As AI tools proliferate, the long-standing economics of enterprise software companies—specifically the per-seat model—will inevitably shift. The rise of agentic systems has threatened to compress workflows, streamline the labor needed to execute tasks and, ultimately, cut down on those revenue-generating licenses. This fear came to the fore during February’s “SaaS-pocalypse,” a seismic market event that—while perhaps knee-jerk—wiped out billions of dollars in market value for the great and good of SaaS. Three main alternatives to the classic seat-based model have emerged: usage-based pricing, outcome-based pricing, and some hybrid of all of the above. In an era of growing ROI concerns, this transition is a big topic of conversation: So are companies moving en masse from seat-based pricing to these alternative offerings? The great rotation According to SaaS management platform CloudNuro, over 45% of SaaS companies moved toward outcome-based pricing or hybrid models in 2024, noting the trend accelerated in 2025. In the last few years, companies like Microsoft, ServiceNow, and HubSpot have jumped on a pricing bandwagon predicated on delivering tangible results: It’s a move that some experts think is beneficial both for client and vendor. “Instead of picking a model and sticking to it, they’re treating pricing as something like a strategy they can iterate on—like the product growth,” said Elana Lian, partner at Dell Technologies Capital. “Pricing is now a growth lever, not just monetization. Pricing can help drive adoption. It can help upsell over time.” From the perspective of the buyer, the pricing change has some obvious benefits: Firstly, it reflects how clients are using AI tools in an era where agentic systems promise great efficiencies for both time and money. Secondly, barriers to entry are theoretically lower (the cost of adoption through licenses can be prohibitive for a company in its early growth phase). Keep reading here for best practices when shifting pricing models.—LI | 
