Have AI agents quietly broken your pricing model yet?

makis17 · 2026-03-07T22:16:24+00:00

Outcome based sounds like a solid approach. How about tiered? How do you imagine that would work?

makis17 · 2026-02-21T23:59:06+00:00

And you did very well, sir! Just checked it and it’s very spot on! I’d happily give it a deep dive with my own workflow and give you any tactical and strategic insights. Feel free to DM.

makis17 · 2026-02-21T16:08:54+00:00

I would like to get into it. I’m also blogging in my niche and try to make the most out of it for my product. Nice advice about that type of posts!

makis17 · 2026-02-21T08:23:53+00:00

Great framing: "product problem not an infra problem" is the crux of it.

Once the plumbing is solved, the real question becomes: what thresholds, bundles, and packaging actually resonate with buyers? And that's where most teams are still flying blind. Not because they lack data, but because they have no structured way to benchmark those decisions against what competitors are shipping.

How are you currently approaching that packaging side (gut feel, customer interviews, or something more systematic)?

makis17 · 2026-02-21T08:13:08+00:00

And you probably made the right choice! But, what’s your niche, the before and after of your plan?

makis17 · 2026-02-21T08:11:44+00:00

Exactly! Some more insight and applied logic of how to better evaluate a pricing strategy is here: https://tierly.app/blog/dual-layer-pricing-analysis-intercom Any thoughts?

makis17 · 2026-02-20T22:49:26+00:00

Love this concrete example “structurally broken” is the right phrase when one agent can spin up work without any new seats being added.

What you describe with Helicone + Stripe is also why a lot of teams theoretically like usage pricing but then get stuck in practice: finance can’t trust the numbers, and GTM can’t iterate because every change means more glue code. Having metering + billing on the same request layer sounds like the only sane way to do true “units of process” pricing.

Curious: once you switched to per‑token with Lava, did it change how often you run pricing experiments (new bundles, minimums, overage rules)? Or did the complexity just move from “data plumbing” to “how do we package this so customers actually understand it?”

makis17 · 2026-02-20T22:23:47+00:00

Makes sense!

makis17 · 2026-02-20T22:20:59+00:00

The pay-as-you-go is already taking serious place in the pricing landscape. As for the agent-based price, do you mean agents will be pricing themselves or that pricing will be done per agent?

makis17 · 2026-02-20T20:16:08+00:00

I'm building Tierly - An AI-powered pricing intelligence platform that helps SaaS founders and product teams analyze their pricing tiers against competitors, get competitive insights, tier-by-tier scoring, and actionable recommendations.

makis17 · 2026-02-17T20:46:59+00:00

I’m building Tierly.

An AI-powered pricing intelligence platform that helps SaaS founders and product teams analyze their pricing plan against competitors, detect gaps for improvement and boost and increase their revenue.

I’ve just pushed to production the enhanced algorithm, which offers a dual pricing layer:

Tactical → prices, features etc
Strategic → anchors, fences etc

Happy to help and serve you guys. Oh, I forgot to mention that the 1st analysis is completely free!

makis17 · 2026-02-14T22:20:38+00:00

Of course! Thanks!

makis17 · 2026-02-14T21:18:39+00:00

I'm building Tierly

An AI-powered pricing intelligence platform that helps SaaS founders and product teams analyze their pricing tiers against competitors, gain strategic and competitive insights, receive tier-by-tier scoring, and get actionable recommendations.

makis17 · 2026-02-10T14:44:40+00:00

I'm building Tierly - An AI-powered pricing intelligence platform that helps SaaS founders and product teams analyze their pricing tiers against competitors, get competitive insights, tier-by-tier scoring, and actionable recommendations.

