT-1 can compose multiple tools together
- AutoGPT can call web tools, APIs, calculators, and more in one loop
They act like universal adapters, stitching workflows across software ecosystems.
For businesses, that capability is huge: it’s like having a smart assistant who can operate all your enterprise software through one interface. The user doesn’t have to manually transfer data or coordinate between systems – the agent handles it end-to-end.
4. Persistent and Proactive Operation
These agents don’t quit after one run:
- They persist through sessions, retries, and failures
- They react to changes (like cancelled appointments)
- Some even initiate tasks (e.g., reordering inventory when it runs low)
They keep working, sometimes even when you’re not, unlike traditional software, which sits idle waiting for input.
Why This Changes the Pricing Game
Agentic software delivers autonomous value, doing work a human (or team) would otherwise do. That breaks traditional software pricing models.
- Per-seat licenses? Irrelevant when one agent can replace dozens of users.
- Logins or dashboard usage? Useless, agents don’t browse, they act.
Simply put; “Agents complete tasks, not browse dashboards… and they don’t need 10 seats to get things done.”
This shift demands new pricing logic, possibly:
- Task-completion pricing
- Usage- or transaction-based billing
- Value-based pricing tied to business outcomes
Because agents work continuously, deliver results, and reduce labor, pricing should reflect output, not access.
In the upcoming sections, we’ll dive deeper into how monetization strategies are evolving to match this new breed of software.
How Agentic Products Differ from Traditional SaaS (Value, Automation, Risk)
Agentic software diverges from traditional SaaS in three essential ways: how it creates value, how it automates work, and the pricing risks it introduces. These distinctions are foundational to building the right monetization strategy.
1. Rapid, Outcome-Focused Value
Traditional B2B SaaS often delivers value by enhancing productivity or enabling new capabilities over time, usually requiring user adoption across a team. In contrast, an agentic AI can generate rapid ROI by performing tasks outright.
For example, an AI customer support agent might resolve thousands of tickets in its first month, a direct productivity boost that would take a human team months or expensive hires to achieve.
In fact, a 2024 McKinsey survey found that in most business functions, a majority of companies using generative AI reported significant cost reductions from its use. The value creation is immediate and measurable in tasks completed, hours saved, or errors avoided, rather than just feature usage. This means customers can often justify a higher price if the agent reliably delivers outcomes. (It’s not uncommon for AI capabilities to command a 20-30% price premium thanks to their outsized impact.)
2. Fewer Human Users Required
Traditional SaaS pricing often scales with the number of human users or “seats” because each user derives individual value from the software. But an effective AI agent can do the work of many. This flips the script: if your agentic product makes a customer’s team more efficient, they might need fewer employees or software seats, ironically shrinking the old basis for pricing. If an AI tool massively boosts employee efficiency, the client “could end up hiring fewer staffers, meaning fewer seats for [the SaaS vendor] to generate revenue from”.
In other words, a per-seat model can severely under-monetize an agentic product, you’d be charging for one user while delivering value equivalent to many users’ output. This is a key reason AI startups have embraced usage-based and value-based pricing models: to capture value in line with outcomes, not headcount.
3. Automation & Compute Cost Challenges
Agentic software shifts more work from humans to machines. While this automation delights customers, it introduces variable costs and risks for the provider. Running advanced AI models (e.g. large language models powering agents) incurs significant compute expense, think API calls, GPU time, etc.
Unlike traditional SaaS where the marginal cost of an extra user is low, here heavy usage can rack up cloud bills. Pricing needs to account for this. The compute burden of AI has made cost considerations an “underlying driver” in modern pricing – similar to how the shift to cloud usage forced new pricing thinking in the past.
Additionally, usage of an agent can vary wildly per customer. One client might have the AI doing 100 tasks a day, another only 10. This unpredictability means purely fixed pricing could blow up your margins or, conversely, usage-based pricing could shock customers with sporadic high bills. We’ll address balancing these factors later on.
