Salesforce says per-user pricing will be new AI norm

• Salesforce CEO says the company can justify 3-4x price increases with up to 10x more valuable tools
• Customers prefer seat-based pricing for improved predictability
• The company isn't worried about reduced headcounts losing it per-seat subscriptions

Salesforce CEO Mac Benioff has alluded to a return to seat-based pricing for agentic AI, after the company experimented with usage and conversation-based models.

It seems that customers were demanding for predictability and flexibility in terms of pricing, and that they have so far been fond of the company's Agentic Enterprise License Agreement (AELA).

"When we first started with Agentforce, we were talking about, oh, it's going to be so much per conversation... but customers have pushed for more flexibility," Benioff said in last week's earnings call.

What is the future of AI pricing?

Salesforce believes that there are also opportunities to charge more for artificial intelligence – customers could expect "three or four times or 10 times more value" from the company's products, so it could easily justify "three times, four times the ability to multiply the monetization on customers."

However AI comes at a cost, because it seems companies are buying the technology to improve worker output rather than replace them entirely, leaving them with two worker resource bills (human and AI). "In most companies, humans are also going to increase," Chief Revenue Officer Miguel Milano explained.

To this tune, Salesforce doesn't seem to be too bothered about charging on a per-seat basis, because companies aren't significantly dropping workers (and therefore seats).

Moreover, half (55%) of the companies that fired workers to replace them with AI said they regretted their decision in a survey earlier this year, and many leaders have even written off headcount decreases as a result of artificial intelligence.

On the flip side, it's Salesforce's customers who may not reap the rewards of seat-based pricing, with some users barely scratching the surface of the tools available, rendering their seats poor value for money.

Looking ahead, it's unclear how the landscape will play out, but a mix of seat-based and consumption-based pricing could be an effective way to ensure customer value.

Speculation about a revision to pricing strategies broke as the company posted a 9% year-over-year increase in quarterly revenue. Now in its fourth and final quarter of fiscal 2026, Salesforce has also upped its full-year revenue expectations from $41.45 billion to $41.55 billion.

Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!

And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.