What will happen in B2B pricing in 2026? Our predictions.

1. API pricing is generalized

2. Credit based pricing becomes the dominant model

3. Credit wallets become standard

4. Synthetic data becomes the normal way to explore

5. Pricing and value become transparent

6. Pricing of all enterprise applications goes down

7. Pricing of chatbots goes down

8. Pricing of agents goes up

9. Costs go up

One of the open questions for SaaS and AI pricing in 2026 is the fate of user based pricing. In 2025 there was a lot of interest in credit based pricing. Towards the end of the year there has been pushback, with people as prominent as Marc Benioff from Salesforce predicting that user based pricing will prevail. We disagree. Credit based pricing provides a better answer to the questions of price predictability and price flexibility than does user based pricing. Over the long term, credit based pricing models will push out user based pricing.

How have AI pricing models changed in 2025?

Our 2024 post ‘The Evolution of AI Pricing Models: From Consumption to Hybrid and Generative Approaches’ has had more than 4,000 views! 3,000 of these in 2025.

AI is evolving rapidly. We test our predictions from 2024 to see what has happened in 2025.

The big trends that shaped pricing in 2025 were the emergence of vibe coding, the adoption of agents as a common way to package AI functionality and credit based pricing to price them. Ibbaka covered these trends in its most popular blog posts of 2025. Here are the top five for 2025 plus our top performing post overall.

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.

On October 16 Brandon Hickie from LinkedIn and Companyon Ventures gave a compelling webinar on credit based pricing, why it is emerging as a dominant pricing model for AI applications and agents, and emerging best practices for implementation. Longer term, credit based pricing may change the techstack for pricing and billing management. Get a glimpse into the future.

Credit-based pricing is a hot topic with major software vendors integrating credit-based pricing into their pricing and monetization models. There are also some important objections.

1. This is just disguised cost-based pricing

2. Predictability of cost and revenue

3. Familiarity

4. Transparency

5. Revenue recognition

A well designed credit-based pricing model can address all of these.

Ibbaka has put together a stellar line up for its October webinars.

October 1, Wednesday, joint pricing industry leaders Augustin Manchon, Mark Stiving and Marcos Rivera for a wild conversation on how AI is transforming pricing roles.

October 16, Thursday, Brandon Hickie from LinkedIn and Companyon Ventures and Steven Forth will go deep into the credit based pricing model that is dominating AI and agent applications.

Four perspectives on credit based pricing that will help you to make a decision on whether to adopt this pricing model and how other companies are succeeding (and sometimes failing). Includes insights from the four most important reports plus case studies with practical lessons. This is in preparation for an important webinar with Brandon Hickie of LinkedIn on October 16.

Credit based pricing models are increasingly common, especially with agentic AI. When should you choose this pricing model? What are the design goals? What are the key design decisions to be made? This post reviews the key questions about credit based pricing models and then proposes a step-by step guide to their design.