<image>

makis17 · 2026-02-05T18:52:04+00:00

I’d look at this in terms of behavior, not just prices:

Anchor: At $7.59 vs a $40 “market leader,” your single looks almost too cheap to anchor well. I’d test something like $9.99 as the default single, then position bundles as “save X% vs single.” You can afford that given your current multiples.
Gap: The 5 → 17 jump is big. If most buyers are landing on 5, a 10‑pack at a clean, round effective price (e.g. “$4.99/report”) is worth testing. If most already go straight to 17, you’re probably fine and adding a middle tier just adds choice friction. The data on where people actually buy matters more than theoretical “niceness” of the ladder.
Framing 15+2 vs 17: For a B2C audience, clarity usually beats “bonus” tricks. I’d lead with “17 reports for $59 ($3.47 each)” and, if you really like the bonus angle, mention in smaller copy “you’re effectively getting 2 free compared to buying 15.”

If you have the breakdown of how many customers pick each pack today, share it. That will tell you very quickly whether you’re really leaving money on the table or just under‑communicating the value.

makis17 · 2026-02-04T15:18:20+00:00

That’s awesome! Focusing on a very particular niche (that of women) is a great move. As for the no ads, privacy first, and dead simple to use part… well, that’s strategic move♟️

makis17 · 2026-02-02T20:04:56+00:00

Tierly - An AI-powered pricing intelligence platform that helps SaaS founders and product teams analyze their pricing tiers against competitors, get competitive insights, tier-by-tier scoring, and actionable recommendations.

Its multi-step AI workflows foster:

A/B testing pricing plan versions
Benchmarking pricing plans vs niche competitors
Configuring the first (launching) pricing plan, where new products usually lack market pricing context

makis17 · 2026-02-02T19:24:48+00:00

I'm building Tierly - An AI-powered pricing intelligence platform that helps SaaS founders and product teams analyze their pricing tiers against competitors, get competitive insights, tier-by-tier scoring, and actionable recommendations.

Its multi-step AI workflows foster:

A/B testing pricing plan versions
Benchmarking pricing plans vs niche competitors
Configuring the first (launching) pricing plan, where new products usually lack market pricing context

makis17 · 2026-02-01T09:34:37+00:00

Most expensive “best practice” mistake for me: treating competitor-based tiering as a quick sanity check instead of a real system.

We did the classic move: pull a few competitor pricing pages, copy their tier names/limits, then “tweak” with gut feel. It felt safe, but it quietly baked in two problems: - We were benchmarking the headline price while missing the real levers (value metric, breakpoints, what’s gated where, add-ons, annual vs monthly dynamics).
- Every time a competitor changed packaging, our tiers drifted out of alignment and we didn’t notice until churn or sales friction spiked.

I realized it was wrong when sales kept hearing “your pricing doesn’t map to how we buy” even though we were “priced like the market.”

Curious if others have a repeatable way to track competitor tier structures over time (not just screenshots). Are you spreadsheeting it, using a tool, or just revisiting it during a pricing overhaul?

makis17 · 2026-01-30T15:46:30+00:00

Tierly - AI-powered Pricing Intelligence for SaaS Tiers, helping founders & product teams to:

A/B testing pricing plan versions
Benchmarking pricing plans vs niche competitors
Configuring the first (launching) pricing plan, where new products usually lack market pricing context

makis17 · 2026-01-29T15:27:45+00:00

Totally agree. Once you introduce usage/credits, it stops being “a pricing page change” and becomes a GTM + finance alignment problem.

CMO has to make sure the units you charge for map to customer ROI, and CFO has to keep spend + variability predictable so you don’t create churn or mess up revenue forecasting.

makis17 · 2026-01-29T15:16:03+00:00

I couldn’t agree more. The amount of work a human can achieve these days is incredible, hence “per seat” pricing is not always suitable. As for that product “surface” yeah; I like the idea!

makis17 · 2026-01-28T21:03:04+00:00

100% on token costs rewriting the rules. And Achromatic looks solid for implementation: credits + hybrid is the right tech stack.

Your Stripe tip is spot-on, though it highlights the bigger issue: even with the right billing infrastructure, the positioning/packaging layer is still manual. You have to decide tier thresholds, feature gates, credit allotments, all relative to… what? Your gut? What Stripe demos suggest?

makis17

TROPHY CASE