In short, agentic products deliver faster value, require fewer users, and shift cost burdens to the provider. For customers, that’s a win, which helps explain why Bessemer predicts AI-native companies will reach $1B ARR 50% faster than their SaaS predecessors.
But to monetize this shift, pricing models must evolve. Per-seat or static pricing makes little sense when value is created by autonomous, compute-driven execution. Next, we’ll define what value really means in this context, as it will anchor our pricing approach.
What ‘Value’ Looks Like in Agentic Software
Successful pricing always starts with understanding customer value. For agentic software, “value” is usually measured in the outcomes and efficiencies the AI delivers, rather than traditional metrics like users or time saved using a feature. Here’s how to clarify the value your agentic product provides:
1. Tasks Automated
List out the concrete tasks or processes your AI agent handles for the customer. These could be things like generating monthly reports, transcribing meetings, responding to support tickets, updating database records, etc. Each task the AI automates is something the customer’s team doesn’t have to do manually.
For example, if your software development agent automatically fixes bugs or writes code, consider the value of each bug fix or feature it completes. Agentic products often shine in high-volume or repetitive tasks that would require significant labor. The volume of tasks handled by the AI per period can be a direct value metric.
2. Hours (or Costs) Saved
Translate those automated tasks into time or cost savings. How many human work hours does the AI save a client in a month? Multiply that by an average fully-loaded hourly cost to quantify dollars saved.
For instance, an AI marketing assistant that drafts social posts and schedules campaigns might save a marketing team 40 hours/month, perhaps $2,000+ in labor. Many companies adopting AI report this kind of efficiency gain; notably, by late 2024, a majority of companies using gen AI were seeing measurable cost reductions within the business units using the tech.
This reinforces that saved time (and the cost associated with that time) is a primary component of AI’s value. If your agent reduces errors or downtime, include the cost of those issues too (e.g. preventing one data error might save X dollars in cleanup or lost revenue).
3. Outcomes Achieved
Beyond efficiency, consider the quality or revenue outcomes the AI drives. Does it increase conversion rates, improve customer satisfaction, reduce churn, or boost output?
For example, an AI sales outreach agent that books 20 extra meetings per month is directly increasing the sales pipeline – a tangible outcome that has revenue implications. In customer service, an AI with a high resolution rate can improve customer satisfaction scores and handle surges without extra hires. “Price per resolution” is a metric some look at for AI support agents, rather than price per seat.
Think about framing value in terms of results: e.g. “Our AI delivers X outcome, which is worth $Y to your business.” This outcome-centric view resonates with customers; in one survey, 70% of users said they prefer pricing based on results achieved, as it guarantees they pay only when they see real benefits.
4. Speed and Scalability
An often overlooked aspect of value is speed. An agentic system might complete tasks in minutes that would take a human team days. This faster time-to-value can be critical (for instance, faster data analysis can enable quicker decisions).
Also, the AI can often scale on-demand, handling 1000 tasks as easily as 100, which provides peace of mind and flexibility for the customer. These advantages reinforce the ROI of the product, which you should be prepared to articulate in monetary terms. If your AI helps achieve something sooner, what is that time worth? In fast-moving markets, speed itself is money.
To sum up, in agentic software value = (Tasks automated or outcomes delivered) x (impact of each task/outcome). Before you set any prices, get a handle on these value drivers. They will guide your segmentation, metric, and price levels. In fact, the pricing metric you choose should ideally track with one of these value indicators, which brings us to Monetizely’s pricing framework, starting with segmentation.
Pricing Agentic Products with Monetizely’s 5-Step Framework
To systematically price your agentic software, use the Monetizely 5-step pricing framework, a five-step transformation process covering:
- Customer Segmentation
- Packaging
- Pricing Metric
- Rate-Setting
- Operationalization
This structured approach, applied to dozens of SaaS and AI products, ensures your pricing is grounded in market data, aligned with value, and operationally feasible. Here’s how each step applies to agentic AI offerings.
