Pricing and scaling your AI product | Madhavan Ramanujam
Why 95% of AI startups get pricing wrong, from the field's leading advisor.
Open lennysnewsletter.com →
Building & Product
Podcast
Podcast
Podcast
Podcast
Article
Article
Article
Thread
Article
Thread
Article
Guide
Article
Article
Article
Article
Article
Article
How should I price a product built on AI agents?
Per-seat pricing breaks when your product replaces labor instead of assisting it: agents don't have seats. The market is converging on usage and outcome pricing (Intercom charges $0.99 per AI-resolved ticket, Zendesk per automated resolution, Salesforce $2 per conversation), usually wrapped in a hybrid: a platform fee plus variable consumption. Anchor your price to the value of completed work, agree contractually on what counts as an outcome, and watch your token costs so an unlucky customer doesn't make you lose money per task.
Go deeper
18 resources.
Pricing your AI product (audio)
The listenable version: AI products can capture 25-50% of value created.
Listen on Spotify open.spotify.com →Bret Taylor on AI agents, outcome-based pricing, and the OpenAI board
A candid founder-to-founder chat on making outcome pricing actually work.
Open cheekypint.substack.com →Why hybrid pricing already won the AI era
The evidence that base-plus-usage hybrids outperform pure models.
Open revenuecreator.com →Outcome-based pricing for AI agents
The company that popularized charging per resolution explains its own model.
Open sierra.ai →AI Is Driving a Shift Towards Outcome-Based Pricing
The investor-grade case for why agent pricing had to change.
Open a16z.com →A new framework for AI agent pricing
Patterns from 60+ agent companies distilled into a usable framework.
Open growthunhinged.com →The most disruptive AI pricing models so far
Real price points: $2/conversation, $0.99/resolution, per-task AI SDRs.
Open substack.com →Your pricing is (probably) broken: here's how to fix it
The diagnostic to run before you copy anyone's agent pricing.
Open growthunhinged.com →Lenny on Madhavan's pricing playbooks
The quick summary thread before you commit 90 minutes.
Open x.com →Pricing AI for Distribution: How AI Companies Use Pricing to Grow
An India-founded billing leader's data on outcome and value models.
Open chargebee.com →The 2026 Guide to SaaS, AI, and Agentic Pricing Models
A catalogue of every live agent pricing model with examples.
Open getmonetizely.com →Why AI Companies Have Adopted Usage-Based Pricing
The billing-infrastructure view of metering agents without angering customers.
Open flexprice.io →SaaS Pricing Is Breaking: Why Per-Seat Models Don't Survive the AI Agent Era
The structural argument: agents don't log in, so seats can't price them.
Open mindstudio.ai →AI Agent Pricing Models Explained
A quick taxonomy to pick your starting model in an afternoon.
Open pickaxe.co →SaaS meets AI agents: transforming budgets and customer experience
How enterprise buyers expect to budget for agents, useful in negotiations.
Open deloitte.com →SaaS vendors must adjust pricing models as agentic AI transforms the industry
What incumbents are doing to their pricing, so you can position against it.
Open rsmus.com →SaaS pricing is shifting from per-seat to usage and outcome
Includes the practical bit others skip: define 'resolved' in the contract.
Open softwareseni.com →More in AI Agents
- What actually is an AI agent, in plain language? 18 →
- Why would a founder use agents instead of a chatbot or automation? 18 →
- What real tasks are founders delegating to agents today? 20 →
- How do I build my first agent without being technical? 20 →
- Which platform or framework should I build my agents on? 18 →
- How much do AI agents cost to run, and how do I keep the bill under control? 18 →
- How do I test an AI agent and know when it's reliable enough to trust? 18 →
- What can go wrong when an agent acts on my behalf, and how do I keep it safe? 16 →
- What is MCP, and why does it matter for my agents? 18 →
- Should I build one agent or a team of agents working together? 18 →
- Can coding agents like Claude Code actually build my product? 18 →
- Is there a real startup opportunity in building vertical AI agents? 19 →
- Why do most AI agent projects fail, and what do the winners do differently? 19 →
- How do I give my agent the right context and memory so it stops forgetting? 18 →
Also in Starting Up
The same ground, over in Build the product, our Starting Up track.
eChai Partner Brands
