CROSS-CATEGORY: Four Incompatible Pricing Metrics Now Compete for the Same Unit of Agent Work
With Meta's per-token launch on August 1, the market now has four live and mutually incommensurable meters for one job: per-token (Meta, $2/M), per-conversation (Salesforce Agentforce, $2.00 flat), per-resolution (HubSpot Breeze at $0.50 per resolved conversation and $1 per qualified lead; Zendesk at $1.50 committed / $2.00 pay-as-you-go), and seats-plus-credits (monday.com, $0.01-$0.0125 per credit on top of 1,000-3,000 bundled). Bain's review of 30+ SaaS vendors found 35% simply bundled AI into higher per-seat tiers and 65% layered usage meters on top — zero have fully left seats behind. The practical consequence for anyone buying agents: cross-vendor comparison is currently impossible, and the vendor picks the denominator that flatters its own economics.
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