Step 1: Customer Segmentation: Define Your Key Customer Groups
Not all customers derive value the same way. Start by identifying distinct groups of customers, those with different needs, usage intensity, or willingness-to-pay. Effective segmentation ensures you avoid “one-size-fits-none” pricing and instead tailor both packages and price to perceived value.
For agentic software, consider segmenting on the following dimensions:
- Firmographics: Company size or industry. A startup and a Fortune 500 company may use the same AI assistant but derive very different values. Larger firms often expect more support, demand tighter security, and can pay more for the same AI features.
- Use Case & Automation Intensity: What’s the core job the AI performs in each segment? Some customers may rely on the product for mission-critical automation (e.g., AI Ops for IT incident response), while others may use it for “nice-to-have” tasks like meeting summaries. Customers also vary in usage behavior, some run the agent continuously, others intermittently. These are separate segments.
- Value Sensitivity: Assess how much ROI each segment typically receives. An e-commerce client might see direct sales growth from the AI, while a nonprofit uses it for internal reporting. One may afford performance-based pricing, the other needs a lower entry price. If your data shows some customers get 10x the ROI of others, that’s a reason to segment.
- AI Adoption Readiness: Some customers are early adopters, eager to experiment. Others are conservative, risk-averse, and need a clearer value proposition. You might offer aggressive value-based tiers to AI-forward startups and lower-commitment pricing to traditional firms still testing AI.
Recommendation: Focus on 2-3 core segments that matter most for growth. Build Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) that document characteristics, key jobs-to-be-done, and value levers. These segments anchor every pricing decision going forward.
Step 2: Packaging: Create Compelling Offers Aligned with Value
Once segments are defined, the next step is packaging, how you structure product tiers or bundles. Packaging defines what a customer gets and how service is delivered. For agentic software, don’t simply mimic SaaS norms. Instead, align packages to the ongoing value delivered.
Key principles:
- Reflect Continuous Value: Agentic software often runs 24/7, automating tasks continuously. Packages should represent sustained service levels over time. For example, a basic tier could support 3 task types; a premium tier might automate 10, with added model tuning or dedicated support. Think in terms of ongoing business impact.
- Avoid Volume-Only Differentiation: Don’t build packages that just increase usage quotas (e.g., “1,000 vs. 10,000 AI calls”). That reduces packaging to a usage-metering model. Instead, combine usage with differentiated features and outcomes. For example:
- Tier 1: Basic automation + community support
- Tier 2: Custom AI capabilities + priority support
- Tier 3: Full-suite automation + human-in-the-loop + guaranteed SLAs
- Incorporate AI-Specific Value Adds: At higher tiers, offer benefits such as:
- Human-in-the-loop quality control
- Enterprise-grade data privacy and governance
- Onboarding/training sessions
- Integration with client-owned data sources
These elements justify higher pricing and appeal to demanding enterprise buyers.
- Keep Packages Simple and Outcome-Focused: Offer 2–3 clear tiers that align to distinct customer profiles. Describe each in terms of business outcomes. For instance:
- “Automation Basic: Automates top 3 workflows (~20 hours/month saved)”
- “Automation Pro: Handles advanced tasks across your org (~50+ hours/month saved)”
- Test Internally: Can your team describe the difference between tiers in one sentence? Can customers self-select the right option based on outcomes? Role-play sales calls to validate alignment with segments.
Step 3: Pricing Metric: Choose How You Charge (Align Price to Value)
Once you’ve defined your product tiers, the next step is selecting the right pricing metric, the unit that customers are charged on a recurring basis (monthly, per use, per outcome, etc.). This isn’t just a billing format; it’s the foundation of monetization strategy.
