Hybrid seat-plus-credit confirmed as the market's actual pricing shape, not outcome-based

There’s been a lot of talk about AI vendors moving to outcome-based pricing, where you only pay when the tool actually delivers a result. A survey of more than 230 SaaS companies suggests that’s not really what’s happening yet. The biggest pricing bucket, at 37%, is a hybrid model. You pay a seat fee plus usage or credits on top. Pure outcome-based pricing didn’t come close to that share, according to the report.

Here’s the twist worth paying attention to. A separate survey of CEOs found 97% plan to retire pure per-seat pricing within two years. So the seat model isn’t disappearing, it’s getting layered with usage charges instead of replaced outright. That matters for how you budget next year’s software spend. If you’re used to a flat per-user fee, expect vendors to start adding a metered layer on top, tied to how much you actually use the AI features, not just how many people have logins.

For an owner, this means your software costs are about to get less predictable and more tied to actual usage. Renewal conversations are going to shift from “how many seats do you need” to “how many seats plus how much volume.” It’s worth asking your vendors now what their credit or usage pricing looks like, before it shows up as a surprise line item at renewal. Worth flagging that this is one survey pending the primary report, so treat the exact numbers as indicative rather than settled fact, but the direction, seat plus usage rather than pure outcome pricing, lines up with what a lot of vendors are already rolling out.

If you’re trying to keep a handle on which tools are billing you for seats, credits, or both, this is the kind of thing we build into an AI command centre, so you can see actual usage against cost in one place instead of guessing at renewal time.