There’s been a lot of buzz around B2B pricing models with the advancement of AI and as we head into Q4.

Spoiler: there’s no “one-size-fits-all” solution.

Whether it’s usage-based, per-seat, or outcome-based pricing, each has its pros and cons.

The key?

Align pricing with the unit most closely tied to the value your product delivers.

1️⃣ Usage (consumption)

Great for landing deals and growing over time. But variability in usage and costs makes it hard for enterprise customers to forecast, which is critical for budgeting. I’ve seen this firsthand—at one startup, we priced by monthly active users. For industries like e-commerce, where usage skyrockets during holidays and dips afterward, we started selling annual blocks of usage to smooth out those seasonal spikes—be creative.💡

Another challenge is the value per unit of measurement. For example, a store clerk using a mobile checkout app at Home Depot directly drives revenue—each user is high-value but part of a small group. Compare that to a dating app with 100 million users, where individual users have less financial impact.

In these cases, you’ll need to adapt to the customer. You might sell tailored SKUs with premium features for high-value users while offering more standard packages for large, low-value audiences.🎯

2️⃣ Users (per-seat)

People are down on this model—“Per-seat pricing is dead!”—but it’s still one of the simplest and most predictable.

Headcount is easy to measure, and there’s often strong value alignment with each onboarded user. Plus, it’s nice not having to spend more than 30 seconds explaining how you price.💡

So why the negativity?

It’s not just the perceived impact of AI on jobs. A less-discussed reason is that we’re at the tail end of three-year contracts signed in 2021 during SaaS’s peak purchasing era. Back then, companies were the largest they’d ever been, signing big contracts with expanded headcount. Fast forward to today—headcount has shrunk, budgets are tighter, and companies are churning or renegotiating. This is accelerating the perceived irrelevance of per-seat pricing. 🤔

At Aircover, we see the future of headcount differently.

If AI helps companies sell and produce more, it drives the need for more people—not fewer. Look no further than Salesforce, which is hiring 1,000 people to sell its new AI product.

That’s why we believe AI won’t reduce the relevance of per-seat pricing. It’s about pairing it with other models—like usage for specific features or outcome-based pricing—to capture additional value.

3️⃣ Outcome (results)

This model sounds compelling but faces similar challenges. It’s been used in e-commerce for years (e.g., taking a percentage of revenue), but once you’re a big enough line item on the P&L, customers push back.

Even when you can prove direct revenue impact, when a new CFO arrives, if they see your company as the top expense they will demand a discount—or threaten to find another solution.

Moral of the story? Be the second most expensive on the P&L. 😉

Even when you can prove direct revenue contribution, customers may credit other factors like brand strength or marketing efforts.

Pairing outcome-based pricing with other models (like usage) can help smooth over objections and manage this dynamic.

The Bottom Line:
Pricing should be flexible and tailored to your product and customers. It’s not about chasing the most hyped model but aligning pricing with the value your customers derive. Whether it’s usage, seats, or outcomes, the closer pricing aligns to value, the better.