Good Better Best packaging models remain common, even in the agentic AI space. At the same time, they are being priced using credit based pricing models. How do Good Better Best and credit based pricing interact? What are design approaches are emerging? We explore this critical pricing design question in this post.

Credit based pricing models are common for AI and agenticAI companies. Design of these models is becoming a critical skill for go-to-market and pricing teams. One of the key question when designing this model is how granular to make the credits. There is a tension between tracking cost and value and between simplicity and precision. Managing these tradeoffs is critical to the design of credit based pricing models.

Generative AI has up the stakes on pricing transparency. But there is more than one type of transparency. There is pricing transparency, pricing model transparency. and pricing process transparency.

With generative AI in the buying process companies will have explicit, machine readable, information on value, price and the process used to set prices publicly available.

Some companies have a pricing process and a pricing model.

Others make do with just a pricing model or just a pricing process.

And then there are those companies that make do with some form of ad-hoc pricing, sometimes very smart and adaptive, often more like a frozen accident.

Most of us need to have a pricing process that leads to a pricing model.

Pricing model - a system of equations used to set price.

Pricing process - a set of algorithms and heuristics used to set price.

There are two different visions emerging for the role agents will play in B2B software. One view is that agents will be add ons to larger standard enterprise applications. The other view is that agents will become the main point of interaction and value creation. Both have quite different implications for pricing. We polled our LinkedIn communities to get additional insights into this. Of course there are multiple possible futures here and all may emerge in different B2B software sectors.

There has been a lot of discussion of how to price AI agents. But the busines senvironment is changing and the question has changed. Business leaders are now asking how agents are changing pricing. The rapid emergence of an AI driven agent economy is changing how we think about pricing of all B2B software and is leaking into many other conversations. This post explores these critical questions.

OpenAI has been the defining company of the AI era and this applies to pricing as well. OpenAI has provided anchor points of $20 per month for basic generative AI and $200 per month for more advanced solutions. They have also signaled that price will increase exponentially as models get smarter. Other companies have followed suit. How does this frame pricing for AI app and agent companies? Can you price higher than OpenAI? What is needed to achieve premium pricing?

Witness the strategies shaping the future of B2B SaaS with exclusive access to our 5 most essential recent webinars—with our VIP decks now available for download. These sessions bring together the latest thinking from the industry’s top pricing and monetization experts, covering everything from Q1 2025’s biggest pricing shifts and the evolution of agent-based packaging, to actionable frameworks for AI pricing, mid-year trend analysis, and what’s really happening in B2B SaaS monetization.

Our Wrapped 2024 webinar and podcast recap of cutting-edge strategies in AI monetization, Net Revenue Retention (NRR), and value generation for B2B SaaS. From expert tips, industry leader conversations and interviews - content to make you and your customers a sales and value creation powerhouse.

AI agents are emerging as a standard way to deliver AI functionality, especially in B2B. This has been underlined by Salesforce’s recent Agentforce announcements. Agent pricing is evolving from inputs and number of agents to actions and outcomes. This evolution is framing how we think about pricing generativeAI.

AI agents are emerging as a standard way to deliver AI functionality, especially in B2B. This has been underlined by Salesforce’s recent Agentforce announcements. Agent pricing is evolving from inputs and number of agents to actions and outcomes. This evolution is framing how we think about pricing generativeAI.

Adobe is investing heavily in generative AI and has begun to signal how it will approach pricing. It is taking an incremental approach. Price remain anchored in a per seat price, but plans are becoming more flexible, and more expensive!

Conventional approaches to pricing are not fit for purpose when it comes to pricing generative AI applications for B2B. A new process is needed. Ibbaka is proposing generative pricing, a mashup (or concept blend) of dynamic pricing and value based pricing.

Salesforce has announced that it will use consumption pricing for its AI agents going forward. Why is Salesforce taking this approach? What are the implications for other Vertical AI companies? Results of our LinkedIn poll.

Ibbaka had the pleasure of hosting a roundtable discussion on Monetizing Generative AI, featuring two industry luminaries: Michael Mansard from Zuora and Kyle Poyar from OpenView Partners. Generative AI is going to transform how we build B2B applications, how we configure them, how we move to dynamic configuration, and all of that is going to have a huge impact on both monetization and pricing.

OpenAI's o1 models are getting a lot of attention. They are a phase change for how we work with generativeAI. OpenAI has also shared how it will approach pricing of this first version of reasoning models. Reasoning tokens. What are the implications for generative AI pricing generally?

OpenAI has released o1, it next generation approach to generative AI reasoning and problem solving. If you were OpenAI, how would you price this innovation? We summarize the results of a flash poll, give some analysis and provide our own recommendation.

Most companies monetizing generative AI are using hybrid pricing models where they combine more than one pricing metric. You can see that in the survey we are running to prepare for the Sept. 19 roundtable on monetizing generative AI. What metrics tend to be used together? We ran the data through a Leiden algorithm to find the clusters.

Here are some early insights from the survey we are using to inform our Sept. 19 roundtable on generative AI monetization. Michael Mansard, Kyle Poyar and Steven Forth will go deep into the trends in generative AI and how it us being monetized.

Join our Sept. 19 roundtable on generative AI monetization. Kyle Poyar from OpenView and Growth Unhinged, Michael Mansard from Zuora and Steven Forth will have an open conversation on how second generation applications are getting priced and monetized. Take this three minute survey and prime your questions for this important session.