A strong pricing metric should align with:
- How customers receive value
- How you incur costs
- What customers understand and accept
1. Usage-Based Pricing = when product value scales with usage
Most agentic products lean toward usage-based models, charging by tasks completed, characters processed, documents analyzed, or API calls. This feels fair (“pay for what you use”) and maps well to the actual work being done.
- Choose a usage unit that tracks perceived value. If customers care about “reports,” don’t charge per API call, charge per report or batch processed.
- Consider hybrid plans: include X units in a base fee, then charge overages or apply volume discounts.
- Help customers estimate their bill; unpredictability is the #1 reason usage pricing backfires.
As seen,
- Usage-based SaaS grew 137% faster than traditional subscription models (OpenView)
- Adoption rose from ~30% in 2019 to ~79% in 2023 (Bessemer Cloud Index)
2. Outcome-Based Pricing = when you can prove results
In this model, you charge based on measurable performance, like % of revenue generated, savings realized, or leads delivered. It can be a powerful differentiator if the outcome is tightly tied to your product.
Caveats:
- Hard to implement unless attribution is clear.
- Enterprise buyers may resist variable invoices.
- Requires unambiguous contracts (e.g., “$X per qualified lead” or “Y% of cost savings on KPI Z”).
3. Fixed Subscription (Time-Based) = when simplicity or predictability is the priority
Even if you track usage internally, presenting a flat monthly or annual fee often works better, especially with larger customers. The assumption: typical usage is predictable or capped.
This model works when:
- You’ve modeled average usage carefully
- Customers want budget certainty
- You can handle high-usage customers without killing margins
How to Pick the Right Metric
Ask yourself:
- What best reflects customer success?
If the goal is content generation, “per article” may work. If accuracy is the win, tie price to performance or offer SLA-based tiers. - What reflects your cost to serve?
If every AI task consumes compute, usage-based pricing protects your margins. Blending a fixed base fee with a usage component often makes sense. - Is it easy to understand?
Avoid abstract units like “AI cycles.” Use countable, intuitive metrics (documents, conversations, credits). Transparency builds trust. - What’s expected in your market?
If competitors price per API call, it might make sense to do the same—or to educate customers if you deviate.
Most Common Outcome: Hybrid Models
By 2024, hybrid pricing has become the norm, blending base subscriptions with usage-based components, usage caps, or add-ons.
These models balance:
- Fairness (customers pay more as they use more)
- Predictability (base plans ease procurement concerns)
- Sustainability (you capture revenue as cost scales)
Avoid the Complexity Trap
One company tried juggling 15 usage metrics and over 20 price points, creating chaos for sales and confusion for buyers.
Instead:
- Anchor on one or two primary metrics
- Keep the pricing explainable, predictable, and aligned to value
As McKinsey puts it: don’t blindly follow usage-based hype. Let your strategy, not trends, dictate your pricing model.
Step 4: Rate-Setting: Determine Your Price Levels
Once you've defined your pricing metric, it's time to set the actual price points. This is where many founders get stuck—balancing customer willingness to pay, competitor benchmarks, margin needs, and strategic positioning.
Instead of guessing, treat rate-setting as a structured hypothesis with inputs from multiple sources:
Start with Willingness to Pay (WTP)
Validate what your target segments consider a fair and high-value price. Use:
- Surveys or customer interviews: Ask: “At what price would this feel expensive? At what price would it feel like a great deal?”
- Design partner pilots: Offer early access at varying prices to gauge reactions
- Frameworks like Van Westendorp or conjoint analysis: These help map perceived value bands based on real data
Example: If your AI tool saves $5,000/month in manual effort, pricing it at $1,500/month should feel like a no-brainer, but only if the customer sees and trusts that value.
Benchmark Against Alternatives
Customers always have choices, even if it’s manual labor or status quo software.
- If your product replaces a $60K/year employee, pricing at $10K/year becomes compelling.
- If legacy tools charge $0.10 per transaction and you’re asking $1.00, be ready to justify 10x the value.
