Per-Seat Pricing Is Dying: What the Shift to Usage-Based SaaS Means for Your Margins

Episode notes

Is per-seat pricing dying a slow death, and is your SaaS expense structure ready for its replacement? In episode #373, Ben Murray breaks down the shift from per-seat subscriptions to usage and outcome-based pricing, and what it means for your finance org. Bloomberg projects subscription pricing falling from 60% to 30% of SaaS models over the next decade, while outcome-based pricing climbs from 10% to 60%. This is no longer a thesis on a slide. GitHub, Salesforce, Zendesk, Intercom, Figma, HubSpot, and others are already repricing, and public companies are reporting AI ARR in the hundreds of millions. If you cannot answer what your AI margins are when the board asks, you are already behind. See exactly how legacy SaaS leaders are repricing, from Zendesk charging per automated resolution to Salesforce billing per AI conversation plus flex credits, and what GitHub's June 1 move to token-based billing signals for the rest of the market. Understand why a single bucket of cloud hosting that blends traditional infrastructure with inference spend leaves you blind, and what instrumentation to put in place before budget season.