AI pricing is broken: credits, seats, and the 91% problem
AI pricing is confusing customers, and the people running AI companies admit it. Lovable’s own growth lead says her company’s $25/mo plan is hard to explain. You get 100 credits, but you have to start building before you understand what those credits buy. That is not a positioning problem. That is a product problem.
The Credits Trap
Credits exist for a real reason. When an AI agent retries work or takes a longer path to the same outcome, the underlying compute cost varies wildly between two identical requests. Credits bundle that variable cost into something that fits a subscription model.
The problem is that credits are not outcomes. Audio tools price in minutes. Scraping tools price in pages. A buyer immediately understands what they are purchasing. Credits require a learning period before the value lands, and most buyers do not stay long enough to complete that education.
What Buyers Actually Want
G2’s 2026 AI Agents Report puts numbers on the frustration. According to the report, 91% of B2B buyers find per-seat pricing unfair for AI agents. 57% prefer usage-based models. 46% report that agent running costs came in higher than they expected, and 74% say they are open to switching vendors at renewal.
Real-time cost dashboards and spend caps ranked as top demands. Buyers do not just want different pricing structures. They want visibility and control over what they are spending as work happens.
The Valuation Mirage Running Alongside This
There is a structural problem in how founders are reading the fundraising market right now. Startup valuation reports only include companies that successfully raised. As fewer seed companies reach Series A, the surviving group gets more selective and their reported valuations skew higher.
One model correcting for this bias estimates that new seed rounds value companies at four times the average of existing seed startups. Higher round prices can therefore accompany a tougher fundraising market at the same time. Before you use a recently funded competitor to anchor your own round price, compare your actual growth and unit economics with theirs, not just the headline number.
Where Agent Pricing Gets Interesting
Walmart is already using AI to negotiate individually with smaller suppliers. Those suppliers previously received standard terms because the savings from negotiating each deal individually were too small to justify the effort. Agents change that math entirely.
For founders building in this space, the pricing question and the agent capability question are the same question. If your product cannot show buyers what the agent did and what it cost in terms they recognize, the 74% renewal churn risk from the G2 report applies directly to you.
I’m founder of BizStack at Cagri Sarigoz LLC and a passionate advocate for entrepreneurs.
With over 14 years in tech, marketing, and AI, including my role as Head of SEO at CitizenShipper and co-founder of TaleBot at Intale AI, I’m dedicated to sharing genuine, useful product insights and tips.
At BizStack, I aim to cut through the digital noise to provide clear, actionable advice.
And more than all else, I’m a father to a (always) little girl and a husband.
Contact me at [email protected] for assistance.