Position yourself clearly:
- Are you a premium product?
- Are you the efficient alternative?
- Are you category-defining?
Model Your Costs and Margins
For agentic software, cost-to-serve matters a lot.
- Estimate unit economics: compute, human QA, support, infra
- Identify thresholds: What’s your breakeven per customer?
- Build in margin buffers: especially if usage spikes
Example: If 1,000 AI tasks cost you $100, and you want a 70% gross margin, price at least $333 for that volume.
Don’t forget:
- Cost of customer acquisition (CAC)
- Potential discounts or partner commissions
- Long-term margin improvements (e.g. infra optimization)
Anchor to ROI and Value Stories
Once you settle on a number, stress-test it through the customer’s lens: “At $500/month, we only need to save your team 10 hours/month to break even, and we typically save 40+ hours. That’s a 4x return.”
For enterprise plans, ensure there's a clear value justification:
- Hours saved
- Revenue unlocked
- Cost avoided
- Time-to-market improved
This makes pricing less about cost and more about gain.
Test and Iterate
Your first price isn’t final, it’s a testable hypothesis.
- Soft-launch with promotional pricing
- A/B test packages or tiers
- Monitor sales velocity, close rates, discounting, and pushback
- Track usage patterns: if everyone hits the cap or no one upgrades, your tiers may need rework
Be agile, but not erratic. Stability matters. Iterate with purpose, especially in the first 12–18 months.
Step 5: Operationalization: Implement and Manage the Pricing
Designing a brilliant pricing model is only half the battle; you also need to operationalize it within your business. This means integrating it into your sales process, billing systems, customer communications, and continuously managing it. Many pricing strategies fail not because they were wrong on paper, but because the company couldn’t execute them properly. Here’s how to nail operationalization for your new agentic product pricing:
Get Billing Infrastructure Right
- Meter usage accurately: AI workloads often need precise tracking of tasks, API calls, or compute cycles
- Integrate billing and product systems: Avoid gaps between what’s used and what’s invoiced
- Support flexible billing logic: Proration, overage handling, tier changes mid-cycle
Example: If a customer upgrades mid-month after exceeding usage, does your system bill the difference correctly?
Use tools like Stripe, Chargebee, or custom billing engines, but ensure they support your pricing model, especially if it’s usage-heavy or hybrid.
Enable Sales and Success Teams
Train your go-to-market teams on:
- Why you price this way
- How to explain fairness and ROI
- How to handle discount requests
Arm them with talk tracks: “We charge per task, not per seat, because that’s how you get value, and you only pay for what you use.”
Set guardrails:
- Approval thresholds for discounting
- Clear upgrade/downgrade logic
- Policies for exceptions
Update the sales playbook and FAQ to reflect the new pricing reality.
Communicate Proactively to Customers
If introducing new pricing (or transitioning from old models), be proactive:
- Explain what’s changing and why
- Emphasize fairness and scalability
- Offer grace periods or incentives for early migration
- Reinforce the tie to customer success
Example message: “We’re introducing a usage-based model so you only pay for what you use, scaling with your needs as they grow.”
Offer tools:
- Usage dashboards
- Bill estimators
- Alerts at 80–90% of usage caps
This builds trust and helps avoid bill shock.
Monitor KPIs and Feedback Loops
Post-launch, track key metrics to evaluate effectiveness:
- MRR growth by segment
- Average revenue per customer (ARPC)
- Churn and downgrade rates
- Usage patterns vs. plan limits
- Gross margin per plan
Use these insights to adjust pricing, packaging, or customer education. If certain features are consistently underused, consider pulling them out or creating new tiers. If usage consistently overshoots, consider price adjustments or limit reinforcements.
