The SaaS Pricing Index — Real Cost of 22 Business Tools
Most software cost comparisons multiply every tool by a seat count, even the ones that do not bill per seat. We do not. Two tables, priced the way each vendor actually charges — updated as we re-verify each category.
A pricing comparison that multiplies every row by a seat count is wrong more often than it is right. Email platforms bill by contacts. Several accounting tools bill a flat rate with a capped number of included users. A handful of newer tools — Coda is the clearest example — bill per builder, not per person on the team, so a 30-person company can pay for three licences.
Force all of that into one "cost × seats" formula and you get a number that looks precise and is not real. So this index does not do that. It classifies every tool by how it is actually billed, using the vendor's own pricing text — not a hand-maintained list that drifts out of date — and shows the honest figure for each.
Priced per seat
| Tool | Category | Price | 12-mo cost | Free plan | Score | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trello | Project Mgmt | $6/seat/mo | $720 | Yes | 7.8/10 | Aug 2026 |
| ClickUp | Project Mgmt | $7/seat/mo | $840 | Yes | 8.2/10 | Jul 2026 |
| monday.com | Project Mgmt | $9/seat/mo | $1,080 | Yes | 8.3/10 | Jul 2026 |
| Asana | Project Mgmt | $11/seat/mo | $1,320 | Yes | 8.4/10 | Jul 2026 |
| Notion | AI Tools | $12/seat/mo | $1,440 | Yes | 8.2/10 | Jul 2026 |
| Grammarly | AI Tools | $12/seat/mo | $1,440 | Yes | 8.7/10 | Aug 2026 |
| Pipedrive | CRM | $14/seat/mo | $1,680 | No | 8.4/10 | Jul 2026 |
| Zoho CRM | CRM | $14/seat/mo | $1,680 | Yes | 8.2/10 | Jul 2026 |
| HubSpot CRM | CRM | $20/seat/mo | $2,400 | Yes | 8.8/10 | Jul 2026 |
| Salesforce Sales Cloud | CRM | $25/seat/mo | $3,000 | No | 7.8/10 | Aug 2026 |
List prices in USD, billed monthly. "12-mo cost" = price per seat × selected team size × 12 — the same model used throughout this site (see methodology). Seat-block rounding some vendors require (see monday.com) is not applied here.
Priced by contacts, clients or a flat rate
| Tool | Category | Entry price | 12-mo cost (entry) | Top tier | Free plan | Score | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Obsidian | AI Tools | $5/mo · per user / mo | $60 | $50 | Yes | 7.6/10 | Jul 2026 |
| Brevo | $9/mo · Unlimited contacts | $108 | $18 | Yes | 8.2/10 | Jul 2026 | |
| Coda | AI Tools | $12/mo · per Doc Maker / mo | $144 | $36 | Yes | 7.8/10 | Aug 2026 |
| Mailchimp | $13/mo · 500 contacts | $156 | $20 | Yes | 7.9/10 | Jul 2026 | |
| Wave | Accounting | $16/mo · 1 user | $192 | $16 | Yes | 7.4/10 | Jul 2026 |
| Omnisend | $16/mo · 500 contacts | $192 | $59 | Yes | 8.5/10 | Aug 2026 | |
| Xero | Accounting | $20/mo · Unlimited users | $240 | $80 | No | 8.5/10 | Jul 2026 |
| FreshBooks | Accounting | $21/mo · 5 billable clients | $252 | $65 | No | 7.8/10 | Aug 2026 |
| QuickBooks Online | Accounting | $38/mo · 1 user | $456 | $115 | No | 8.2/10 | Jul 2026 |
| Klaviyo | $45/mo · 1,500 contacts | $540 | $60 | Yes | 8.4/10 | Jul 2026 | |
| Jasper | AI Tools | $49/mo · 1 seat / mo | $588 | Custom | No | 7.6/10 | Aug 2026 |
| Copy.ai | AI Tools | $49/mo · 1 seat / mo | $588 | $249 | Yes | 7.5/10 | Aug 2026 |
List prices in USD, billed monthly. These 12 tools do not bill per seat — email marketing tools bill by contacts, others by a flat rate with an included user or client cap. "12-mo cost" annualises the entry tier only; it does not scale with team size, because the vendor's own price does not.
Why the numbers sometimes look different from a headline price
Three things routinely separate the number here from the one on a vendor's pricing page. First, this is the entry paid tier, not the free plan and not the enterprise tier — the tier a real small business actually buys. Second, it is list price: annual billing typically cuts 10–20 % off every figure here, and we do not apply that discount because not everyone commits annually on day one. Third, for per-seat tools the figure is genuinely your cost at your headcount, not a single-seat number dressed up as a comparison.
Cite this data
Use it. If you are writing about software pricing, quote a figure and link back — that is the whole point of publishing this as a standing page rather than burying it in an article. A workable attribution:
"According to StacksVerdict's SaaS Pricing Index, the real 12-month cost of [tool] at [N] seats is $[X]."
Reproducing the full table or scraping it in bulk is covered by our terms; quoting individual figures with a link is exactly what this page is for.
Methodology
Every figure here uses the same rubric as the rest of the site: list pricing pulled from the vendor's own pricing page, re-verified quarterly, dated per tool. The six-criteria scoring alongside each row is explained in full on our methodology page, including why value for money carries the heaviest weight.
Questions about this index
Why does the "12-month cost" change when I switch the seat toggle?
Because the calculation is genuinely price per seat × your team size × 12 months. It only appears in the first table, for tools that actually bill that way — HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho, Salesforce, Asana, monday.com, ClickUp, Trello, Notion and Grammarly. Ranking never changes between seat counts, because every tool in that table scales by the same multiplier.
Why is Coda in the flat table when it clearly charges per user?
It charges per Doc Maker — the people who build documents — not per person with access. Editors and viewers are free and unlimited. A 30-person team with 3 builders pays for 3 licences, so multiplying by headcount would overstate the real cost by roughly 10×. The same logic keeps Obsidian's per-user Sync add-on and Jasper's single-seat entry tier out of the per-seat table — see the notes on each row.
Why is an email marketing tool not in the per-seat table?
None of them bill by seat. Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Brevo and Omnisend all price by contact-list size, and the cost of that scales with your subscriber count, not your team's headcount. Multiplying an email platform's price by "seats" would produce a number with no relationship to what you would actually pay. See our email marketing cost breakdown for the contact-tier math.
How often is this updated?
Each tool is re-verified against its own pricing page quarterly, and the date shown per row is when that happened — not when the page itself was last touched. As of today the oldest verification on this page is from July 22, 2026. If you spot a stale or wrong figure, tell us — we correct within 48 hours.
Can I get this as a spreadsheet or API?
Not yet. Every figure on this page is real HTML, readable by any scraper or LLM without one, which covers most of what a spreadsheet would be used for. If a structured export would be useful to you specifically, say so — it is the kind of request that decides what we build next.