I’ve advised 30+ B2B companies on pricing since selling Payflow. The patterns in 2025 are clearer than the playbook most founders follow.

Seat-based isn’t dead — it’s narrowing

Seat pricing works when value scales with headcount: collaboration tools, security, HR. It breaks when one power user generates 80% of value while 50 seats sit idle. We’re seeing mid-market pushback on per-seat renewals — not revolt, but harder procurement conversations.

Usage-based went mainstream, then overshot

Usage pricing aligns incentives when the metric is legible: API calls, transactions, storage. It fails when customers can’t predict bills. Finance teams hate surprise invoices more than they hate flat fees.

The winners hybridize: platform fee + usage band with caps. Customers get predictability; vendors get expansion revenue.

62%
Of B2B SaaS companies in OpenView's 2025 survey offer hybrid pricing — up from 41% in 2022

AI is forcing repricing conversations

Every board deck asks: “What’s our AI monetization?” Most answers are weak. Bolt-on AI features get bundled free for retention. Native AI products need new metrics — credits, outcomes, compute.

Companies charging per “AI action” without defining an action are setting up support nightmares.

Customers will pay for AI when the ROI story is one sentence. Not when your pricing page needs a calculator and a lawyer.

Consolidation pressure from buyers

Average mid-market company runs 130+ SaaS apps. Procurement is consolidating vendors. Multi-product suites with bundle discounts beat best-of-breed on renewals unless best-of-breed is 10x better at one job.

Founders building point solutions need sharper wedges and clearer expansion paths.

Pricing model fit by product type

  1. Infrastructure / API → usage + committed spend tiers
  2. Workflow / collaboration → seats + feature gates
  3. Data / analytics → volume + query limits
  4. Vertical SaaS → flat tier + implementation fee

What I’d watch in 2026

More annual-only contracts at lower entry tiers — vendors trading flexibility for predictability. More public pricing pages — opacity is losing to self-serve buyers. Fewer “contact sales” gates under $25K ACV.

Pricing is the fastest lever you have and the one founders research least. Match the model to how value is created and consumed — not to whatever your competitor’s homepage shows.