Establish a cadence:
- Monthly pricing performance reviews
- Quarterly roadmap check-ins
- Annual pricing refresh (or sooner if needed)
Treat Pricing Like a Living System
Assign ownership. Pricing isn’t “set and forget,” it needs to evolve with:
- Product improvements
- Market shifts
- Competitive moves
- Customer maturity
React with intention, not impulse. And when you do make changes, communicate clearly and justify with value. Customers are far more receptive to price increases if they understand the upside.
Common Pricing Traps to Avoid with AI Products
Even with a solid framework, there are a few classic traps that SaaS founders and revenue teams sometimes fall into when pricing AI or agentic software. Be mindful of these as you refine your strategy:
1. Don’t Stick Rigidly to Seat-Based Models When They Don’t Fit
Charging per user often clashes with the value AI delivers, especially when your product helps teams do more with fewer people. If your AI reduces headcount or improves efficiency, a seat-based model can:
- Disincentivize expansion: Fewer users = less revenue.
- Undermine perceived value: You’re penalized for delivering productivity gains.
What to do instead:
Align pricing to outcomes or the work performed, not the number of users. For example:
- Shift to usage-based or output-based metrics (e.g., tasks completed, reports generated).
- If your AI makes a team twice as efficient, don’t let that result in half the revenue.
This is why many successful AI-first SaaS companies have moved away from per-seat pricing entirely.
2. Don’t Go Overboard with Usage-Based Everything
While usage-based pricing aligns well with AI outputs, going all-in on metered pricing has risks:
- Revenue unpredictability for you.
- Cost anxiety for customers, which can stall adoption.
- Over-complexity: Charging for every action or metric creates confusion and operational overhead.
What to do instead:
- Use a single primary usage metric or a simple tiered model.
- Add guardrails like:
- Tier caps
- Volume discounts
- Predictable base fees
Hybrid models (e.g., base fee + usage) strike the right balance, tying pricing to value while keeping costs manageable for customers.
3. Avoid Underpricing by Ignoring the AI’s Value (and Costs)
Founders unsure how to price novel AI features often default to:
- Offering them as free add-ons, or
- Pricing too low to drive adoption.
But this can:
- Anchor low perceived value in the customer’s mind.
- Hurt your margins, especially if usage grows faster than revenue.
- Expose you to loss leaders if heavy users overwhelm your infrastructure.
What to do instead:
- Charge based on perceived outcome value.
- Industry data shows AI features that deliver results can command 20–30% price premiums.
- Use your cost model to set pricing floors, and value communication to set ceilings.
Avoid “unlimited AI” flat fees unless you’ve fully modeled your usage risk.
4. Resist Constant Custom Pricing or Exception Creep
New tech often invites custom requests:
- “Can we pay per outcome?”
- “Can we get a custom deal?”
While some flexibility is fine, especially with design partners, too many exceptions lead to:
- Unscalable pricing operations
- Poor revenue predictability
- Difficulty in managing or comparing deals
What to do instead:
- Productize requests into your standard model.
- For example, offer rebates or bonuses for outcomes, rather than reinventing your entire pricing model per client.
- Keep your core pricing architecture stable to preserve scale and consistency.
By steering clear of these, you'll maintain a pricing model that’s scalable, value-aligned, and operationally sustainable.
Conclusion: Turn Pricing into a Growth Lever
Agentic software changes the value equation, and your pricing should reflect that. By defining the autonomous value your product delivers, segmenting smartly, aligning packaging and metrics with outcomes, and setting prices grounded in data, you turn pricing into a true growth engine, not a guess.
Great pricing isn’t just about what you charge, it’s how clearly you connect price to customer wins. Keep asking: How does my product create measurable success, and how do we share in that value? When your pricing model answers that, you’re on the right path.
Need help refining that model? At Monetizely, we help SaaS and AI companies craft pricing strategies that scale, rooted in real-world data, tested frameworks, and market insight. Get a free pricing assessment by our pricing experts and unlock your product’s full revenue potential.
Let pricing become your advantage, not your bottleneck.