AI is breaking per-seat pricing. What are the best companies charging for now?

The clearest statement of why per-seat pricing breaks when software does the work, with the support agent example (115 dollars per seat per month becomes a price per resolved ticket) and the variable cost problem underneath AI products.

AI Is Driving A Shift Towards Outcome-Based Pricing

From Andreessen Horowitz by Ivan Makarov, James da Costa and Bobby Pinero short read

• When AI resolves the ticket, Zendesk's 115 dollars per seat per month for support agents stops making sense.
• Three shifts: software becomes labor, the seat stops being the atomic unit, and model API costs make COGS variable.
• Decagon sells both per conversation (usage) and per resolution (outcome) as parallel options.
• AI-native companies price on usage or outcomes while incumbents mostly hold per-seat or bundled models.

Survey data from 230 B2B software and AI companies, so you can see what your peers are actually charging rather than what conference talks claim. Notable findings: hybrid pricing is now dominant and AI products carry thinner margins than classic SaaS.

The state of B2B monetization in 2026

From Growth Unhinged by Kyle Poyar long read

• 37 percent of B2B companies now run hybrid pricing, up from 25 percent a year earlier.
• The median target margin on AI features is about 50 percent, not the 70 to 80 percent of classic SaaS.
• 29 percent use AI credits today and another 33 percent plan to add them within 6 to 12 months.
• 70 percent say AI spend comes out of the customer's existing software budget, not new money.

Tracks adoption of usage-based pricing from 45 percent to 63 percent of SaaS companies and, more usefully, flags data mediation as the thing that breaks when you switch. Includes investor views on moving early, around five million dollars ARR, rather than after scale.

Usage-based Pricing: Growth and Adoption in a Changing Landscape

From Chargebee by Arijit Bose 6 min read

• 63 percent of SaaS businesses already run some form of usage-based pricing.
• 46 percent are running or testing usage-based plans alongside a subscription, not instead of one.
• Make the switch around 5M in revenue rather than 100M, when there is less internal resistance.
• 64 percent named data mediation as the critical requirement, and 85 percent are still iterating on their model.

Explains the platform fee plus included usage plus overage structure that most AI-era companies are converging on, with Twilio and Intercom as worked examples. From the Chennai-built billing company that has to make these models actually invoice correctly.

The Great Middling: Hybrid Pricing Model and its Growing SaaS Relevance

From Chargebee by Harikrishna 9 min read

• Hybrid pricing blends a fixed base with a variable component so you get predictability and upside.
• APIs and AI let customers do more without adding licenses, which is what breaks pure seat pricing.
• Pure pay-as-you-go is easy to scale down and quietly drop, so a base fee keeps dormant accounts covered.
• Longer contracts raise TCV, which invites more resistance, more discount requests, and slower deals.

Recent field notes from the billing company that sees how AI products are actually charging now: credits, actions, hybrid seat plus usage. Better than a think piece because these are live models with live numbers.

Pricing Is Product: Field Notes From the Frontier of AI Monetization | Chargebee Beelieve '26 | SF

On Chargebee by Chargebee Beelieve panel 28 min