Hybrid Pricing

Hybrid pricing combines a fixed component — seats, a platform fee, a tier — with a variable one tied to consumption: tasks run, documents processed, credits burned. It is where most AI-native software has converged, and the reason is arithmetic. Pure seat pricing breaks when marginal cost is real. Two customers with the same headcount can differ tenfold in inference spend, so a flat per-seat price either overcharges the light user or funds the heavy one out of margin. Pure usage pricing fixes that and introduces its own problem: revenue becomes unpredictable for you and the bill becomes unpredictable for the buyer, which is the objection that stalls procurement. The hybrid answer is a floor plus a meter. The seat fee covers access and the fixed costs of serving an account; the usage component covers the work. Include a generous allowance in the base so that ordinary use never generates a surprise line, and price overage in units the customer recognises — "documents", not "tokens". Whatever units you choose, publish the conversion. A credit system nobody can convert into money reads as an attempt to hide the price.